How to make a spanner(wrench) out of pvc.

I've seen some pretty amazing pvc projects here and I thought I must do a nice and simple pvc project as my first instructable. It can be done in 5 minutes and costs about nothing.

Step 1: Required stuff.

Materials needed:
Short piece of pvc pipe.
A source of heat (I used a tea candle).
A metal rod.
Bolts or brass fitting.
Pliers to hold the bolts.

Note: I'm having trouble adding notes to the image.So please bear with me. My problem has been solved thanks to Tool Using Animal.

Comments

[finton]

Great idea! That would have been just the answer for spinning a nut onto a long bolt as I had to do recently. Instead I had to use a Crescent spanner (shifter, adjustable wrench, whatever) doing <180 degree turns once my socket set wouldn't reach any further. I'd be inclined to have some type of adaptor to connect it to an electric drill so one need not turn it by hand.

[frikkie]

Dis n oulike instructable .Nice work  ;)

[PetervG]

So whats a spanner?

[altaria1993]

a spanner is a tool wich you use to turn around bolts and nuts with, and you americans prefer calling it a wrench :)

[JakeTobak]

I Googled "spanner" and it seems to be a wrench.

[Apples]

british english word for a wrench.

[servant74]

Two nations separated by a common language! :) ... I wonder which famous person I misquoted that from.

[Gorfram]

Oscar Wilde. He seems to be the source of all great quotes that aren't from Mark Twain or Winston Churchill. :)

[Phil B]

Actually, it was George Bernard Shaw.

[Legolutionary]

I may be mistaken, but isn't that Mike Skinner? The Streets - Two Nations...

[lemonie]

This type of tool is known as a 'box spanner'. PVC cannot take much torque, and that much is obvious. If you're using this on PVC nuts it'll have an advantage in not chewing them up. However, metal nuts will surely chew this tool up(?)

[binnie]

pvc will melt if you heat it. the nuts go bye bye lol

[jjsonp]

you can also heat the handle and melt/push it through the PVC if you don't have a drill handy. sometimes i've found melting a hole through PVC to be much more convenient than drilling, depending upon the application.

[crapflinger]

"back home" we had to turn off the water to our house at least once or twice a year in the winter because none of the pipe's were insulated (if we left the water on...the water would freeze and the pipes would burst...i love old houses)...well the only place to turn the water off was from the main "tie in" box to the city water supply..who sells wrenches for the contraption inside of that box? no one...how much did the city charge to come turn your water off/on when you wanted them to? about $100..IF they ever showed up...so we made our own wrench using roughly the same method as this instructable...and it worked great...

[Kiteman]

Do you pull the bolt back out to leave a hexagonal hole?

[Oorspronklikheid]

yes you do

[theRIAA]

good idea, nice design, should be pretty handy

[jtobako]

any idea how much torq this will take, or how close the pvc diameter should be to the nut? the nut could be taken out by threading a bolt on it and using the bolt as a handle. 'spanner' is english for (american) 'wrench.'

[Tool Using Animal]

interesting, i can see it being useful for "emergency" applications, not crashed car emergency, but i left the metric sockets at home emergency. About the image notes, i've found the only way they work for me, is do the whole instructable, and then go back and do image notes.