“i love it when you talk that way…”
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It’s Wrenches of Color, thank you very much.
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Wow, funny, in the German Amazon store, it costs 103 Euro, approx. 115 USD.
Must be hell of an awesome tool!
It’s a slippery slope. A couple of purchases like this and you might find yourself thinking about the $125 deluxe kit with Beechwood box as some sort of investment.
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IKR?
If you can’t see what size it is by what size it is, you need to grow some skillz.
PB Swiss ones come in nicer colours, and have shinier ends:
They’re also much more expensive, so must be better, right?
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That is not the bottom of your toolbox, that is my bedroom floor and you need to get out of there. Again.
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Looks like a good idea. I’ve been trying to figure out a good way to color-code wrenches neatly.
I’m really failing to see how the colors add anything at all. Maybe I could memorize that my faucet handle’s screw (which is always coming loose) needs the “light blue” wrench, but I’ve already memorized that it’s the “second smallest” wrench, so it adds nothing.
As @redesigned noted (appropriate username FTW), if the numbers on the holders were color-coded then it would absolutely make sense, because you could quickly see which wrench was which size.
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perhaps if your project requires multiple wrenches like a bike, you might have a few of them spread out on your workbench. Color coding them will save you many seconds of time by the end of the repair!
I use pvc electrical tape. The wrench for my Elec-trak battery terminals is taped in yellow and black in a diamond pattern. My philips screwdrivers are taped in black, the standards are mostly green shrink tube, although some are in orange tape.
You can always tell the toolbox of a person who works with high current or high voltage. All the screwdrivers and similar tools have the metal thickly taped or shrink-tubed, with just the tiniest sliver of metal showing on the work surfaces!
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For screwdrivers that’s perfect–next time I’m at the electronics place I’m getting shrink tube.
However, what I really would like to do with the wrenches is encode the size into color bands. You can’t put shrink tube on a wrench.
I primarily encode the function, rather than the size, on my wrenches with pvc electrical tape. But since I remember that the battery bolts are 1/2" it works out to the same thing really.
You can get heat shrink tube big enough and shrinky enough for wrenches under 3/4", but it’s not cheap or easy to find. I have a couple feet of it that I scavenged from somewhere.
I bought a pair of folding hex key sets - one metric, one imperial. It’s very slightly clunkier to use than individual keys, but I never lose one, and they’re well labeled in the holder. Has been entirely sufficient for my minimal hex keying needs.
Basically like this:
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I like those. Been meaning to get 'em. Other solutions involving plastic boxes/containers/racks have all fallen apart.
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I had a problem where the individual bits were flopping around which was kind of a hassle - I spent a while with an elastic band around the tool to hold it all in place. Then I realised that the tool itself is adjustable with a hex key - I just had to tighten the holder a bit.
I put together an Ikea metal loft bed frame with this tool. The big plastic grip makes it a lot more comfortable when you need to apply a lot of torque
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Wouldn’t it be funny if the only hex key you possessed that could tighten it was a permanently-attached part of the tool itself?
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I have standard, metric and torx sets pretty much like those in my primary toolbag. They are a great way to keep a large set of sizes in a small space. But when I’m not on the road I generally find loose allen keys to be more convenient and easier to use… there’s a box on the workbench where an absurd number of them have accumulated over the years.
A trick you can do with the combo sets is to unbolt the dog bones and slip a steel rod through the loop to make a really long or really high leverage allen wrench. Best to wear safety glasses if you do try this one weird trick, though… the failure mode can be pretty ugly.
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