Craftsmen Threw Bolt sockets.
 

Hey I'm in the market for a new socket set. I have a set of ratcheting wrenches that I just love.
This craftsman "through bolt ratchet" seems like a hybrid of a ratcheting wrench and a traditional socket. I was wondering if anybody had a set and what they thought of them?

My brother lent me his 192 Piece craftsmen kit (just like the one in the pic) It's got a nice hard plastic carry case. I thought it was kind of a joke when I barowed it from him, But now that I have had it for some time I have growen to like it and think I need one for myself. It's nice to bring it out to what your working on and you have everything right there.

There are very very few applications that the thru bolt sockets will work on that a ratchet wrench by itself won't work on. They are more of a gimmick than anything else. Think about what you use your wrenches for and what the thru bolt sockets will do that they won't. Then add the fact that you probably already have deep and shallow sockets and a ratchet. The uses for the thru bolt sockets diminishes to almost nothing.

Robert: I need to buy my own kit and return the one I got from my brother. The kit I got from my brother has Deep Sockets, I was thinking that the Threw Bolt ratchets would eliminate the need for deep sockets????

If you look at how the Threw bolt ratchet sets up. Its almost 1/2 the thickness of a ratchet and socket. so in a tight space where a traditional ratchet and socket are to thick this will do the trick. I like many mechanics are very traditional when it come to hand tools and Yes these seem somewhat gimick-y I have seen them for more then a year. I must admit I thought the same thing about ratchet open end wrenches when I first saw them but 4+ years later they are one of my fav's

The thru bolt sockets won't give you the depth of a deep well socket. The other negative is you can't add a extension to a thru bolt socket and retain your thru bolt capability. Snap On tried the thru bolt sockets about 15 years ago and Gear Wrench tried them more recently. Neither one of the companies had much success. Other than the "I got to have one of everything" customers. You will be far better off with deep and shallow sockets with extensions.

Also you mentioned thickness. A wrench whether it be ratchet or not is always thinner than the socket itself. The shallow socket allows you the obstruction clearance you can't get with the wrench itself.

Another thing I noticed is the kit your brother bought you has 6 point as well as 12 point sockets. This will give you even more versatility with rounded fasteners.

Someone bought me a Craftsmen set that have those universal sockets (not through bolt, but same grab), and I kind of hate them. They'll supposedly work on a lot of different fasteners, rounded off bolts, etc., but I found they don't grab all that well, and I've had a couple lose teeth on stubborn bolts. I just stick with my standards for most things now and keep that little set in one of the cars. Honestly, if you have a complete set of ratcheting wrenches, I'd think the through-sockets would just be redundant for you.

I bought a set called the O-Ratchet back in the mid-90's for my Dad and thought it was the coolest thing ever. It was not. He gave it to me when I moved out after college and it hasn't been used since at least 1998. LOL! Total gimmick. The ratchet head and hole that goes through it just aren't big enough to accommodate most of the bolts that I needed it for. Oh well, it's a cool design that I can pass down to my grandkids or something.

I actually got a set of Armstrong o ring ratchets and love them. I use them for everything. They are much higher grade then craftsman though so kinda not a real good comparison. And mine do have xtensions up to 8"

Robert; I can see your point about the extentions, But they do have extentions that come in the kit, they come in 2 diffrent sizes. The down side to the extentions is that when you start working with a large diamater bolts the inside walls of Extention will make contact with the bolt. So it sounds like I should stick with a traditional socket/ratchet combo set.

I have the original one before Craftsman decided to make them, Gear Ratchets. They are amazing. Everything is really solid, you have more torque. You don't have to worry about shallow and deep sockets.

There are a few downsides though.
-lack of extensions for long jobs, they do extend, but you are limited in your options of how many and how long.
-the walls are really thick and so sometimes it can be hard to get into tight spaces
-the adapter that allows you to put in regular sockets comes in from the top, limiting how much pressure you can put on them.

Overall, I use them 9/10 times over my traditional set and would recommend them. They are compact as in you need half the sockets, and work excellent. I had my original set stolen and had to go get another. It was something I didn't want to live without.
On the flip side, a big set of traditionals with plenty of shallow, deep, extensions, with a quality ratchet would serve you equally as well, but take up more space.

