Wrote off a torque wrench story from an old timer, then I checked it myself

Mark Smith · 2026-09-10T03:45:13.055974+00:00

An old timer at the hangar in Wichita kept telling me to hand torque the small stuff instead of trusting my click wrench on everything. I figured he was just stuck in his ways, so I kept using the wrench on a set of plugs last week and two of them came up loose at 40 hours. I grabbed his old beam wrench off the shelf, checked it against mine, and mine was reading about 12 inch pounds off at the low end. That was a $300 lesson I did not need, and now I keep a beam wrench in the box just to spot check. Anybody else see drift like that on a click wrench that still feels fine in your hand?

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Wrote off a torque wrench story from an old timer, then I checked it myself | Aircraft Mechanics - Opinions Matter