I’M AN old school guy – a set of open-end spanners and a set of ring spanners formed the basis of my first tool kit as a teenager with his first car (actually in my case the boat came first – but that’s another story).
Yet these days I see it’s a set of combination spanners that is more than likely to kick off the tool kit.
Ring and open-ended (ROE) as they are known, it is hip to acronymise (who knew that this was even a word?). Anyway I digress, back to ROE spanners. ROE consist of an open ended ‘head’ at one end with, most commonly, a 12-point ring spanner at the other end. Importantly both of these ends are the exact same sized fitting.
I’m happy to roll over on that one.
Market forces dictate there is economic common sense in opting for a combination/ROE set of spanners, preferably in my opinion (PIMO) in a tool roll/wrap.
Every brand seems to offer a wide selection of offerings of combination spanners.
Astute spenders will tell you also ROE spanners are regularly used as loss leaders to get you into a store.
My last 22pc set was purchased as the headlining act of a 50 per cent off sale. In fact, because the metric set skipped the Xmm and Ymm spanners, I only purchased this set for the 11-piece imperial spanners.
In a minute I’ll explain why I wanted a backup set of imperial spanners. Momentarily though, just to conclude my justification for this purchase, here goes: The 22-piece SAE/MM (that’s imperial/metric respectively in at least one era I’ve lived) was cheaper on special than the imperial only set that I was originally going to purchase.
But it irks me the 15mm and 16mm are not included in this kit; it further irks me the complete 24-piece set in the same brand was much more expensive; too expensive to justify its purchase on OCD grounds.
I don’t have a solution, except to accept unless I get to rub genie’s lantern when I next stub my toe on one at a jumble sale, then it’s a problem which even my letter to CEO Tools won’t be able to rectify.
For sure somebody in the back room at Tool HQ has worked out this little strategy forces us to buy more tools.
Maybe next year’s 23-piece kit will come out with the 15mm and 16mm – but omit the 17mm.
Maybe instead of finding genie’s lantern, maybe I’ll get all three wishes at once and at a farm auction somewhere I’ll stumble across a complete set of made in Australia Sidchrome spanners.
When I say complete set I mean a set of open enders and a set of rings in both AF and metric.
Which brings me, in a roundabout way, back to the reasoning behind getting a backup set of combination spanners.
You see I decided some time ago that I’d like to trial a set of combination spanners.
I was starting out on a new project-car project, an American model from the 1970s – ergo, a car that used imperial spanners.
So at that time I purchased an inexpensive ROE set at Repco, their MechPro ‘red’ brand, for $15 on special. Fifteen bucks for a set, that’s cheaper in many cases than buying a single one-off double open ender.
There’s the point right there.
Then when one of my 40-year-old imperial open enders went missing in action and I needed to use the same sized spanner on a bolt-head as well as on the nut; then I was as stuck as the rusted on bolt.
So it was off to the Repco store (again). Now I’m no heathen, however I was glad Repco was open on a Sunday (AKA shed day). At the store I met the aforementioned 22-piece spanner set, rolled wide open. Even the missus agreed it looked nice – and home it came with us.
Incidentally the set was from the Repco MechPro blue range. With the five-year warranty.
It was just the ticket for those very common occasions on this project car when I needed two of the same sized non-ratcheting imperial spanners, one at each end of the nut and bolt head, in order to crack the nut before using a ratchet(ing) spanner to speed up the disassembly process. PIMO I’d rather not use ratchet drives when cracking nuts.
The missus was spot-on.
Back inside the shed the unfurled tool roll looked lovely. It looked lovely at a distance – just don’t look too closely or you’ll see the obvious. I still maintain that I never purchased them for the metric numbers. Anyway I go through the various tool store catalogues each week looking ever hopefully for the 24-piece set to be on special.
Meanwhile, perusing the catalogues yesterday, I spied a tool I just have to have.
And the offer this week kicks in an extra $10 off in must-spend-now-before-they expire (MSNBTE) loyalty bonuses – or was it a birthday bonus?
Anyway I’ll tell you about that tool next time.
NEXT WEEK: Steve looks at ratchet spanners – the good ones.
