Hey guys! Today I'm going to show you a great way to tether your allen wrenches for doing zinc replacements.
If you've done much of this work and ever dropped a
wrench, you know that it would be nice. You're going to need some electrical heat
shrink tubing, some braided nylon cords, of course whatever your favorite
Allen wrenches that you're using. And a propane torch to shrink the tubing.
It's a pretty straightforward process. This is what the heat shrink tubing looks like when you buy it.
It's flat, so just go ahead and snip off say an inch and a half of it.
And because it's flat, you sort of have to squeeze it from the side to open it up.
Once you do that, you can feed the nylon cord through one end.
And what you want to do is feed the long end of one of the Allen wrenches through the same side.
That's what it should look like. Once you've done that, you're ready
to shrink that tubing down. And that'll hold everything together nicely.
Now this is just the first tubing. I'm going to put two tubes on each one of these wrenches for added strength.
Don't forget to melt the end of your cord.
This one I've already slid on. You'll notice it's a different color because it's slightly a
smaller wrench size. Do the same thing, shrink it up. And don't forget to melt
the end of your cord so it doesn't fray.
All right, that one's good to go. Now to save time, I've already done the others.
So I've got a total of five. Now we're going to slip the second tube over top.
This is the one that's going to give a little added strength. And I will be doing this to
each of the wrenches. So go ahead and shrink that up.
And even the wrenches that have the same size tubing (the black color),
you should still be able to slide it over because once it's shrunk, it's gonna be
smaller than the original size. So just slip it over top, shrink it again.
And again, to save time I went ahead and did this to all of mine. Now even though it's
kind of snug you'll notice the cord still slides which is what you want.
What we're going to do is we're going to pull a little extra slack on the short end so
we can tie a knot like this. And once you've done that, go ahead and melt the
end of the knot and just press it flat to keep the not secure. And once you do
that, you should be able to just slide the knot up against the tubing.
Now notice these are pretty strong now. They're not going to go anywhere.
So these are ready for the loop knot. So yeah, if you want to tie this to a
lanyard, you're going to need some sort of a loop on the other end. Just grab a
couple inches of it and tie a simple loop knot. It should look something like this.
You still need to pull it tight. Now that should be good to go.
So again, to save time I went ahead and did the full set. But now we want to label it.
Of course these wrenches come with little tiny stamps on them. But when you're
underwater and you're working, you want a bigger label so you can see what you're doing.
So I just took a magic marker (a permanent pen) and again these are the
five most common sizes that I would ever use for replacing zinc. And once you get
the label written, this is just a different color of the same shrink tubing.
And the permanent marker is fine with the torch. You'll notice it still
reads very clearly once it's shrinks. And it's not going anywhere. So that's a good
permanent label for the wrench. So I repeated that for all the wrenches.
And the common sizes that I'd use. As you can see, they're much easier to read than
anything that was ever stamped onto the wrench in the factory. And once you've
got those done then they're pretty easy to clip on a lanyard and you're ready to go.
So just clip the ones you need, I mean
they'll all fit on there nicely but typically you're not going to need to bring all of them with you.
If this helps you guys out, I hope you'll give a
thumbs up and subscribe. And if you know anybody else trying to do this, please do share this video.
Thanks for watching and dive safe.