On Sat, 27 Feb 2010 05:20:04 -0600, the infamous Sano
scrawled the following:

Joseph Gwinn wrote in
:

In article ,
"Jon Danniken" wrote:

Here a tool I made this week, I call it a socket on a stick. I made
it to attach the water lines to my bathroom sink, as there isn't
enough clearance up there to tighten it with a wrench (you can
barely get yer fingers up in there).

The socket was fifty cents from a pawnshop, which was cut using a
thin abrasive disk in an angle grinder. I left a small shoulder on
the base of the socket to keep it from sliding off of the hexagon
nut it will tighten.

The socket and the stick were welded together using 6013 GMAW rod
and a Miller buzzbox; I was very surprised at how easy it was to
weld these together (yes my welds look like turkeysh*t, but they
will function in this application).

Here's a few more thousand words:

http://www.metalworking.com/dropbox/SocketStick01.jpg
http://www.metalworking.com/dropbox/SocketStick02.jpg
http://www.metalworking.com/dropbox/SocketStick03.jpg
http://www.metalworking.com/dropbox/SocketStick04.jpg

Looks like a better basin wrench.

http://www.ridgid.com/Tools/Basin-Wrench

Something I would have killed for as a yout'.

Serendipity found me last month when I found one of those in the weeds
behind the house I was working on. I needed it that day to install a
new faucet in the kitchen sink. A little bit of oil got the button
working so I could telescope it, and the thing worked like a
champ...to break off the "fingers" on the plastic nuts which had both
apparently been crossthreaded all the way up to the sink. I ended up
dismantling the faucet and cutting it into 3 pieces, then snapping the
plastic base into many pieces, so I could -finally- drop the 2 brass
fittings through the holes in the sink...and be done with the old one.
That was good for 2 solid hours of fighting. To top it off, one of the
copper tubes I cut in two decided to cut back. My thumb is almost
healed now.

When you need a basin wrench, they're _damned_ handy.

--
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
--Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)