Has anyone ever heard of Olsa Tools?

Grant Lamontagne · **on:** October 26, 2024, 04:39:34 PM

Yeah, me either.

Then I spotted this thing on one of the Socials, called a Bolt Head Size Finder. Want to take a wile guess as to what it does?

You are way off. It finds the size of a bolt head. I don't know what you are thinking, but you should absolutely be ashamed of yourself. This is a family forum after all!

Anyways, rather than going through a half dozen sizes of wrenches or sockets trying to figure out what size the bolt head is, and whether it's Imperial or Metric. That is always a frustration, at least for me. Maybe I'm exceptionally incompetent though, so maybe this is a solution to a problem most people don't have. After all, if Social Media is to be believed, every bolt head is 10mm and there is no such thing as a ten minute socket that stays put, and I have managed to keep my 10mm sockets in the sets they came with. Obviously I am doing it wrong....

But this Bolt Head Size Finder is absolutely elegant in it's simplicity. It's basically two strips of steel with a rivet (a hollow rivet even- gets my SAK muscles pumping!) at one end and a slider that holds the notches cut in the middle. You basically grab the bolt head (or nut, or whatever) in the jaws at the end, slide the slider (because what else would you do with a slider?) until the jaws are tight and read the markings on the side that tell you what size it is.

It's that simple. Metric on one side, Imperial on the other, and good fro sizes from 5/16ths to one inch, or 8-25mm.

And, it comes already attached to a cool carabiner to make it just that little bit harder to lose it.

Oh, and one more thing that makes Olsa Tools pretty darned cool- they are Canadian!

I liked the concept so much I also got one for my father, and now that I see them in person, I like them even more. Hopefully this week I will get a chance to actually use it and see if it is as cool as I think it is.

Def

Farmer X · **Reply #1 on:** October 27, 2024, 12:50:34 AM

That's pretty cool. And those social media know-it-alls have obviously never done any work under a hood. I've used a 10mm socket at work maybe once.

Grant Lamontagne · **Reply #2 on:** October 27, 2024, 03:08:20 PM

I use mine from time to time, but like all of my sockets and wrenches, it goes right back into the holder when I'm done.

Years ago I had an issue with my wrenches- I was using one to assemble a bed frame and I handed it to Megan to put back in my wrench roll. When I was done and went to put everything away, there was an empty slot in the roll. I searched and searched and couldn't find it. I was pretty upset about it.

A few months goes by and I am using my wrenches for something else and I realize there was two wrenches in one of the slots, and one was my missing wrench.

Apparently I had asked Megan to put it in the roll and she didn't realize that each wrench had it's own slot, and she'd tucked it in with another one.

Def