It occurred to me today...

[po18guy]

That I very often find myself in this situation.

[footgoose]

swear to God... 20 years ago I made a special trip to Lowes and bought FIVE 10mm wrenches of differing types, brought them home and hung them all on ONE peg at the bench. They added to the TWO in the box that I can never find.

Not a problem now

[Lucky Phil]

28 minutes ago, footgoose said:

swear to God... 20 years ago I made a special trip to Lowes and bought FIVE 10mm wrenches of differing types, brought them home and hung them all on ONE peg at the bench. They added to the TWO in the box that I can never find.

Not a problem now

Well I grew up in the aviation world where if a tool from you toolbox is missing after a job it's a massive deal and often sleepless nights. It could be sitting somewhere waiting to jam a flight control. Funnily enough I tend not to lose tools:)

My 1/4 drive Snapon ratchet went missing a year or 2 back. I couldn't find it for about 20 min and wasn't worried about it jamming in flight controls more the fact that I'd bought it like 45 years ago and had it my whole professional career and now it was gone. Very, very sad I was. Then I found it, joyful it was. In my back pocket all along.

Ciao   

[po18guy]

Am thinking of opening an internet business: "10mm Socket World" Whadya think? The slammed Honda boyz would be good for a few.

[Bill Hagan]

6 hours ago, po18guy said:

That I very often find myself in this situation.

 

For reasons I cannot explain, I have more 10mm wrenches than any of my others.  

After reading this thread, I am beginning to wonder if they belong to you and some others here.

Cue ...

 

 

Bill

 

 

[docc]

Getting back to mySport after an uncharacteristically extensive wrenching session on my little Honda, I had to stop reaching for the 12s and 14s and fall back to the 11, 13, 17, 19 for the Guzzi. 

"Odd", I know . . .

[po18guy]

Guzzi is perfect for those who lost the popular sized wrenches.

[p6x]

4 hours ago, docc said:

Getting back to mySport after an uncharacteristically extensive wrenching session on my little Honda, I had to stop reaching for the 12s and 14s and fall back to the 11, 13, 17, 19 for the Guzzi. 

"Odd", I know . . .

If I remember correctly, the distance between two opposed faces which determines the size of the wrench you need to use is based on the standard used for that particular fastener.

It is either ISO, or DIN and at the manufacturers' choice to follow. Either one works, but for the same size, the nominal wrench size may change.

This always has been a major pain in the back side.

In the oilfield industry, early on, some accessories, instrumentation, metering systems were manufactured in the USA, and installed on equipment manufactured in Europe.

So you would always need to have a tool box with imperial and metric tools; sometimes the temptation to use the wrong tool would result in a lot of frustration. That included tap and dies, and screws that looked alike but with imperial threads that you may want to install in a metric threaded hole; same size, different thread pitch!

And the cherry on the cake were with the early British standard for threads, which fortunately got discarded when they embraced the metric system. Initially, British threads would screw anti-clockwise against the universal standard to screw clockwise, excepted for gas connections.

 

[Lucky Phil]

I spent my whole career working on US built aircraft, so all AF (plus a lot of years on Airbus, and Fokker come to think of it) and the metric system is by far and away the best. I can measure out 900mm OR 35 and 27/64ths", spare me. The only thing I still convert is 10ths and hundredths of a mm, thousandths of an inch seem more relevant to my brain for some reason. But I always do the calculation in my head, I'm not mad enough yet to use a calculator or anything. And who cares how much force a horse from 1824 could produce and the length of a mans foot from the same time. 

Ciao 

[po18guy]

I just want to know what was in Raceco's Guzzi race bike. That vid is epic.

[SFTripod]

6 hours ago, p6x said:

If I remember correctly, the distance between two opposed faces which determines the size of the wrench you need to use is based on the standard used for that particular fastener.

It is either ISO, or DIN and at the manufacturers' choice to follow. Either one works, but for the same size, the nominal wrench size may change.

This always has been a major pain in the back side.

In the oilfield industry, early on, some accessories, instrumentation, metering systems were manufactured in the USA, and installed on equipment manufactured in Europe.

So you would always need to have a tool box with imperial and metric tools; sometimes the temptation to use the wrong tool would result in a lot of frustration. That included tap and dies, and screws that looked alike but with imperial threads that you may want to install in a metric threaded hole; same size, different thread pitch!

And the cherry on the cake were with the early British standard for threads, which fortunately got discarded when they embraced the metric system. Initially, British threads would screw anti-clockwise against the universal standard to screw clockwise, excepted for gas connections.

 

Lest we not forget Whitworth tools........Oh, that's right, we're "trying" to forget them....

[Rox Lemans]

The elusive 10mm goblin strikes again. 🤣

[p6x]

2 hours ago, Lucky Phil said:

I spent my whole career working on US built aircraft, so all AF (plus a lot of years on Airbus, and Fokker come to think of it) and the metric system is by far and away the best. I can measure out 900mm OR 35 and 27/64ths", spare me. The only thing I still convert is 10ths and hundredths of a mm, thousandths of an inch seem more relevant to my brain for some reason. But I always do the calculation in my head, I'm not mad enough yet to use a calculator or anything. And who cares how much force a horse from 1824 could produce and the length of a mans foot from the same time. 

Ciao 

I spent a good part of my career dealing with mixed units based on what the customer fancied. Sometimes I had to measure tools in inches, other times in meters. Sometimes I had to make my report using ISO units, sometimes Imperial.

Although I was taught in metric, I had to learn inches and fractions because some measures are still expressed in imperial units.

But I agree with you that metric is much more intuitive to decipher.

[Lucky Phil]

6 minutes ago, p6x said:

I spent a good part of my career dealing with mixed units based on what the customer fancied. Sometimes I had to measure tools in inches, other times in meters. Sometimes I had to make my report using ISO units, sometimes Imperial.

Although I was taught in metric, I had to learn inches and fractions because some measures are still expressed in imperial units.

But I agree with you that metric is much more intuitive to decipher.

I grew up the opposite, learning Imperial and then Metric. Metric just makes more sense and is more straight forward. Imagine working on old English bikes with cycle threads. Some British bikes actually have their own bespoke thread size and pitch that you can't buy an over the counter replacement for. I believe the BSA Bantam centre stand bolt is one. These are the people that invented the Imperial system, Nuff said.

Ciao 

[p6x]

1 hour ago, SFTripod said:

Lest we not forget Whitworth tools........Oh, that's right, we're "trying" to forget them....

Whitworth was nicknamed "Gas thread" by my Lathe instructor when we learned about threads... but we never used it.

And understanding threads is a great adventure in the world of oilfield connections... API or not....