I saw a couple of different videos on youtube recently in which they used multitool pliers as a "third hand" or "helping hand", which is something often useful for soldering or fine detailing. This got me brainstorming about how you might use a SAK without pliers to do the same thing. Here's the result:
Here you can see I'm using the inside of the scissors of a Compact to hold a wire, with the back side hook propping it up. The tension of the backspring causes the scissors to want to close, which in turn puts clamping pressure on the wire and holds it very securely.
The Compact is only two layers, so obviously it's not going to be as stable as something with more layers like a Climber, a Huntsman, or a Ranger. But this does demonstrate that a two layer model can hold something and still stay balanced, even though it would still be easy to knock it over if you bumped into it.
Here we have the same compact being used to hold a small keychain flashlight. Raising the flashlight up just a little bit off the table makes a huge difference in how well you can see. This allows you to do that while keeping both of your hands free to work with.
I used this two layer Spartan to demonstrate how you can use the can opener and the awl to accomplish the same thing, but it's not as stable because the awl is thinner than the hook. It's also not able to hold the wire quite as high up as the scissors, but this is what you would do if you didn't have a scissor layer on your SAK, like for example if you had a Camper or a Hiker model. This method can also hold the small keychain flashlight from the previous image.
Drawbacks:
Whatever you use the SAK to hold can't be too heavy or else the SAK won't stay upright.
It's not the most sturdy third hand method, and SAKs with fewer layers aren't as stable as SAKs with more layers.
You have to be mindful of not causing premature wear on the scissor spring, since whatever you clamp in there can push up against the leaf spring.
This is not intended to be a regular use of your SAK. This is just something that you could do in a pinch.
Additional note: if you have a place to hang up your flashlight from above, but but you don't want the flashlight pointing straight down, then you can use this little hack to hold your flashlight so that it is pointed sideways instead of down, and then use your SAK's lanyard ring to hang the SAK up while the SAK is holding the light.
Here you can see I'm using the inside of the scissors of a Compact to hold a wire, with the back side hook propping it up. The tension of the backspring causes the scissors to want to close, which in turn puts clamping pressure on the wire and holds it very securely.
The Compact is only two layers, so obviously it's not going to be as stable as something with more layers like a Climber, a Huntsman, or a Ranger. But this does demonstrate that a two layer model can hold something and still stay balanced, even though it would still be easy to knock it over if you bumped into it.
Here we have the same compact being used to hold a small keychain flashlight. Raising the flashlight up just a little bit off the table makes a huge difference in how well you can see. This allows you to do that while keeping both of your hands free to work with.
I used this two layer Spartan to demonstrate how you can use the can opener and the awl to accomplish the same thing, but it's not as stable because the awl is thinner than the hook. It's also not able to hold the wire quite as high up as the scissors, but this is what you would do if you didn't have a scissor layer on your SAK, like for example if you had a Camper or a Hiker model. This method can also hold the small keychain flashlight from the previous image.
Drawbacks:
Whatever you use the SAK to hold can't be too heavy or else the SAK won't stay upright.
It's not the most sturdy third hand method, and SAKs with fewer layers aren't as stable as SAKs with more layers.
You have to be mindful of not causing premature wear on the scissor spring, since whatever you clamp in there can push up against the leaf spring.
This is not intended to be a regular use of your SAK. This is just something that you could do in a pinch.
Additional note: if you have a place to hang up your flashlight from above, but but you don't want the flashlight pointing straight down, then you can use this little hack to hold your flashlight so that it is pointed sideways instead of down, and then use your SAK's lanyard ring to hang the SAK up while the SAK is holding the light.