hey everyone I'm sound here in my cave with a tooltip about a class of tools
sometimes I'm revealing to you really cool tools that I like or tools you
might not know about things like Forstner bits etc however today I'm
gonna talk about a tool that we all have in our shop I'm just going to tell you
what I think the best version is and today we're going to talk about allen
wrenches allen wrenches are small hexagonal wrenches for unscrewing allen
screws and bolts there you go that's pretty straightforward now if you're
like me and let's go take a walk over here if you're like me you end up with a
lot of Allen wrenches because they often come with tools that you buy so here is
what a lot of people end up with in their shop is a collection of random
sizes of allen wrenches by the way the most common size that I have found
happens to be four millimeters four millimeter seems to be the one that
ships with every freaking tool but there are allen wrench sets you can buy
handheld sets long set short sets in all the time that I have been using Allen
wrenches I have a favorite kind and I'm gonna talk to you about it laid out in
front of me are a set of imperial bond whose tea handled Allen wrenches these
are the kind I learned to use in Jamie's shop he's had sets of these forever
since I worked with him for him in the early 90s and there's a couple of things
I really really liked about this number one even the small sizes I have not had
them stripout for the most part any allen key that fits a screw that you're
supposed to undo they will work they are made to varying manufacturing grades and
some are super close and some are not good for the most part they work just
fine but in the edge cases where you have a really recalcitrant
allen key or allen screw or a set screw that you've got to undo these bond hoes
I have never had a strip out on me I've never had their coroner's round I've
never had them break an Allen head um not to say that you can't do it I've
just said these are made of particularly hard steel and I really dig that too I
really like and I've get a lot out of the ball and the ball and allows you to
actually get purchase on an allen key from multiple angles rather than just
from right above it I also love the construction of these I like their
weight they feel substantial this is a piece of steel welded to the main shaft
and then Plasti Dip each type size is actually written on the side I will tell
you after several years that wears away Allen Allen wrenches are one of these
things it's like if I see a bolt in my car I can usually go get the right
socket for it but allen keys never ever ever do I grab the right Allen wrench
for the Allen Allen bolt ever ever it's always one size up or one size down um
there is a third thing that I love about these bond hose wrenches but first I'm
going to show you how much I love them because so when you're working on a tool
like a milling machine there are allen keys all over the
milling machine there are some in the vise and for adjustment and for actually
tramming it in allen keys are a totally critical tool so I actually keep the set
that's on the workbench right now this set actually lives here right on the
right side of my mill so I have constant access to them that's how important it
is to me for my flow state while machining have Allen wrenches nearby
it's also important to me when I'm using the lathe so I have a second set over
here at the lathe I know this seems really really indulgent it is one of the
things I spent TV money on back when I was making TV money
a full set of Imperial and metric Vaughn hose Allen wrenches but wait there's
more also within my first order retrieve
ability stack of mission-critical tools you will notice another set of Imperial
and metric allen keys made by bond host this is how much I truly love these keys
and to note I'll grab one of the big ones over here at the lathe on the lathe
I use slightly shorter ones this is another thing that I like about that
bond hose so there's the shorty here's a long e so you have a lot of options with
these this doesn't have the ball and that was less important on the lathe and
I use it but I told you there was one of the things that I loved about these
Bonzo's allen keys and it's this because of the sturdy hardy welded steel
construction and the heavy weight of this these make fabulous little
impromptu thwack errs yep in every bond hoose allen key there is a hammer and I
dig that about these in fact you can see how much on the lathe I use it as a
hammer is like I'm actually wearing away the Plasti Dip here because of how many
times I've whacked this I use these all over the place when you're clamping
something into a vise on the mill it's good to cut it a little hammer to make
sure it's sitting right on those parallels these are fabulous so look
with any tool I'm not saying these are the best ones that are made because your
particular use case might be way more specific than mine it might be very
different and maybe you need a lot of smaller Allen wrenches in which case you
can buy them down to surpassingly tiny sizes but for your basic shop set if you
can afford it these are my all-time favorite Allen wrenches thanks that's
another tool tip see you next time here at the cave bye everybody