[R-390] Wonder tool: Ignition wrenches

[Tim Shoppa]

I went to the local Sears last night and bought a pouch each of metric
and inch open-end ignition wrenches.

Previously I had been using nutdrivers where possible to grip all the
myriad nuts and spacers and control washers etc. around my radios and
other electronic miscellany. But where not possible (which was more
times than not) I ended up using needle-nose pliers, which was far from
ideal.

But the ignition wrenches are so so much better where a nutdriver is
not possible. The Sears inch set covers all the nut sizes from 2-56 up
to the nuts used to hold controls onto panels. Each wrench has two ends
at different angles that covers most all the situations. They aren't
super-duper thin but are a very useful compromise between thinness and
small-diameter head.

Best $16 I ever spent!

I could imagine a super-duper micro-mini socket set being useful for
electronics work, too, but still haven't located one. I have a generic
1/4" set that goes down to 3/16" which is small enough for the hex size,
but it just isn't all that useful working inside a chassis filled with
parts. With adjacent parts and terminal strips it's unusual for the
socket head to actually be able to clear everything in the chassis and
get over the nut. When I'm building from scratch, they do great because
then I can tighten up everything before I put in the parts and wiring.
What I might end up buying are deep recess sockets for doing control
nuts and nuts on front panels etc.

Maybe what would be useful inside the chassis is a really thin-wall
socket set, don't know if such a thing exists, probably would not be a
standard drive size like 1/4". Thinner wall nutdrivers would be
moderately useful too (I say that with caution because the most frequent
failure mode in my shop is for me to crack/rip/distort beyond usability
the business end of a nutdriver.)

Tim.