Tools you never knew you needed until you got one

[profpointy]

here's another tool I bought on a whim, yet is a lot more useful than I expected - a small angle grinder. Need to cut some steel - get the grinder out, sand half an inch off some wood (for a rough job only), de rust something - use the wire brushy thing. Cut a rusted bolt off. Top tool -and even Bosch Blue (pro grade) is onky £50 or so.

[Heltor Chasca]

I'm sure in each of there exists a tool addict. My penchant is for spades. I've got all sorts: each with a different duty and each as loved as the next. Weirdo.

*I gave up my wheelbarrow addiction. I only have 3 now. I even bought a really smart one for my daughter when she was about 4.

[meic]

here's another tool I bought on a whim, yet is a lot more useful than I expected - a small angle grinder. Need to cut some steel - get the grinder out, sand half an inch off some wood (for a rough job only), de rust something - use the wire brushy thing. Cut a rusted bolt off. Top tool -and even Bosch Blue (pro grade) is onky £50 or so.

It gets a bit tedious changing the heads, so you really need three such grinders and of course a couple of 9" ones for some real fun.

[Mick F]

Don't talk to me about spades.
Last house we lived at, we had a lovely soft-soiled garden. You could have planted anything you wanted.

Here?
Shillet, and the spades are useless.

Really fertile, but in order to dig, you need a pick axe. It's the only way to get through the stones and shale.
The spades haven't been used for over 20 years.

[robgul]

Not sure if you'd call it a "tool" but my ultrasonic cleaner gets a lot of use



Rob

[Brucey]

here's another tool I bought on a whim, yet is a lot more useful than I expected - a small angle grinder. Need to cut some steel - get the grinder out, sand half an inch off some wood (for a rough job only), de rust something - use the wire brushy thing. Cut a rusted bolt off. Top tool -and even Bosch Blue (pro grade) is onky £50 or so.

It gets a bit tedious changing the heads, so you really need three such grinders and of course a couple of 9" ones for some real fun.

I have a few small blue Bosch angle grinders on the go at any given time. The only head I use very often that is a PITA to remove is a cup brush (so I have one grinder set up with that nearly all the time); all the usual cutting/grinding wheels I can usually spin off by hand once I use the button-push spindle lock. Oddly enough this is less easy with a new grinder, but the M14 threads (both male and female) mate with one another after a while and then tend not to bind, so a well-used grinder is easy to work with, no tools required. I must say the QR wheel guard on recent models is just junk; the older bolt-on wheel guard is a much better arrangement.

Needless to say, I run the gearboxes on my grinders in a version of my favourite semi-fluid grease... and all my grinders have had so much use now that the gears are well lapped into one another; these two things mean that the gearboxes on my grinders are quite a lot quieter than on other machines. By contrast the standard lube doesn't get mobile inside the gearbox until it is very hot, and then it just gets thrown outwards and tends to stay there. Before I started using a different lube I would open up a noisy gearbox and the gears would be bone dry (not to mention the bearings.... ).
I guess over the years I've done a few gearbox rebuilds (I managed to chip the pockets where the spindle lock engages on one machine, don't ask me how I did that.... ) I've had a dodgy switch linkage, done a few sets of brushes, a couple of tailshaft bearings...

The last time a tailshaft bearing failed (predictably, the clip broke up... ), I didn't have a spare bearing to hand but I did have a dremel tool and a pot of ball-bearings of the correct size. The races didn't look that bad to me, so I ground some angled loading slots into the bearing races, and made myself a 'Brucey special' full-complement deep groove bearing which would work fine provided it only ever rotates in one direction. That was a couple of years ago; so far it has held up OK.

The Angle Grinder is my favourite power tool; better than a drill, because I have a chuck I fit to an angle grinder which makes it..... a pretty decent drill!

cheers

[Sweep]

About ten years ago, I was given a vernier caliper as a gift by an engineer friend, and at the time thought, 'that's an interesting novelty... but it will only get used once in a blue moon.' It now lives in its case right at the top of the tool box, because it gets used so often, for bike jobs and for other jobs around the house .

Agree. Aldi do them once or twice a year. Lidl as well probably.

Edit - i see brucey got there first but will let the comment stand.

[pete75]

Needless to say, I run the gearboxes on my grinders in a version of my favourite semi-fluid grease... and all my grinders have had so much use now that the gears are well lapped into one another; these two things mean that the gearboxes on my grinders are quite a lot quieter than on other machines.

cheers

I wish mine was that quiet but the engine makes as much noise as me chainsaw......

[Brucey]

angle grinder gearboxes are, IME, really noisy. I wasn't quite sure about this until I stripped a gearbox down and ran the grinder motor without the gears in mesh. The grinder was suddenly very quiet by comparison with normal!

