Flat pack furniture has been propping up the hex stock industry for decades now.

> Eyeballs a hex screw to tighten up a door handle
> Grabs a likely suspect out of the drawer
> Doesn't work
> Gets another
> Doesn't work
> Third time's a charm
> Doesn't work
> Gets the full set of hex keys in the same room as the drawer

"Hey hon, the door handle's fixed."

Makes sense, you keep the furniture too after all

No no no. Throw that away, first thing you do. Have a driver set with every size Allen key, you insert bit into a screwdriver handle and it ratchets. No more bloody knuckles, or pulling it out every turn because your key hits another part. Makes furniture go together so much faster.

heh, I just dug one of those out of the scrap bucket and epoxied it into a drain plug in my truck that I finished rounding out in spectacular fashion.

I wasn't the asshole who started rounding it, but I sure was the asshole that finished the job. Replacement with an actual hex head on it is sitting on the workbench. No more water trap woes if the cheap hex wrench stays glued in that fucked up part

edit: it worked great. The plug had dielectric corrosion (steel plug in a mag/alum body) and at first I thought I just tightened it up too much but nope, I felt that rust break, saw the removal of material on the plug itself once it was all the way out, and I'm sure it's in the secondary fuel filter now. Replaced with a brass plug that had a 19mm hex head on it so no more worries. Big wrench, little torque kinda thing - it's the o-ring that makes the seal, not the torque.

And they're always the softest mild steel they could find so it'll cam out, destroy the head on a bolt and force you to go dig your good one out anyway.

Marrying

https://www.harborfreight.com/8-piece-right-angle-screwdriver-92630.html

with

https://www.harborfreight.com/power-tools/drill-driver-bits/driving-impact-bits/security-bit-set-with-case-100-piece-68457.html

has been a game changer for assembling flat pack furniture. As a result, the hex keys just get tossed in a bucket of other hex keys,

I ductape it to the furnature when possible so if I need it it's there

file a side flat and boom instant (hand) router blade.

If you don't have a dozen 1.5mm hex wrenches, is you life even worth living?

I was shocked when i found a box full of them. Just couldn't comprehend how many of them can be. Probably 50 if not more. If you pack it in a sock - it would knock someone out.

And then my dad said - you think we bought all that furniture in one go? That shelf - one. That bookcase - one. That bed table - three and so on. Years later when we moved out to our new apartment and started buying new furniture - i noticed that these wrenches keep on piling up naturally.

I hate that they include these. But only since I built a home with 2 workshops and filled them with quality tools. 20 year old me was thankful for these shitty Allen keys.

Tape it to the underside, thank yourself when you're taking it apart and already packed or lost your tools

I bet these could be turned into wind chimes.

I throw them at birds I don't like.

You mean Allen key!

Currently working to cut them off so I can use them in my drill

i used to have so many of these things, then they disappeared. Mabye there's a ghost in here who has ghost ikea furniture.

Found one on the trail yesterday and stuffed it in my pocket. Long story, but I was packing 20lbs., scared, in a hurry, threw it back down. "Oh FFS I don't need another one."

his name is allen

Help. I need tungsten to live.

I have a toolbox compartment for these.

One benefit of having bunch of them is providing them to friends/family when they help u assemble furniture.

Faster than having just one person doing all the jex wrench related tasks because the tasks are now parallelized.

Just add it to the drawer!

20 x 4mm ?

Yep, on top of the dedicated tools I've bought standalone.

Grind them to what you need https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVXBiA56eyc

After doing a bunch of carpentry this year, now I have metric and imperial sets of nice long hex bits for my high torque impact driver.

Something is gonna move, one way or another!

Cleaned up my garage yesterday. Found about 15 of them, I guess

Not bad. My favourite of these is where he's holding a random DC power pack.

It's just that I'm confused whether it goes in with the aluminum or unsorted trash, so I never throw it out.