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Thursday, September 19, 2024

Color-Coding Wrenches

My collection of quarter inch drive tools

Once upon a time I had a small box holding a set of quarter-inch drive sockets and wrenches. But time passed, the box disintegrated, some of those sockets wandered off and I acquired new sockets, so now I have a mish-mash of quarter-inch drive tools. That's okay, I found a box on Amazon that would hold them all.

But now I've got metric and English size sockets all mixed together in the same box. If you are looking for a particular socket, be it either or metric, it's easy enough to tell which ones are bigger if all the sockets you have are of that one persuasion, but when you've got them mixed together the problem becomes much more difficult because some English sockets are nearly the same apparent size as some metric sockets, so now you have pick them up and hold them up the light and try to make out the tiny little markings stamped into the side. Bah and humbug.

ZEYAR Permanent Markers

But now I'm retired and I've got time to spend on sorting out my self-imposed problems, so I bought a set of colored markers and painted a red stripe around the base of each English socket and a blue stripe around the base of the metric sockets.

I got onto this because I'm working on a defunct pressure washer and I need some Allen wrenches. I had a bunch at one time, but during the new house project all my tools got scattered. Probably had something to do with my hip going bad and relying on Osmany to pick up the slack. He's probably got them, but he's busy and I don't want to bug him over something as trivial as Allen wrenches. Besides, I ones I had were kind of a mess. So I bought some new ones:

Topline Folding Hex Key Set

I was just looking for English and metric sizes, and I found some, but both grips were the same color. What is wrong with you guys? Why would you do that? So I kept looking and I found this. The set includes a third handle with Torx bits and that's okay, it's not like I'm overrun with Torx drivers. Not everyone likes this kind of tools, but I do. Having a complete set in my hand makes my life easier.


2 comments:

Ole phat Stu said...

Good idea! My airplane was made in USA (Piper 28)and so has Inch based tool sizes, My motorcycles & cars made in Europe and so use metric. I keep them in separate boxes. No torx.

Justin_O_Guy said...

red stripe around the base of each English socket and a blue stripe around the base of the metric sockets.

Ya just Gotta politicize Everything, huh?
Hell, I keep all that commie metric crap on the left side of my box.