With about 35 years of metal working, welding, construction, plastics
manufacturing I've had to improvise many times on tools to do big jobs.
If you already have steel inventory of assorted sizes, these tools are
quickly made up and justify just the one time use since often they can be
salvaged or used again on other special projects with slight
modifications.
One thing that was a first move was always to grind off the stops on
sheet metal shears and weld a new stop forward so it didn't pinch your
fingers or palms when it snapped on cutting completion.
Many larger wrenches were equipped with welded on D rings for use with
power pulls or other leverage increase devices.
Cam over devices for holding items to drill presses and mills were
frequently modified many times in their life span.
There were situations where four men could safely lift a 4000 pound
canopy to a height of twelve feet by making 'jigs' for a one time use
with the jigs being used as material in future projects.
On one project we moved a 250 foot long steel building wall approximately
100 feet across a concrete floor to a new location without removing any
steel sidewalls or support columns. I had a residual supply of 6" casters
around for twenty years that never did all wind up in use at any one
given time after the wall was moved. Labor savings by building the
dollies was over $9,000.00 vs the labor of disassembly and re assembly
with the added benefit of every screw stayed in its place and there was
no puzzle involved.
In my opinion every socket wrench should have a hex on the drive end that
could be stacked on the next larger size to give us a deep socket effect
and reduce the socket swapping routine on close sizes like 1/2" 9/16"
etc. Many spark plug sockets have a wrench hex on them .......... they
just quit too soon and should have put this on every socket.
Screwdrivers should have quality handles the flip out and become T
handles (Brookstone has these).
I saw an extremely clever tool recently that was used on the gland nut on
a Type I engine, it simply locked on the nut and had a starter gear on
the other end that engaged the starter ring gear. It multiplied torque by
about ten to one and was a safe tool.
If anybody has a tool idea they should peruse making the tool. This extra
effort might not lead to millions in profits but is well worth the
trouble if it is indeed a good tool idea.

Stan Wilder

On Wed, 19 Feb 2003 19:24:05 -0800 Alistair Bell <albell@UVIC.CA> writes:
> This will be of use to young and old wrench wranglers
>
> http://www.agrabilityproject.org/assistivetech/tips/handtools.cfm
>
>
> Alistair
>
> --
> '82 Westy -> diesel converted to gas in '94
> albell@uvic.ca
> http://members.shaw.ca/albell
>
>

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