G'mornin' VV: Not a dumb question at all. All I gotta say is you do a fantastic job w/o the nippers, but of course, you use the grinder. The wheeled nippers help shape my pieces. For example, if I'm making a flower petal, I cut a small rectangle then nip it to shape a petal, or on a circle, I cut a square, then nip it into a circle. I don't grind, I tumble to smooth the edges. Sometimes I don't even do that. The nippers are also great for shaping china/pottery shards. Check out the following website for hints on how to use them.
nipper instructions

Thanks for the info slow, are they good for cutting irregular shapes say for the background on a mosaic? And is there a difference between glass and tile nippers or are they the same thing?
Sorry...mosaic is new to me!!
Renee

Vintage, Yes, there is a difference. You can only find wheeled glass cutters at a stained glass shop but you can find tile nippers at Home Depot, Lowe's, or a tile store. I have limited use of tile nippers so can't go into detail about the difference but basically, the tile nippers won't give you the detail the wheeled glass cutters will. And as the name states, they are made for different materials, one for glass, the other for tile.

Yes, you would use the wheeled glass cutters to cut your shapes for background mosaics. I will cut strips of glass, then used my wheeled cutters to cut it into smaller pieces such as triangles or squares. I used my tile nippers for cutting (breaking) plates recently but when I got down to the smaller cuts, used my sheeled glass cutters.

You might find some photos of them online to show you the difference. Hope that helps some.

Couldn't live w/o them. Cut any shape you want - triangles, squares whatever - you control the shape - they cut in the direction you point them. There's a difference in nippers - I didn't have much luck w/the regular tile nippers from Lowes tile tool section, but Riana, in the Puerta Villarta workshop we attended in March, used them quite effectively on the vitreous tiles. Check out the link for the other nippers and a great tutorial on mosaics in general. I was a Googling Queen when I began - coming up on my two-yr. mark in mosaicing - and found all kinds of tutorials.
Joys of Shards

Thanks Slow and d3bbi, I invested in glass mosaic cutters (the wheeled ones) yesterday, man, what a whole new world! They are a great invention!!! I was going to use my regular glass cutter to score and cut bits of glass for the back groung of the butterfly mosiac I am doing but now I only have to use the mosaic cutter to brake each piece in one step!!!!!!!! Thanks for the advice guys!!!