Wolf Wire suspended ceiling wire cutters designed to save lives

Professional Engineering Co. Inc., Lawrence, Massachusetts, has been attending the Washington-based National Demolition Association's (NDA’s) Annual Convention since 2001. Phillip Guerin, president of Professional Engineering, says without fail every year the company is met by demolition contractors who tell him how well the company’s Wire Wolf suspended ceiling wire cutters work.

“The first day I thought of the idea was while I was working at a high rise in Boston and a worker was standing on a mobile baker staging cutting the suspended ceiling wires holding up the grid work,” recalls Guerin. “Another worker was on the floor pushing him to the next location to cut more wires when the worker on top got his neck caught on some communication cables hanging down from the grid.”

Guerin says the worker pushing him did not notice the problem until the worker on top almost fell off the staging. “Having seen this potentially deadly problem and just out of engineering school, I decided that I could solve this problem by making a tool that could cut down suspended ceilings from the floor,” he says.

He says he went into work the next day with a pair of wire cutters mounted on a pole, one handle of the wire cutters was bent at 90 degrees and had a rope tied to it like a tree pruner for Guerin’s first prototype. “It cut the wire very easily and I knew I was onto something,” he says.

It took Guerin about 10 years and a lot of testing with different prototypes as well as taking machine shop classes to figure out the best design for cutting the wires and manufacturing the tool. The end result was a lightweight tool that could extend from 6 feet to 18 feet and cut down suspended ceilings safely from the floor, Guerin says.

“I have no idea how many accidents that were prevented from workers falling off of ladders and staging but it gives me solace hearing from contractors telling me all the time that they always use the tool when they cut down suspended ceilings,” remarks Guerin.

The tool weighs 4 pounds including the extension pole. It can cut down 5,000 square feet of ceiling grid per hour and the heat-treated tool steel blades can cut over 100,000 square feet of ceiling wires without wearing out. It can even cut heavy-duty 8 gauge ceiling wires, Guerin says.

More information is available at info@ceilingdemo.com.