Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Review: WTF - Ti wrench and pry tool

More Kickstarter goodness.

I managed to snag a "second" as an early trial piece for the WTF mini titanium keychain Kickstarter, from Brad, creator of the Bottle Grenade "the-last-opener-you-will-ever-need"

I am always on the lookout for little tools liek this, because I really like having them on hand, in my pack, in my EDC, without being totally overburdened (don't laugh).

This one was a "second" as it was slightly mis-aligned, you can see that the internal cutouts are not quite centered, leading to a slight reduction in strength, so when they were offered for immediate discount sale, i snapped one up.

The Kickstarter project offered these in three materials and I pull directly from the Kickstarter brief for these:

Aluminum 6061-T6 - Ultimate Tensile Strength is 45,000 psi and an elasticity modulus of 10,000 ksi (Soft) ~4.4 grams


Titanium Ti-6Al-4V - Ultimate Tensile Strength is 138,000 psi and an elasticity modulus of 16,500 ksi (Springy) ~7.8 grams

and finally a Parkerized Chromoly 4130 - Ultimate Tensile Strength - 97,200 psi but has an elasticity modulus of 29,700 ksi (Stiff) ~11.5 grams (and a Rockwell hardness of B 90–96 holy crap!!)

I opted for a Ti and a Chromoly, but they aren't expected till November (6 months away, I might DIE) so was thrilled to get this little guy in my hands.

Brad even zipped it though his anodizing mix, and I got to select my colour, this is the 55VDC anodizing and it gave a lovely pale gold colour to the tool.

So, what does it do?

The dimples on the sides correspond to 1/4"  on one side, and 1cm on the other.

The middle cutout features the following sockets:
Standard: 1/4", 5/16", 3/8", 7/16", 1/2"
Metric: 6mm, 8mm, 10mm, 11mm, 13mm


I actually struggled a little while to find some bolts to test this on. Then I realised that half of my house is covered in Ikea GORM shelves   and I set to tightening those suckers up. The teeth of the wrench slipped neatly into place, and away I went. This is indeed a Wrench That Fits.

The next aspect to test was pretty easy to do. The texturesd bevel of the pry-bar end made quick work of jars, cans and a variety of "things to pry" that I might have at one time or other thought to use a screw-driver, butter knife on, but NEVER the end of my multi-tool knife blade (oh no, that was snapped off by rabid goblins).

The "outside edges" are all smoothed off, giving a very comfortable grip, all the way down to the pry-bar end, which is not rounded, but smooth. Certainly enough grip to be used as an impromptu kubaton, if the need arose.

The internal edges are crisp, but not rough, and given that this is a titanium tool, I expect they will probably pretty much stay that way. 

Along with my SAR GlobalTool Dead Ringer comb, and my Snowpeak Spork this is the third titanium tool that I have added to my EDC, and I am really pleased with it so far.

Comparing it with my CountyComm Micro Widgy pry bar, it is a little shorter, and given its complement of ten socket options as well as a pry end, is significantly more multifunctional.

That said, I'm not throwing out my Micro Widgy either. Two is One, One is none.

So as not to keep all my eggs in one basket, (and really, two pry bars on one set of keychain tools is a bit excessive, even for me) I have taken to wearing the WTF on my necklace, with a simple split ring through the lanyard hole, where it sits beside my SAR Global Tool MoonGlow and my 500-700BCE pre-Han dynasty Chinese bronze arrowhead that I got whilst visiting my parents in Beijing. The irony of 2500 years between these two pieces is only magnified by the delightful chiming they make as I wear them, especially when being vigorous, or adventuring.

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