Ratchet spanners

You are looking for what Dave P suggests, a combination ring spanner. They are available in singles and either a 13 mm or a half inch should fit. Ask to try before you buy.

Combination spanners are available totally flat, or with a small angle upwards / downwards from the ring end, depending on using it the right way up, or not :-)

Dave

I have bought some top quality stuff from Lidl. You just need to be a discerning shopper, because some of the stuff they sell is junk.

The same is true of Aldi, but when it comes to DIY tools, Lidl appears to me to have a higher percentage of top quality items. A surprise perhaps, as Aldi is better for food and other household items.

Huge did say - 13mm.

For starters (as I seem to recall you're older than I am) put your

I have ratchet ended ring spanners and they're great when there's no end-on access, but they're fat old things and not good at tight spaces where there's limited radial clearance. For those it's still good rings (esp flat rings, rather than offsets) or crowfoots. The forged ones seem to have smaller heads than two flat sheets like these though.

================================================

The first 3 are views of Lidl's offering, although there isn't much detail visible. The 4th picture shows two of my ancient set of pressed steel / hard plastic sandwich items (about 40 years old) which bear the name, 'Kingsonic' - made in Taiwan. The Lidl set appear to be very strong although a bit chunkier than the Halfords set.

I think you have to be a bit selective about tools from Lidl but so far I've found them to be very good quality.

================================================= Using Ubuntu Linux Windows shown the door =================================================

Please eff off as you are a plantpot.

Putting plantpots to one side, I have a very useful set of Stanley combination (open/ring) spanners in which the *open* end is effectively a ratchet spanner. The jaws are a slightly odd shape.

This is a useful feature because it enables you to undo or do up a nut or bolt without taking the spanner off the head.

They appear very well made and work well wherever an open ended spanner would be strong enough.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Cicero saying something like:

Generally, ratchet spanners shouldn't be used for the initial loosening of the bolt. Only a numpty does that but with the advent of cheap tools, copying the much more expensive designs that go way back from the likes of Snap-On, there are many more numpties using these nowadays. It used to be the price of S-O spanners deterred the numpties in workshops from abusing them too much.

Yep, I have use a few myself and was surprised at how good they were.

The Lidl ones are a bit shorter than you'd expect for a spanner that size

- so may imply the ratchet is the weak link. As you'd expect, really.

I can assure you those I've bought from Lidl are. May not be the *very* finest, ie in the Lindstrom class, but more than adequate for heavy DIY use at a price way below others.

Unless you're in a position to get the discount a big buyer gets from Snap-On they are poor value. Nor is their 'life time' warranty any better than Halfords for their pro range.

But one who actually understands and uses such things rather than just reading about them.

Probably fine on fittings for that plastic pipe you're so keen on. But not for loosening a very tight bolt. No open ender is - as anyone with half an ounce of mechanical knowledge would realise. Or even just some hands on experience.

================================================ That may be true but it might also be just a simple difference in design, but definitely a weakness in either version.

The Lidl version (double-ended ratchet) is about 1" shorter in all sizes than my Halford version (ratchet ring / standard open-ended / non flexing) so even if there is a difference in the strength of the ratchets both versions seem to fail on their implied special purpose of undoing tight nuts in confined spaces. If one can get a standard spanner (non ratchet) of any type on to a nut to break it there seems little point in following up with a ratchet version apart from possible convenience.

Cic.

Which is exactly what is happening here.

Snap-On's unique selling point was (is?) convenience.

The Snap-On van came to you at your workplace and showed you a very wide range of tools. You didn't have to go anywhere to buy them. You didn't need to shop around. You got the opportunity to buy what you needed at your place of work. You didn't need to shop in your own time and your employer didn't need to give you any time off.

That's a pretty powerful selling point.

Bruce gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

They still do that, but as a USP it's surely been heavily undermined by online sales. The only advantage now is one of "Get it today" - which, unless the Snap-On van is there at least a couple of times a day, isn't all that.

Not sure that is the implied purpose. As has been said you don't use ratchet anything if the fitting is very tight. They're more to make undoing a fitting quicker where there isn't room to 'swing' a ring spanner, etc. Although I'd happily use as much force as I could muster on the Lidl ones. But I'm not a gorilla. ;-)