Finds: Northern Tool’s Gearless Ratchets
By Chuck Cage
One of the signs of a quality ratchet (at least according to my Father) is a small “sweep” – how much you have to turn it to engage the next “cog.” A reader tipped us off to Northern Tool’s gearless ratchets this morning, and though Northern doesn’t say much about them on their website, this caught our eye: they offer a “less than 3 degree sweep.” Compare that to GearWrench’s 5 degree sweep or common ratchet’s 12 degrees.
A smaller sweep lets you fit the ratchet into tighter spaces because you don’t have to rotate the wrench as much to make it “ratchet.”
The bad news: We can’t tell you how it works. We’ve never looked inside a “gearless” ratchet, so you’ll have to wait until next week when we can call around a bit and get the inside (literally) scoop for you. (Unless, of course, one of you could enlighten us in comments?) We do, however, remember hearing that Mac Tools offers a “gearless” ratchet as well. We’ll check into that, too.
Thanks, Frank, for the heads-up.
Gearless Ratchet Set — 1/4″ & 3/8″ Drive [Northern Tool]
August 26th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Probably some flavour of one-way bearing. Here’s a site with diagrams of a few such things.
September 16th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Freakishly cool, Daniel! Thanks for the link, that’s a question that’s bothered me for ages. Now to crack open such a mechanism and see if it actually works that way.
October 12th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I’ve heard of some other “gearless” ratchets, or clutch ratchets. Like the Britool (IIRC) 77 series, such as the A77. Seems cool. I wonder.
Ross
October 12th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I’ve heard of some other “gearless” ratchets, or clutch ratchets. Like the Britool (IIRC) 77 series, such as the A77. Seems cool. I wonder.
December 4th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I have a gearles ratcheting screwdriver that I’ve used and abused for 15 years, and it still works like new. I LOVE it. They are no longer widely available in the long size that I own, but Rockler has a stubby one for $6.99: item 31751 - Stubby Gearless Ratchet Screwdriver.
I actually bought 3 more back in the day and expect to hand them down to my kids. The only ratcheting screwdrivers in my house are two “collectible” braces with 8″ and 10″ sweeps. Hard to beat the batteryless torque that a lever gives you