I was just coming out of West Marine and noticed this!

This guy looks like he could use a nice organized toolbox.
Check out this parking lot repair.

This looks like a 350 piece set to me! :)

This set may be a nice addition in some ways to a traditional set but it won't replace a traditional set. You'll still need a full set of standard sockets for your torque wrench. If you aren't ever using a torque wrench, then maybe you could just get a vice grip and some pliers (sarcasm).

All thise tools on the ground all HE needs is a crescent wrench

No, all he needs is a Russian Toolkit.

Contents of Russian tool kit:
Hammer
Vodka

If you can't fix it by hitting it, drink until it doesn't matter anymore.

He left an Iphone sitting right there.

I have no Idea how in the world people can work like this ^^^ I helped out a friend this weekend he had a huge toolbox that looked like 10 drawers of what this guy had laying on the ground. He is a older retired guy that will not throw anything away like junky tools. It was So frustrating. It was a like a 15 min job but I swore we spent 30 + min's looking for the correct socket or wrench. I enjoy working on stuff but HATE sifting threw JUNK like toolboxes full of stuff like what this guy has laying on the ground to get a simple job done. I bet that guys tool bag is full of redundant tools like 10 flat head screwdrivers and only 1 crappy Philips!

Totally with you Grant. My sister inlaw has a husband like that. She asks me to fix things since he is slow to get to it. Then my big challenge is finding the tools within a garage filled with tons of crap. Because of this, I now always visit with my own nicely organized tools. I dig tools that have their own cases.

You mean your brother...;)

^^^ Wait I'm confused!^^^ Dane please explain LOL

What's funny is my wife was doing some cleaning up in the garage at our inlaws ( they have so much crap they don't know what they have) and she found a brand new never used 159 piece Craftsmen Tool kit! and they gifted it to me!!!

I opend up the kit and it Exploded! Yup it's one of thoes one of thoes kits . You open it in the wrong orientation and you have a huge Mess. Major design flaw in the case design.

That's easily rectified. Just paint TOP in white letters. Always store it with the TOP letter facing up.

The #2 suck thing about this kit is not just that you have to make sure you have it in the right Orientation, it's that you need to have some sort of felt or rubber or cloth spacer between the 2 cases (making it hard to close) so that the sockets from the socket side stay in place. Also I can see the plastic hinges not lasting long, as well as the plastic latches that hold it closed. ext. The case in this kit is the week link. And I feel like it's throwing the baby out with the bath water. If these tools were going to live in my tool box fine but they need to be Mobile so the carry case is paramount.
Who ever designed this as a carry case was retarded it's more of a display case. Open it up and then load all the tools in your box and throw the Cary case away!

I have one of these plastic cases from Craftsman. Got it from my dad for Christmas back in 1989 when I was 17. The hinge has been broken since I was 18. I use a bungee to keep it closed, I never open it upside "anymore", and I try not to carry it on its side. It's a pain in the rear but not enough that I would replace it in 22 years.

Hi, my name is Robert and I'm a tool-mess-aholic.
Lol. My tools look like the guy in the parking lot. My sockets are scattered all over the place. But I just use the force to find the right one. Unfortunately, sometimes the force is not calibrated.

Anytime I've bought sockets, wrenches, allens, etc in a nice case, invariably, one will come up missing. (keep in mind, i have kids... it's not always actually their fault, but be sure they always get blamed! ha ha).
I try to keep my stuff organized. And i have a tool chest w/labeled drawers so at least the ratchets/sockets are in one drawer, the wrenches in another, screwdrivers in another, etc. But what happens is sometimes I need to take tools with me and don't know exactly what i might need. So I load up my tool bag w/a little bit of everything. So generally, I can find what i need if i'm at home, but if i'm away from the house, my tools look just like the picture. Especially if the repair is not going well... then it looks EXACTLY like the picture... dumped on the ground.

pound; Admitting you have a problem is the first step in correcting the problem. :) Funny thing is My dad used to always blame us kids for his missing tools. 30+ years later after all the kids have been gone his tools are still no better organized and incomplete, We laugh at him because he cant blame us anymore


