| Inventor Larry Alford, of Perth, Australia, was working in Taiwan, trying to get another invention of his "Kwik Wrench" which he had worked on for 12 years into production. He was renting an apartment and was working on a car his friend had loaned him to drive around Taiwan. Using a conventional ratchet, he was taking skin off his knuckles as he tried to undo some difficult nuts on the motor.
Being an inventor he thought there must be an easier way to do this, and at this point the thought of a simplified ratchet began to roll around his brain. That night at 3 in the morning, as nature called, he got out of bed and in a flash the basic design of the 4-Way Ratchet flashed through his head. A ratchet that could be operated as a normal ratchet as well as being able to be operated by twisting the handle, so that when one was in a restricted area it would be possible to twist the handle and hence wind the difficult nut or bolt on or off.
How was this to be achieved was the first big problem. The intial idea, and as it turned out to be the final idea that struck him, was to achieve this by implanting a differential gear drive into a conventional ratchet.
Several days later after much thinking and beer some rough drawings were in place. It was at this point that the difficult task of making an idea come true. This must be achieved by building a working prototype.
Working in the yard of the small apartment he rented with a small vice, hammer, and a small grinder he had found somewhere, he commenced this formidable task.
The first thought was where he could get a small differential gear drive that would fit into the small space of a conventional ratchet. In Taiwan the heart of the tool industry is in the city of Taichung where he was located, and the tool markets is where you find the most obscure tools. He located some cheap electric drill chucks and a chuck key, three ratchet handles and 30 drill bits.
After cutting two ratchet handles in half, drilling a shaft through the upper half of the hardened half handle, which took a day and a half, and 18 drill bits (he had no means of "annealing" or "softening" the half ratchet handle). Grinding the gears out of three electric drill chucks and filing the lower half of the handle by hand, so that it would slide into the shaft of the upper handle.
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He then located a mechanic who spoke no English. After convincing the mechanic that he was not completely mad, he managed to explain to him with signs, drawings, mumbles, and gestures how he wanted the cuts and welds.
After about an hour of babbling and welding he paid the mechanic and then took off on his bicycle, leaving behind a bewildered mechanic.After some difficult filing, fitting, and re-fitting the ratchet was carefully assembled, and to the amazement of Larry it worked on the intial try.
After returning to Australia, Larry got in touch with different manufacturing companies that he knew in Taiwan in the quest to find a company to manufacture the tool. He finally settled with a friend, Jimmy Chang, whose company, Farmart Tool Kits Kunshan Co. is located in mainland China.
The ratchet is called the 4-Way Ratchet because it has a left and right function just like the conventional ratchet, and also has a left and right function when in the twist ratchet position, giving it four ratcheting positions, hence the 4-Way Ratchet.
The 4-Way Ratchet is manufactured from top quality Chrome Vanadium, is fully hardened and tempered, precision machined for smooth and accurate operation, fully polished and chrome plated, and also has two ratcheting pawls that are usually only found in the more expensive ratchets on the market. This unique 4-Way Ratchet is available in 1/4" drive, 3/8" drive and 1/2" drive.
When the fully patented 4-Way Ratchet was first developed in Australia it was decided that Larry's two other tools, the "Kwik-Wrench" and The "Jackal" Auto Adjust Socket/ Ratchet combination, several large tool companies and retailers
are very interested in this product. |
