While they may work just fine for ty-wraps, the Hozan tool is one of the 4th hands that does NOT have a ratchet lock. So, it really is not going to work as a true 4th hand (i.e. cable tensioned and hands free).

I have been using ty-wraps since they were introduced for aerospace applications way back when and I've always found that plain old slip joint pliers work just fine to snug them down. I like to feel the tension with my fingers. Sometimes you want these things extremely tight, but sometimes you don't. But, that's just me. There is a tool that snugs them down AND cuts the excess in one fell swoop. Nice for high volume production, but hardly needed on a bike.

If you do a lot of cantilever brakes, that's when a fourth hand - and a third hand - can be handy. I can do cantis about five times faster than I could in the past by using these tools. Cantis are, for me, the hardest brakes to adjust and having tools to hold the pads tight to the rim and make fine adjustments in the cable tension makes a huge difference. Sometimes the F.D. cable on a full suspension bike can be difficult and this tool comes in handy, just as an extra long shaft screwdriver can be handy (no, make that mandatory) to adjust the F.D. limit screws on some full suspension bikes.

A lot jobs you do with special bike tools can be done without in a pinch. But, the whole idea is to make jobs easier. Something as simple as a pedal wrench illustrates this perfectly. The "best" Park PW-4 pedal wrench is SOOO nice to use. There is no other wrench that give you better choices for the best mechanical advantage. When you're trying to remove some pedal that some nitwit forgot to grease when it was installed twenty years ago, this is the tool you really want. Can you do it with some other tool? Sure, but it might be a hacksaw and a drill.

Dissing special tools because you don't personally use them at home does not mean that they won't bail some guy in a shop out of a jam when nothing else will do. Consider that the shop guys have to be able to deal with any situation - many that you can't even imagine - that the enthusiast that owns five or ten, or however many, bikes of his own. It's a different world when you work on several hundred, or even thousands of bikes a year, and they range from from forty year old rusted crap to brand new pro bikes. There's a lot of tools in my shop that only rarely get used, but when you need them there is often no substitute, or, the job can get REALLY difficult when it should have been easy.

Toolboy, please don't take my rant personally. It's just that this particular thread is a perfect example of a lot of cases seen in this forum where people want to make excuses as to why they don't need specific tools. If people don't want to spend the money, then fine. Let the shops pay the freight for the head tube reamers and the like. But, please don't say they're not necessary, or useful. To a LOT of people in the business - trying to get a lot of work done in a short period of time - these tools are both necessary and useful.