First off, I have to admit, it's not my idea, it's my step-brother's. But I thought it was a good one and I didn't find anything like it, so I thought I would post it. Sometimes, when you are trying to tighten a bolt/nut to 'factory specifications' you just don't have enough torque. What I have done, and seen done on TV and in movies is the wrench driver (person driving the wrench) will take a piece of pipe thats longer then the tool's handle, place it on the tool and push with that, giving that little extra torque needed. The idea here is to devise a socket wrench that has a teliscopic handle that fits in itself. Of course there should be a catch so that the teliscopic parts don't come out at the wrong time (No, it really *is* a wrench in my pocket!) and a cap so that when it is in it's shortest handle position you don't cut your hand trying to turn the thing. Of course it would take factory standard sized bits. It could also have a torque measure on the head of the wrench so that you could tell when you have just enough. Maybe there could be marked measures on the handle so that when you extend it you can see about how much torque you can put on the nut/bolt.
[updated, corrected spelling errors noted by [angel]]-- barnzenen, Nov 09 2001 Pedants Anonymous http://www.halfbake...Pedants_20Anonymous [barnzenen, Nov 09 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004] Extending-handle socket wrenches are baked. The built-in torque-meter would be rendered totally inaccurate when using it. (sp 'torque', 'standard')-- angel, Nov 09 2001 Why would the torque meter be useless? I thought torque was measured by the amount of pressure on the bolt/nut as the wrench was turned.-- barnzenen, Nov 09 2001 [angel] when did you join the dark side?-- phoenix, Nov 09 2001 Don't torque wrenches use a strain gauge to measure force? It seems to me that it would remain accurate no matter what the length of the handle.-- bristolz, Nov 09 2001 Great idea. Hopefully Peter was dreaming when he saw those catalogues as I think it wold be a shame to cast this onto the pile of overbaked pastries.
[angel, pottetstu]: bristolz is right. torque is a rotational measure. You only need the distance from the pivot when you are trying to find out how much force you need to apply create that torque. So, for a particular torque lengthening the handle will decrease the amount of force you need to apply. Which, after all, is really the point of the whole thing.-- st3f, Nov 09 2001 Concurring with [barnzenen,bristolz,st3f] and hopefully clarifying why they are right.
Torque wrenches measure torque by measuring the pressure applied at a fixed distance from the pivot point. The distance from the pivot point where the wrench measures the force applied does not change when the length of the handle is changed. Therefore the wrench will still measure the torque correctly.
This works because 24lbs of force measured 1/2" from the pivot point is 12ft-lbs regardless whether the person weilding the wrench is applying 12lbs of force 1' from the pivot or 6lbs of force 2' from the pivot.-- mwburden, Nov 09 2001 On reflection, the inaccuracy of the torque meter to which I referred would occur only in the particular arrangement of wrench which I pictured. Objection hereby withdrawn. (It's still baked though.)[phoenix]: Dark side?-- angel, Nov 12 2001 I think [phoenix] was talking about your spelling corrections, thinking you might have joined the PA-- barnzenen, Nov 12 2001 i want boltcutters with removable telescoping handles so i can sneak around with them concealed...-- fenn, May 16 2004 What about unscrewing small nuts in hard-to-reach places? A scaled-down version of this could be applied to a small nut in a cramped place to get at those finagelly little things.
The socket head could even have a gear and spring mechanism so that the handle would return to its original place, allowing you to ratchet it up and down many times, so that you won't have to twist the thing too far in a cramped space.-- qt75rx1, Mar 10 2008 random, halfbakery