Wrench Tips – Tip #9: Color Code Your Tools
Grabbing a tool from your toolbox (or off the floor) is kind of like shifting gears when you drive. It's a short, simple process that shouldn't take much time or thought. You do it so frequently, though, that any little improvement you can make to the process will add up to a big time and efficiency savings over the length of the project.
I'm bothering with this defensive preamble because 90 percent of the people who see the solution recoil in homophobic horror. There's something about the sight of a toolbox rainbow that sends most guys into a chest-pounding diatribe about how they can spot the difference between a 13mm socket and a 12mm socket from across the room with one eye shut through a fogged window.
Well I'm here to tell you those guys are full of shit. We're talking about nearly identical little chrome cylinders with tiny little numbers etched into only one side, and it's always the side facing away from you. Now I CAN tell the difference between my sockets from across the room with one eye through a fogged window. The 12mm is black, and the 13mm is bright green. Easy.
Harbor Freight Tools, purveyor of cheap knockoff tools made with underaged, crippled slave labor, has finally produced something unique, original and of real value to the world. The color-coded socket set. Add up all the seconds of sorting through identical chrome cylinders that I no longer have to do and in the three years or so that I've been using them, this socket set has probably saved me a solid week of searching.
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As you might expect, the color coating on these cheap sockets is not very durable, but while a few years' use makes them ugly, they're still colorful enough to be easily identified. And despite what you might expect, they've proven to be plenty strong and generally well made. I've broken more Snap On sockets than Harbor Freight sockets. |
 Harbor Freight also makes color-coded ratcheting box-end wrenches, but I'm not a fan. The box end is too thick, making them useless in tight spaces, and the ratchet mechanism is a little coarse. Instead, i use colored electrical tape to make my Gear Wrench set match the socket set. It ain't pretty, but it saves just as much time. |
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-Dave Coleman
Got any tips of your own? email them to dave@motoiq.com!
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