Starret 174 tap wrench copy

[bent]

MrPete222 on his YouTube channel posted a series of videos recently about making the subject tap wrench from scratch.

Having broken a tap recently trying to use a cheap hardware store tap wrench, I was interested enough to try building one myself.  But, not having knurling tooling or a #12 tap, I decided to tweak the design a bit to use a #10-32 socket head cap screw.   I used a bar of questionable steel laying in the junk pile at work, looks like cheap hardware store 1/2" rod, heavily cold rolled.  And...it machined like crap, tearing and smearing at any speed/feed combo with fresh carbide cutters...grr!   But it polished up pretty nice - a spark test on the grinder showed it clearly has a bit of chrome in it, so maybe not such a crappy choice.  My working drawing and a couple of pictures of the final product are shown below.

[jeff l]

Nice job on the tap wrench , you will find it very use full.

[gerritv]

Link to videos: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7IBPqOHHZk" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7IBPqOHHZk</a>

This is on my list, near the top. Recently I broke a t handle Starrett tap wrench.

Gerrit

[mklotz]

Although I have one of those, I only use it with my piloted tap extension...

http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/tap-holders-26298

The reason I don't use it in the expected fashion is that it's just too easy to unknowingly loosen the screw and have the tap fall out onto the concrete floor.  A few broken taps convinced me to make a miniature of this style...



which locks securely onto the tap.

The arms are made from 9/32" square stainless stock turned down to 1/4".  I don't like knurling on tap wrench handles so they were left plain. 

[bent]

Jeff/Gerrit, thanks - it was a fun build, even if my mini lathe is pretty lousy at cutting smooth tapers.

mk, That is a good idea on the tap followers.

FWIW - the two grooves on my tap handle were not planned, but a result of a hacksaw slip when cutting off the part; cut the two grooves to cover up the nicks.  Only later did I notice that it makes the handle somewhat resemble my Dynacraft ratchet handle