[Shop-talk] Cute new tools I saw

[Doug Braun]

A Lowe's the other weekend I noticed a couple of
clever wrenches I hadn't seen before:

The first was a pair of quad-size ratcheting box end
wrenches.  Each end of a wrench had an opening for two
sizes, stacked together.  You would flip the wrench
over to use the other size.  The only compromise was
that the ends of the wrenches were twice as thick as a
regular box end wrench.  So, the pair of wrenches gave
you 8 sizes.

The other was a socket set designed quite differently
than normal. Instead of the ratchet having a square
drive that fits into a square hole on the socket,
their ratchet had a big torx-style hole, and the
sockets had a matching pattern around the outside of
the back end.  The supposed benefit of this was that
it was like a (sturdier) ratcheting box-end wrench,
and you could put it over a long bolt to reach the
nut.  They looked really butch, but I'm not sure how
useful they really were.  And I have no idea if there
was a special extension for them.

Is father's day coming up soon?  (Or is it mother's
day?)

Doug