Is there a better hex key set? I'm not doing a dickhead meme, I'm genuinely curious. My new job set me up with some spare no brand keys and they've worked well enough but they just didn't feel right. Asked for a Teng set and they gave it to me the same day. Always had a set for work and one at home, never broke off a ball, never stripped them beyond a quick fix on the grinder. What are you using and why is it better? Posts about hilariously bad keys are also very welcome.
I prefer mine on a driver head so I can just ratchet. But I'm also not turning anything that'll destroy or get destroyed by it.
>Is there a better hex key set?
Wera hex keys are the best on the market. They patented their hex-plus shape, so they are the only brand who dont have straight cut keys.
Every other brand has straight cut hex key and perform about the same.
Eklind vs Wiha vs Bhondus vs anything not chinkshit really honestly doesnt matter. Anyone who tells you otherwise is coping.
But aren't the Wera keys multicoloured and therefore gay?
Sure
You can get the Wera hex keys which are CNC milled out of solid round stock, and then have a tough plastic coating put on top which are color coded.
But if you dont want the Mercedes of hex keys, you can just but the Wera extruded hex plus keys which are just grey.
Whats actually gay is buying and using shittier tools to try and appease your boomer coworkers.
What this fricking shill won't tell you is that the homosexual plastic coating is round and gets slick when covered in oil and grease. It also adds enough thickness to be in the way when access is tight.
The only premium hex keys I would even remotely consider are the knurled ones from PB Swiss.
Always gives me a good chuckle when guys are throwing their tools on the ground, damaging them by not using them for their intended purpose, and covering them in shit and never cleaning them and then blame the tools for sucking. These are the same guys who get lung cancer from dust and get hurt doing dumb shit.
Also teng is ass, should be called Rust-O-Matic
Let me just stop and wipe down my allen key with some brake cleaner after every bolt. Never mind that every hour of downtime costs thousands of dollars.
You can just admit that you don't use your tools professionally. It's okay to have hobbies, just don't mistake your toys for something they aren't.
I use them 'professionally' in pharma plants where they can't look like they just got pulled out of some homosexuals lubed up butthole since most people don't want that injected into themselves, it's not tractors I'm working on cletus
>2023
>not being gay and having rainbow colored allen wrenches
And, apparently, unused.
Kek. This thread doesn’t even need me.
I’m going to shill Bondhus as well. Far less gay than Wiha. They even sell a color coded said that’s not Pride(tm) themed.
Very nice colors indeed. As a former stage lighting designer, i have always despised rainbow / pride / RGB color cycles and otherwise full saturation colors. Shades are nice.
troony got the fake version. Makes sense.
> wera is the best
Yeah, they have a special annealing process in viet nam where they make the metal soft like butter so you can just press any larger size into the smaller hole.
>they have a special annealing process in viet nam
Thats Wiha you are thinking of my friend.
wera is a meme company that makes shit over seas and packages them in czech to have made in czech.
The weak point of the Wera ones is the plastic sleeves that eventually fall apart if you actually use them.
the stainless variant is the same but without the gay
>stainless
No thanks
Picquic
Op Just get a Bondhus Hex key set. I've used this for a few years now and have had no issues. Most machinists use Bondhus because they're so good for the money and you can't really break them unless you've got some kind of hidden moron strength. https://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/01742352
My bondhus 3/16 eloped with my 10mm socket
The color coded Bondhus are great especially for the price.
These are way too short and have no ball, any set of long ball end keys would be better.
I like the swisstools set i just wish they weren’t rainbow, it’s the stupidest way of color coding them. Not because pride flag but because if you use color to distinguish them why the frick make 4 and 5 almost the same color (orange and yellow)???
lol yeah you made me realise I posted a pic of the wrong set! Picrel is the one.
Allen keys are one of those tools where the jackknife sets, the loose L key sets, the T-handle (long preferred) sets, the square drive sets, and ball end duplicates of all the above are well worth owning.
Bondhus are based.
Between the sockets and the T-handles, I don’t really touch the L-keys much. T-handles for speed and length, sockets for torque. And the T-handles with the second bit at the top are like superior L-keys.
I think Eklind sells some screwdriver type ball hex sets that are tempting.
There’s always some situation where a moronic engineer has put a fastener is an improbable location and you need an L key.
I definitely avoid using them tho.
I use the same/metric/torx 3 piece folding set from harbor freight. It cost me $6.99 dollars plus tax. I use it almost every day at work and I make $95.98/hr.
Signed, IBEW Journeyman Inside Wireman
*SAE, not same. My bad, lol. Posting from my $80 Android phone I bought at Walmart.
Bondhus
These right here don’t come out much but can be real bacon savers.
Those are pretty.
The last few years of Sears, they always had these socket sets on sale for the holidays and I shilled them a lot. IIRC the bigger set with the ratchet was like $39 and the smaller one with the ball ends was more like $20. Could’ve been more but either way when you’re doing automotive stuff and you need a 6” torx bit or ball end socket with the leverage of a ratchet or those wobble extensions to get in a certain moronic spot, it’s so worth the money
Bondhus vs Wera after 5 years.
You castrated them by cutting off their balls. Nice.
The most surprising thing in the world is that you still have them all! I loose about 1 a year on average. Sometimes i find one rusted out somewhere though.
