https://westcoastsaw.com/products/ratchetscrench-tool v3 is available now. $20 plus shipping. Another site Buckin promoted sold out at $30It'll be interesting to see what improvements they've made. It looked like that product had "died".
Please post some details when you get them!
I was thinking of how it is configured. A hand-friendly large rounded handle, and about six inches of dull stilletto blade. It seems to me that they were designed to be cheap to make and give the manufacturer an excuse to claim they provided useful tools. As a lifelong mechanic, I'm not impressed with it's design as a tool. It's nearly optimized to penetrate the user in a fall in order to save 15 cents in manufacturing. Beancounter design.Scrench is for chain tension and adjustment and chain replacement. That it usually fits the spark plug is mostly a bonus.
BTW, I took an appropriate junk box end wrench that fits the bar nuts, and ground the other end to fit the adjusting screwdriver slot.It's much less clumsy than a scrench. I stuck it in a piece of tubing and put it in my pocket. If the spark plug goes bad, I have the luxury of going back to the garage and changing it out. If I was working 30 miles from home, I might make a point of having a small toolbox handy.I was thinking of how it is configured. A hand-friendly large rounded handle, and about six inches of dull stilletto blade. It seems to me that they were designed to be cheap to make and give the manufacturer an excuse to claim they provided useful tools. As a lifelong mechanic, I'm not impressed with it's design as a tool. It's nearly optimized to penetrate the user in a fall in order to save 15 cents in manufacturing. Beancounter design.
Anyway, I'm just a mechanic and not going to further fight chainsaw tradition. It is what it is.
I'm used to making my own tools. A slightly offset open end wrench with the other end ground to fit the tensioning screw works better for me than the factory scrench, and I imagine there are better designs. I still don't like the semi-pointed end if I don't put it in some kind of scabbard, but I was mostly just blowing off steam about how much worse the factory tool seems to me.There were some 2-piece designs that you might find safer.
Like plumbing wrenches. Tube that fits over the bar nuts. Screwdriver fits crosswise though the tube to tighten / loosen. Won’t poke you as a ‘T’ wrench. Easy to lose pieces.
Guys who use socket or conventional wrenches sometimes over tighten bar nuts and strip out studs. The ‘cheap’ wrenches actually act somewhat as a limit.
Philbert
Is it worth carrying a dull t-handled pushknife on your body just waiting to stab through important parts of you if you slip and fall?
I cut my scabbard just a bit long, got the scrench warm and stuck it through the end.Maybe it’s a stupid question, but how do you carry your Scrench when you’re working in the woods?
Pocket carry doesn’t really work for me. In the front pocket screwdriver down tears the pocket and screwdriver up it pokes you. Back pocket you’re asking to tear up the seat in your vehicle.
Drill a hole in it and put a loop para cord and a carabiner? Seems like the string would be in the way tightening your chain. There’s lots of ideas on the internet. What actually works for you?
Often I get lazy and leave it with the case with the gas and oil and file and stump vice, but then it’s not with me if I need to tighten a chain or adjust the carb.
What have you personally done for years that you can swear by?
I cut my scabbard just a bit long, got the scrench warm and stuck it through the end.
This is where mine sits as well, however, I put a rubber band around mine as it likes to fall out.Call me lazy and unimaginative, but I just use the scrench-holder that's already molded into my Stihl scabbard:
No aortas, left ventricles, eyebones or earballs were punctured in the making of this image...
Looks like a rifle sight for felling trees!I cut my scabbard just a bit long, got the scrench warm and stuck it through the end.
It's a snug fit to get in and out and it definitely won't fall out, and I can always find it now just by looking for the scabbard.
Why? Because I mentioned that I am uncomfortable personally carrying some scrench designs? It's not like I called for banning them. Sheesh!Please, please, please- somebody- anybody! Someone please research the number of A&E admissions for scrench related epidermis puncture wounds versus chainsaw related ones....... PLEASE!
Apparently I'm either an excessively woke *****, or a wildly unsafe animal. Because I think it would be reasonable to carry a scrench on my body in a way that won't impale me instead of leaving it over there on my chainsaw case. But some also think it's ridiculous for me to consider the possibility that I might fall and get impaled and should just carry the scrench jammed in my belt or something.Call me lazy and unimaginative, but I just use the scrench-holder that's already molded into my Stihl scabbard:
No aortas, left ventricles, eyebones or earballs were punctured in the making of this image...
No. You prove that deep puncture wounds are insignificant.Please, please, please- somebody- anybody! Someone please research the number of A&E admissions for scrench related epidermis puncture wounds versus chainsaw related ones....... PLEASE
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