Tips for Organizing and Marking Loose Allen Wrenches and Other Small Workshop Tools
These tips for organizing small allen wrenches from Tested are for… well for organizing small allen wrenches. But the (spoiler!) fingernail polish approach can be used for other small workshop tools as well, and Terry Dunn makes a really good point about how using the wrong allen wrench invariably leads to stripping the wrench prematurely. Thus a solution was needed for identifying (not just organizing) the wrenches. Read on!
If you’re like me, you have an unorganized bin of loose Allen wrenches in your workshop. SAE and metric sizes coexist is this microcosm without discrimination or prejudice. Maybe you call these tools hex keys. Whatever the case, they are a blessing and a curse. In larger sizes (bigger than 3/16″ or 4.5mm), they are cheap, convenient, and robust tools. The smaller Allen wrenches, however, present several problems for me.
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