I don’t see a 10mm in there*
I mean the useful ones, not the ones for jap cars.
Didn’t even know they made them in metric… i wonder if ther’s a metric torx, too?
>metric torx
Kek. There are plenty of other unnecessary drives costing us lotsr of money. Are you familiar with Torx Plus(tm) or XZN(tm)?
The 10mm thing was a joke.
I wonder where they get all these genius ideas for screw shapes? Don’t look at picrel. I feel a patent filing coming on….
Oh and, are there any other measurement standards other than metric and sae? I think each one warrents 50 sizes and I want to be able to sell 150 of them, in stubby and extra lawnge for the super delux kit with 450 bits.
After a yearm you’ll want to throw them when I bring out “black chrome”. A year after that, you’ll dump them on ebay to get the “impact ready” which are just the same as the original ones but spray painted black. They will have pentagon shafts but we’ll have adapters you can buy… or just buy our line of cordless impacts with the pentagon bit holders already installed. Eat your hart out SDS, I’m coming for you!
Like half of those shapes at least are already used. Apple uses the penta fasteners. There’s this ribe driver that is used on some old Italian cars and that’s a goofy spline. There’s 8pt as well, I think that’s an American fastener.
Afaik, it’s basically metric and SAE now. There’s that goofy JIS thing where phillips drivers are a slightly different shape. I think there used to be a british standard for nuts and bolts but that has died off by now.
I’m sure there’s a bunch more goofy historic things. All I know is that Phillips guy probably made $$$$ licensing out those screws.
Today I was working on my bicycles and my dad got some park tool t handle type allens.
from around 2 or 1.5 up to 10.
Per usual the 5 and 8 got most of the work.
Not sure I would but em since the socket allen, or old craftsman L allens work fine. The nice thing about the craftsman set is that you can stick the allen through a plastic holder, and it turns into a t-handle
>british standard
whitworth?
I still prefer JIS to phillips. Seems to cam out less when you reef on em. Also seem to be consistently sized since the japanese make them.
>seem to be consistently sized
That’s because if you buy a Japanese driver and Japanese screws, they’re not going to be cheap trash. Good American PH drivers fit well in quality PH screws. Shitty Chinese PH drivers in Chinesium screws are sloppy as hell.
Don’t remember what the British stuff was called, but for some reason I remember seeing specific taps and dies for older British stuff.
Kevin please have a nice day. Or at least take a day off you fat frick
Love you too bby ;^)
Also Park Tools allen keys are made by Bondhus I believe.
… also note the metric colors are for homosexuals
Interesting comparison. The balls on the wera seem to have better edges except for the pink one that’s missing, the black one that has concrete on it and the one with no plastic. Short sides seem okay except red and pink.
On bondhus the blue, red and 1/8” are rounded off on the short side, and most of the small ones have been replaced aren’t original. The balls on the original ones all seem rounded off except brown one
Guess it’s a draw but still bondhus wins because they don’t have the stupid plastic around them
You should at least get ones with a ball end
I did, just posted wrong pic.
God bless. I never understood getting the ones with the big dorky handles personally. If you’re cranking something down or torquing it, wouldnt you just want the corresponding ratchet socket? And for something that doesn’t require that a normal L key should be fine. I have a little breaker bar for my Allen keys but that’s it, if it needs more power that means I gotta go get the sockets.
Get yourself some nice "T" handle Allen wrenches (what they're called) in both metric and standard. IMPORTANT: be sure to get them with what looks like a little "ball-like" feature with squared off edges found on last 1/4 inch or so of working end. This is very helpful if you are in a spot where you can get "T" handle Allen centered on screw/bolt and they will still work at a pretty severe angle.
My favorite T handles are the picrel, they have that little side nub on the handle that gives awesome leverage.
Other solid brands of T handle are Bondhus, Eklind and Wiha.
>picrel
Hue
Also fwiw, if you go Wiha, they seem to have 2 sets, one is nice German stuff and the other is Asian made.
I keep thinking about upgrading my Allen brand T handles and these shitty Pittsburgh Torx t-handles that don’t include some common sizes, and the Kleins are really tempting. Icon at HF has new sets that actually look solid but I really don’t trust HF to spend like $100 or whatever on all 3 sets, I would rather drop the extra money on the Kleins unless I get an Icon coupon and can try them for cheap. But if they suck, I don’t want to upgrade again.
Yup forgot the pic.
If you’re unsure what to get just get Bondhus.
I have Bondhus folders. I would go with them for basic L-keys, but Bondhus T-handles don’t have the side part for the high torkkksss.
Pic related is one of the reasons I really want to try the Craftsman V. I think a lot of mechanics like that design on the MAC version. Wish they weren’t so expensive for Asian made tools
You won’t regret the Wiha
Those are the ones made in Asia. I don’t really care to buy from a German brand that isn’t even made in Germany. I’d rather buy the Craftsmans at that point.
Pic related is the German Wiha sef
Craftsman V Series looks real nice too. The Craftsman V Series tools are basically rebadged Facom and MAC, they might be made in Taiwan though. They have that RBRT design on the hex. Once again though, not cheap, probably like $200 for metric, SAE, and torx.
Wish they sold this V-Series stuff in stores, I would def impulse buy at least a ratchet if I could fingerfrick it first.
i stick my torx sockets in the fasteners because I've stopped caring.
pb swiss knurled