Things

[unixronin]

Things that suck:

Thinking you broke your torque wrench, while using it to try to loosen overtorqued lug bolts because it's the longest lever arm you have.  (Subsequently, I went and bought a new Kobalt-brand half-inch-square-drive breaker bar and fitted an extra 24" extension onto the handle, giving me better than a three-foot lever arm.  That finally did the trick.)

Things that puzzle you:

"Wait a minute.  I could swear I saw the case for this torque wrench in the storage cupboard down in the garage, which I can't get into right now because there's stuff stacked in front of it."

Happy things:

When you finally get enough stuff organized and moved to get into the storage cupboard, find the torque wrench case, open it ... and find the GOOD Utica torque wrench that you'd forgotten you had, which you bought as a replacement when the ratchet on the cheap Taiwanese one started slipping.

(This time, I threw the cheap broken one away.  "Won't get fooled again...")

In other news, with the assistance of a chain hoist and a strap hoist (both loaned by a friend), we finally got the 600lb safe moved to its intended location on the third floor of the new house, enabling us to move three desks, three computers and a laser printer into their intended positions.  Progress Is.

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Your house must be younger than ours. Wouldn't trust the floor joists with that kind of concentrated load...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The joists supporting that floor are pretty substantial, like about 3x10 timbers, and they're essentially trusses to boot. Plus, the safe's almost — if not directly — over a load-bearing wall. The floor didn't so much as creak when we put the safe in place. I'm really not worried about it taking the load without complaint.

[genuine-snark.livejournal.com]

Tsk. I'd have thought you'd know better than to use a torque wrench as a breaker bar. Bet you did, too. :)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, I figured loosening, I wouldn't be stressing the torque setting mechanism ... and in any case, nothing else I had gave me a long enough lever arm to shift them. What I'm probably most annoyed about is that I played myself for a fool by keeping an already-broken torque wrench instead of just throwing it out when it broke in the first place.

[genuine-snark.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not sure of the mechanics involved, but apparently loosening can kill a torque wrench. I've seen all kinds of warnings against using a TW as a breaker bar. Apparently, it's real tempting once you're in the situation, since it's roughly the right size/shape...

Definitely not something to do to the nice one!

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on the precise mechanism used. With some types, all that happens is the torque cam bears directly against the inside of the shaft instead of on the detent, and you're just not going to break it without physically snapping the wrench in two.

With my old wrench, the ratchet failed before anything else anyway, so whether the torque setting mechanism could take the reverse load or not was pretty much moot. I'm actually not sure of my reasoning in not keeping it after the ratchet went south ... it could quite well have been, "This thing is no longer useful as a torque wrench, I'll just keep it as a breaker bar." But if so, then I subsequently forgot that part...

And in any case, I have a real breaker bar now.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

Using a torque wrench as a breaker bar throws the calibration off.