I have a love hate relationship with the basin wrench.
It’s one of those odd tools that you don’t reach for often, but in the situations where you do need it, it is a life saver like no other tool.
It also only comes in one single size, as far as I can tell, and one single head style- the toothy spring loaded C- which is odd since it’s more of a concept than a specific tool- or at least it SHOULD be, but instead it is both concept and tool. One and one, and one of one.
This makes assembling an arsenal to do battle with physics in this particular way extremely limited. Some larger ones would be nice. Some longer ones, with longer handles. Maybe a different head style that can grab oversized nuts?
Or maybe a head style that can grab a nut with the use of only one hand. The current design requires two hands, or incredible vertical precision. If the wrench slips too far IN it slides off the nut and clamps closed- requiring you to fit your two fat hands back up there to pry it open against the spring and put it back on the nut. If it slips too far DOWN it also slides off the nut, also requiring both hands to get it back in position.
And if the nut is prehistoric and requires additional leverage, I have to:
1) Use two hands to position the teeth on the nut.
2) Hold it at a perfect even vertical height with one hand- not too high, not too low.
3) Apply torque against the nut to “grab” it, maintain this torque with muscle force.
4) Use my spare hand to add some kind of an extension to the handle if it’s stuck.
5) Position myself to best use the largest muscle groups to dilute the possibility of injury.
6) Apply maximum torque to break the nut lose, and rotate it maybe 1/5th of a rotation.
Then, try to stay on the nut and rotate it back to have another grab- since we are going to need to do this about 40 times to get it off- and if you think it’s hard holding a perfectly level vertical position, try holding a perfectly level vertical position while trying to reverse rotate 45 degrees?
It always falls off the nut immediately, and instead of just repeating step 6, we go back to 1 because of the way it’s designed.
Engineers: fix this.
Tool makers: invest in variety. Take my money. Please.
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