It's funny because old habits die hard. I'm talking about tool boxes. We were brought up as Little boys working out of dads tool box that you needed one and the bigger the box the better!!! With the exception of a professional mechanic who can pull their project (boat or car) into a stall close to your tool box your wasting time and energy going back and forth. IMO a Tool box is where your store all the tools you don't use! IMO The tool bag is the modern day tool box. I discovered them when I got into boating 13+ years ago, and built a kit for the boat. My kit was so awesome I found myself going back to the boat and grabbing the tool kit "out of the boat" to do random projects even when I had a tool box full of well organized tools.

with the exception of away from home lake trips I don't even bring tools on the boat with me anymore it's been so reliable (knocking on wood) But the Boat tool kit Inception lives on. Building a personal tool kit is very fun. You only have a small amount of space so like Yoda said "choose wisely my young apprentice" you have to pick tools that can get the job done and leave the rest, you need as much room so that you can make room for more random stuff that you MIGHT need. :) Kind of a Swiss army knife tool box. And I'm not talking about those funky Leatherman tool's that do everything ok but don't do much very well. Example ever tried using one of those leathermans as a screwdriver? I'm about as comfortable with one of those as using a rubrics cube to fix your car. It will work in a bind but not Ideal. I mean come on your not going on survivor Island where you can only bring 1 item! "if you plan correctly" you can pack some serious tools in a small set up and pretty much take care of anything. Building a portable tool box that has everything you need and nothing you don't is something I thing every Dude should have. Its very personal and Im sure no 2 are the same.

The other day I left my garage door open and thought that someone swiped my tool bag. I simpley left it in a room and forgot about it, It was only misplaced for 15 min's but I was crushed!!!! thinking someone made off with my tool's made me realize how much I depend on them and how much time I spent perfecting my "Carry On"

Okay, minor thread jack, but I had a neighbor text me a few weeks ago telling me that they drove by and saw that my garage door was open in the middle of the workday.

I had left the house that morning and forgot my sunglasses. So I backed into my driveway and ran inside to get them and drove off. I forgot to close the opener. Doh!!!

I text my neighbor back asking them if they could close it for me (I have the touchpad on the outside of my garage that has a "down" button that anyone can use to close the door without knowing the code.). But still, I had to depend on her to go over and do it for me. Not very comforting.

I found out that Liftmaster/Chaimberlain has tech now where you can retrofit your garage door opener with wifi. They call their system "MyQ".

Basically there's a replacement in garage opener button and then there's an internet gateway. The replacement button is cool and has a motion sensor to turn on your garage light when motion triggers it (this is great for when you just want to open the house door to the garage and toss something in the recycle bin or whatever). Then there's a little gateway that plugs into your router. basically the gateway allows control of the wall mounted switch remotely and you can retrofit almost ANY garage door made in the last 10 to 15 years with the new wall switch and in turn the gateway.

I was able to retrofit my garage door for like $70 total. $40 for the gateway (you only need one of these) and $30 for the wall switch (you'd need one of these for EACH opener you wanted to connect to the internet).

With this system you can control and MONITOR your door remotely. there's a website and also android/iphone apps. you can also program in alerts (email or app) like "alert me if the garage door is open longer than 15 minutes between 9am and 4pm M-F" or "alert me if the garage door opens between midnight and 5am."

You can also program the wall switch to close the door automatically a few minutes after it's opened so you don't forget to close it. (I don't use this feature).

When the door is going to close remotely (or via the timed function) it sounds a warning alarm to let anyone in the garage it's gonna shut.

Ok back to the tools for a sec, what do you guys think of these 12 point sockets? I like the look and feel of the Black Oxide tools but it looks like craftsmen only offers that finish in the 1/4 and 3/4 socket sizes

Those sockets are referred to as spline drive. They work on spline fasteners as well as 12 point fasteners. As far as 6 point fasteners they are hit and miss. I also don't think the black oxide finish will hold up in a harsh chemical environment. Do you really want your tools in a kit? There are other ways to organize your tools and keep them mobile at the same time.