One facet of the ergonomics approach to the problem of cumulative trauma disorders (CTDs) in industry has been the design of hand tools aimed at reducing exposure to deviated wrist postures. Despite rising incidence rates, the wide dissemination of the Western Electric (WE) plier study, and several empirical investigations of bent-handled knives for the meat-packing industry, the demand for bent-handled tools is low. Most empirical investigations of such tools have focused on performance measures associated with discrete, well-defined motions rather than with performance in terms of output per unit time. It was hypothesized that the performance of operators using bent pliers might be significantly lower than that achieved with straight pliers. This hypothesis was confirmed through an experimental investigation of a simulated wire-twisting task comparing the WE pliers to standard needle-nose pliers. The performance decrement associated with the WE pliers, which depended on work height, ranged from 1.4% to 17.0%. This study was not about CTDs, per se, but the results have implications for efforts aimed at reducing wrist deviation through handle design. The results are likely specific to the task and workplace geometries investigated, suggesting further studies. The implications of this research for industrial interventions related to deviated wrist postures associated with plier use and suggestions for future investigations of bent-handled tools are presented.