I think the noise occurs because the motor poles create a series of torque pulses that are large enough to accelerate the rotor several times per revolution; this in turn causes the crown wheel in the gearbox to chatter back and forth, and this is where much of the noise comes from. Normally there is next-to-nothing to damp this motion.

If you regrease a gearbox with normal (#2) grease, it runs quietly for about two seconds before the grease is hurled off the crown wheel, then normal (noisy) service is resumed. If you pack lots of #2 grade grease into the gearbox it comes out wherever it can, and it also causes quite a lot of drag inside the gearbox; the grinder will slow noticeably whilst it is still full of grease. Oil causes less drag but comes right out of the gearbox and makes a dreadful mess everywhere. Whatever doesn't come out in use will leak out during storage.... Turns out that the right grade of SFG will keep everything lubed (and quiet) without creating too much extra drag, but won't also spume out of the machine too much.

It is never going to be a quiet machine, but they can be, ooh, about half as noisy if the gearbox is sorted out.

cheers

[pete75]

angle grinder gearboxes are, IME, really noisy. I wasn't quite sure about this until I stripped a gearbox down and ran the grinder motor without the gears in mesh. The grinder was suddenly very quiet by comparison with normal!

I think the noise occurs because the motor poles create a series of torque pulses that are large enough to accelerate the rotor several times per revolution; this in turn causes the crown wheel in the gearbox to chatter back and forth, and this is where much of the noise comes from. Normally there is next-to-nothing to damp this motion.

If you regrease a gearbox with normal (#2) grease, it runs quietly for about two seconds before the grease is hurled off the crown wheel, then normal (noisy) service is resumed. If you pack lots of #2 grade grease into the gearbox it comes out wherever it can, and it also causes quite a lot of drag inside the gearbox; the grinder will slow noticeably whilst it is still full of grease. Oil causes less drag but comes right out of the gearbox and makes a dreadful mess everywhere. Whatever doesn't come out in use will leak out during storage.... Turns out that the right grade of SFG will keep everything lubed (and quiet) without creating too much extra drag, but won't also spume out of the machine too much.

It is never going to be a quiet machine, but they can be, ooh, about half as noisy if the gearbox is sorted out.

cheers

My noisy one runs on petrol or , strictly speaking, petroil not electricity...

[kylecycler]

A thor leather faced mallet:

Bought it because it appealed to me and seemed quite well priced but not sure what I thought I'd use it for.

Incredibly useful for hitting things pretty hard without damaging too much. More use on car parts than bicycles to be fair
When my first one got nicked, I bought two more in different sizes

+1 on that. Mine is about 30 years old now; the leather had shrunk and shrivelled, I tried saddle soap but then I think I soaked it in olive oil or some such and it's swelled up and tight again now. Great fun, actually - you can knock hell out of stuff and not damage it! Good for whacking a pedal spanner when the pedals are a bit tight to slacken, especially. Also used for 'persuading' the big adjustable spanner to turn when removing a tight freewheel. Never fails.

This one belongs to Robin Mather, the framebuilder. Not a Thor, but made in England and you can see it's been well used...

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
The copper hide mallet is an engineering tool. I doubt many auto guys own one.
In a metal machine shop (metal cutting) it main use is to tighten milling machine vises and tapping work down onto parallels.

I got to think hard on what one tool would be most useful after using it first time.
As I spend more time nowadays working with wood, a tool that has revolutionised time saving has got to be a battery drill driver.
I bought a few for a job I was working on for the assembly line in mid 80's, £ 150 each, nearly a weeks wages for me.
Angle grinders are powerful and useful but dangerous in the wrong hands.
I mainly use with one for metal cutting / finishing, flap disc are useful, the 9" is used most for masonry.

I have many hand tools but just using it once probably pays for itself when times money.

[RJC]

the dial sort are pretty good (and don't need batteries) but...twice a year Aldi and Lidl have digital vernier calipers for about ten quid. These are tops! Just make sure you have a few spare batteries to hand....

cheers

The Lidl digital calipers I bought a few years ago which take a 1p size coin cell are still on their original battery, some calipers I bought elsewhere which used a smaller battery would flatten a battery in under a year. I suspect the issue is the electronics rather than the battery.

[Brucey]

My noisy one runs on petrol or , strictly speaking, petroil not electricity...

ah, one of those... you could fit it with an expansion chamber, take it to Mugello this weekend, and rev the wotsits off it, just like all those nutty Italians!

cheers

[Tiberius]

Not sure if you'd call it a "tool" but my ultrasonic cleaner gets a lot of use



Rob

Rob.....I know that they use those things in the motorbike world for cleaning gummed up carbs' and the like....

Serious question. What do YOU use it for ??.....I sort of want one but I don't really know why yet (I've bought all sorts of tools for exactly the same reason... ).....