Best metal for socket sets?

[AnthonyH]

Back in 2000 when in Italy at the Co-Op in Cortina I bought a bargain ABC Tools A3115/5 socket set (surface drive) for £94.95. It now costs £409.30.

https://www.abctools.it/en/prodotti...9-chiavi-a-bussola-e-accessori/a31155000.html

Packaging has changed.

Prior to this I was using, and still have Kamasa 1/2" and 3/4" drive, which many of us oldies used for many years a long time ago. The 3/4" drive is a real nut buster as there is no 1/2" shaft bending and springing.

A nice set you've got there! £409 is more than the cost of a scrapyard car.

I ended up buying a good set of sockets, just the wrong ones for the job, so I bought another set and promptly lost the only size I needed! I'm a bit bemused by the loss but its been so wet I haven't got close to doing anything on the car anyways.

 

[s130]

and promptly lost the only size I needed! I'm a bit bemused by the loss but its been so wet I haven't got close to doing anything on the car anyways.

I personally hate loosing tools. I go ballistic and hunt and hunt, think at night where did it/they go, did I leave it on the drive and someone stole it? Pretty OCD when it comes to stuff like this. Even if the tool was rubbish 50 pence item and I had a spare/duplicate I would still go bonkers.

Some of this is because the loss could be in the engine bay / other place and cause damage. The rest of the time it is because I'm ...........

 

[AnthonyH]

I personally hate loosing tools. I go ballistic and hunt and hunt, think at night where did it/they go, did I leave it on the drive and someone stole it? Pretty OCD when it comes to stuff like this. Even if the tool was rubbish 50 pence item and I had a spare/duplicate I would still go bonkers.

Some of this is because the loss could be in the engine bay / other place and cause damage. The rest of the time it is because I'm ...........

I'd owned the socket for less than 24 hours when it went missing so it was an usually quick loss, i've had the whole family looking, and yes wondered if someone stole it off the drive.

Over Christmas I got a personalised jigsaw puzzle made with family photos, it was a load of fun putting it all together. And at the end, guess what? There was one piece missing, we hunted high and low before deciding the company that made it had lost it. Last week the missing piece turned up...only 4 months later. So anyway, i'm now expecting this socket to appear sometime around August

 

[vexorg]

Yeah, that dread of dropping a smaller tool or socket down the back of the engine bay and thinking the hour will be spent finding it

 

[AndyRKett]

I buy spares if things likely to be lost, I have a lot of 10mm spanners around the garage as well as a lot of 10, 13 and 17mm sockets.

Actually I have a lot of different socket sets 1/4 3/8th and 1/2inch and usually have a couple of different set of sockets to fit each of them. A couple of years back I bought a really good set of 1/2inch deep sockets to go a long with a normal 1/2 inch socket set. The combination of those two will get most bolts out

The other thing I do is buy 6 sided sockets not the type that love to round every thing off you try to use them on

 

[AndyRKett]

I personally hate loosing tools. I go ballistic and hunt and hunt, think at night where did it/they go, did I leave it on the drive and someone stole it? Pretty OCD when it comes to stuff like this. Even if the tool was rubbish 50 pence item and I had a spare/duplicate I would still go bonkers.

Some of this is because the loss could be in the engine bay / other place and cause damage. The rest of the time it is because I'm ...........

Maybe not quite to the same degree but I grew up with a father who never put tools away and then would blame me and my brothers for using them and losing them because of that and never being able to find a tool when you wanted/needed it growing up I not take meticulous care of tools and will even have a tidy up mid job just to make sure I know where everything is

 

[s130]

Sadly you / I / Us generally work alone. Yet surgeons have a whole operating team but they still seem to loose instruments and often in the patient and all stitched up not to be discovered till a painful incident or the airport scanner going bonkers!

Thankfully I've not swallowed a tool yet, that I know of. Maybe that is where my little xyz went?

 

[AnthonyH]

Maybe not quite to the same degree but I grew up with a father who never put tools away and then would blame me and my brothers for using them and losing them because of that and never being able to find a tool when you wanted/needed it growing up I not take meticulous care of tools and will even have a tidy up mid job just to make sure I know where everything is

Our garage was converted into another bedroom long before we arrived. I have a tool trolley in the conservatory at the back of the house. What happens is that i come indoors from the drive then put things down in ordinary household places, usually its somewhere obvious. I'm fairly close to just buying another socket now.