Where to find large tap wrenches?

**IanW** · 25th October 2015, 05:03 PM

For the number of holes you are likely to need to tap, I'd certainly be looking at cobbling up a wrench. One fashioned after the Beall wrench NC pointed to should be fine. I can't see any need for the notches, just bolt two bits of flat steel together as in the pic, with about 8mm bolts. If you can't drill holes that size in steel, a couple of reasonably well-fitting U-bolts may do the job, & there'd be no need to drill the arms. I have no idea what length to make the arms, though - I googled #8 wrenches to see if I could get a length, but didn't get anything useful. The largest holes I've tapped in steel were 3/4", which didn't take as much effort as I expected, so you probably don't need arms more than 300mm long.

If you want a real challenge, try driving a 4 tpi, 2" tap through an under-sized pilot hole in very hard wood - there's a pic of some idiot busting a gut doing just that in this thread. ...

Cheers,

**rtyuiop** · 26th October 2015, 11:01 AM

Yeah, I think I'll look at making up something out of hardwood for now, and if something cheap pops up on ebay/gumtree I'll decide if the wood wrench is working well enough!

**BobL** · 26th October 2015, 02:02 PM

A bloke at the mens shed made one for a 38 mm tap along similar lines of the Beal except they used thick walled SHS with an ID that fit the tap shank.
Instead of bolts they just welded lengths of SHS on as handles and spacers like this. The handles were each about 600 mm long - it took two blokes to cut the thread.

Where to find large tap wrenches?-tapholder-jpg

Where to find large tap wrenches?-tapholder-jpg

**IanW** · 26th October 2015, 07:08 PM

Originally Posted by BobL

....... The handles were each about 600 mm long - it took two blokes to cut the thread....

Well there you go, so much for my estimation of half that length being sufficient! You could still use shorter arms & extend them with a bit of pipe when needed, as we did when tapping the bluegum bench. If it takes that much effort to turn a 30mm tap, rtyuiop, you will need to make your wooden wrench solid!

Cheers,

**markinoz** · 27th October 2015, 10:45 AM

have a look at toolexchange.com.au

**rtyuiop** · 4th January 2016, 04:54 PM

Quick update - just got one from India on ebay. Haven't tried it out so far, but it looks a little rough in unimportant areas, but I couldn't see any issues that would stop it working perfectly well.

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