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Posted by D. Sherman on Monday, February 11, 2008 at 19:30:12 :
In Reply to: Re: new tool review posted by mannyc on Monday, February 11, 2008 at 17:18:20 :
Fair enough. There may be a niche for them. I don't see the advantage right now, even if price was no object. If I look at the other approaches, the disadvantages of the double wrenching method are that it's liable to spring apart and hurt you, and you can't apply a huge amount of force without damaging the wrenches where they're joined, since they weren't designed to be loaded that way. The main disadvantage of the standard piece of pipe is that one size doesn't fit all. Quite often the pipe at hand is too big for a snug fit on a small wrench, too small to fit at all on a big wrench, too long to fit in the available space, or too short to provide sufficient torque. I still think something "pipe-like" is preferable to your approach in terms of inherent mechanical strength. Perhaps you could make a pipe-like tool that had an adjustable length, or even just two sections like a hydraulic jack handle, combined with some way to make it fit snugly over various sizes of wrenches. Even sleeves of some sort would be okay if the whole assembly could fit together into something small enough to carry around in a tool box.
As far as the overall strength goes, your ultimate practical specification is that the extension has to be strong enough to supply sufficient torque to twist the head off a grade 8 bolt or destroy the jaws (not bend the handle) of a Proto or Snap-on wrench. At that point, the extension is no longer the weakest link.