4 ms·
>life's ambition is never again to spend four hours messing around with an allen wrench 4 hours? So its still fashionable to pretend that you have no engineeri
by yvueywa 17y ago
>life's ambition is never again to spend four hours messing around with an allen wrench
4 hours? So its still fashionable to pretend that you have no engineering or practical aptitude!
Imagine reading the atlantic and claiming you didn't understand theatre or poetry
- derefr 17y agoUsually when I hear this complaint (on putting things from IKEA together), it's not a problem with putting things together in general, but allen wrench usage in particular that gets them. I'm not sure why—maybe the fact that the process is reversible and doesn't involve making holes in wood makes the constructor feel like they're playing with Lego rather than actually "building" something?
- paulbaumgart 17y agoA power drill + a few allen wrench bits makes the process feel a lot manlier. :-)
- yvueywa 17y agoI think it's just lazy journalism. Along the lines of - oh I'm so sensitive an artistic and creative I'm no good at anything mechanical.
- philwelch 17y agoAllen wrenches are the least usable types of wrenches or screwdrivers I've ever used. I always end up skinning my knuckles. IKEA should develop and sell a better allen wrench.
- pasbesoin 17y agoI recently put together some trestle leg table/desk supports from them. The included, sort-of-S-shaped allen wrench worked just fine. Actually, I was impressed at how well it worked combined with its minimalist design. I'd be cautious using a drill/power driven allen bit. The wood in my trestles is not the hardest, and I can see where too much power too quickly could damage it before one's reaction time caught up with events. If you are cautious, things should be fine. If you just set a torque limit and fire away, you could end up unhappy.
- philwelch 17y agoI'd like an allen wrench bit for a traditional hand-powered screwdriver. Though one of those low-power electric screwdrivers we use at my work to install rack-mount equipment into racks might work OK too (if it had an allen wrench bit).
- pasbesoin 17y agoThere are handheld / hand-driven screwdrivers that have replacable... bits, I guess one would call them. I have one that switched between large and small blade and Phillips heads. Now that I check, I also have an inexpensive Husky screwdriver/bit set that was a Secret Santa gift; it has hex bits, though I haven't used them. I'd think before using it for IKEA assembly, though. For the trestles, the screws required significant torque to penetrate. Applying that repeatedly for these not too short screw, by using one's wrists and a screwdriver grip, I imagine would quickly become tiring. A nice thing about the IKEA "throw-away" wrench is that its S shape allows one to create significant torque with a finger grip, lessening strain on / torsion of the wrist.
- akd 17y agoA friend outfitted his apartment with IKEA and it took 4 MIT engineering students 3 hours to complete it all.
- philwelch 17y agoYou know how IKEA has those showcases, and some of them are complete apartments with nothing but IKEA in them? 12 man-hours would be impressive to put one of those together.
- aaronblohowiak 17y agoI have an alan wrench bit for my drill / driver. Minimize one bottleneck, then work on the next ;)
- akd 17y agoFriendly FYI: That's "Allen" wrench.