As it happened, I recently bought some wingnuts. I just double-checked, and they’re the American variety (but not the super-cheap stamped ones).
I am not of genteel manners but I am a woman, and my grip strength is way down from what it was when I used to prune grapes for a living. I can still tighten a wingnut.
If the equipment comes with a wingnut-tightener my opinion is that they shouldn’t have used a wingnut, but possibly the manufacturers thought the users wouldn’t have tools and it was cheaper to supply a wingnut-tightener than a proper wrench.
That is a very interesting idea. Thank you!
Not “wingnut(s) for easy lifetime adjustability” but rather “wingnut(s) for cheap one-time assembly net of needing included tools.”
Any gizmo using the latter logic is using the wrong fastener(s).
I’m thinking more that the whole point of a wingnut is either a) to indicate that this is something that shouldn’t be tightened more than handtight because tightening it too much may either break something or prevent something from moving that should or b) to make it easy to frequently adjust something without needing tools, in which case the something should be designed so that it doesn’t need to be tightened more than can be done by hand tightening the wing nut. In either case needing to put a tool on it defeats the purpose. In the first case putting a tool on it is also liable to break something or prevent it from functioning.
The problem isn’t that the wing nut is poorly designed. The problem is that either the thing it’s used on is poorly designed, or the wingnut is the wrong fastener. Or both. Or possibly, as somebody suggested, that it’s a seriously undersized wingnut – in which case that particular wingnut is also the wrong fastener.
Yeah. Agree completely.
Said another way, wingnuts of a particular size totally can be the right idea for a given application. But there are so many ways to get it wrong that that’s not the way to bet here in the 2024 world of cheap-ass Chinese gizmos for the cost-conscious US market.
I can’t think of a more succinct example of ‘bad ergonomics’.
I didn’t see this bit. Yeah. Maybe there has also been a race to the bottom with the manufacture of these fasteners. I would say that the only realistic use for the wingnuts in common circulation would be for temporary assembly - for example if there is something that needs to be assembled loosely as a first stage - that is, you’d spin on the wingnuts and do them finger-tight just to get the [whatever-it-is] to stand up straight, then one at a time, you’d remove the wingnuts and replace them with regular nuts and tighten them with a spanner.
Or all three. The thing it’s used on may be poorly designed, and the wingnut may be the wrong fastener, AND the wingnut is poorly designed. It is supposed to be tightened using the fingers, yet it is simply not designed to fit them as well as it could be; I’m fairly sure the square edges are an artifact of design for ease of manufacture, rather than ease of use.
I just bought some German Form wingnuts to replace the godawful plastic and pressed brass wingnut-handwheel on one of these - the rest of the product is superbly well made, but the fastener is not - after a period of regular use, the plastic part slips on the brass threaded insert and can no longer be done up (or in some cases, can’t be undone if the failure happens during tightening).
They cost about 10x what I would pay for regular stainless wingnuts in my local hardware shop, but I think most of that is just economy of scale and also manufacturers of less common parts can get away with overpricing, because if you want the part, you want the part.
I know some wingnuts. Not sure if they have square or rounded corners, or maybe they are just politicians.
BMW uses nice wing-nuts. Spare tire hold down and other places. I fill my pockets with them everytime I hit the junkyard looking for treasure.
Slight hijack: BMW also have trunk-mounted tool kits. It simply amazes me how often I’ll come across one in the junkyard and all the tools are still in them. Score! They can sell for big bucks on eBay.
They’re also used for things that need to be adjusted frequently, and for some things that need to be removed occasionally, as for cleaning or replacement of a part.
And, I think, sometimes to indicate “finger tight only!”; though that assumes both some degree of knowledge on the part of the user, and that the user can trust that the manufacturer means it that way, and knows what they’re doing.
I really don’t see how rounding those edges makes any difference. You’re turning the thing from the flat part, not from the edges.
If the surface is too small for your hands to apply enough pressure to tighten it as much as needed, the problem isn’t that the edges are square; it’s that either the wingnut is too small and a larger wingnut should have been provided, or you’re trying to tighten it harder than the design calls for, or a wingnut is the wrong connector because it should be tightened more than finger tight and should use a connector designed for a wrench.
There is no ‘fat part’ on the American form wingnuts (or the descendants of that form, as commercially available) - the area of the wing is smaller, and thus there is more pressure per unit area for the same torque, and because the area is smaller than the pad of the thumb or finger, the flesh deforms around the sharp(ish) corner of the wing.
Ah. So the problem isn’t the rounding, it’s the area.
Yes, although both, because the area is smaller, the rounding, or lack thereof, becomes a pressing matter.
I don’t mess with wingnuts all the time, but I know what you’re talking about. It instantly called up memories of my fingers hurting after tightening a wingnut, and those always had corners. The corners dig in, even though I’m pressing on the flat part. And, yes, the rounded ones don’t do that.
That said, I just considered it normal. It doesn’t hurt that bad if it’s only one or two that you’re doing very rarely. But I get why it would be a problem after the second one. It hurts worse with each wingnut, to that point where you lose feeling yet it still hurts.
If you have to do a whole lot of them, try gloves?
And not using the tips of your fingers, but the sides.
Here’s a comparison of the two, based on technical drawings for the same sized thread:
Now it might be tempting to look at that and say that the German Form may be unsuitable due to its generally larger size for the same thread, but I think that’s a moot point, since anywhere it is used, is somewhere you have to be able to get your fingers into.
Part of the comfort factor is the greater wing area; part of it is just that the wings splay a bit wider, so there is more leverage to apply torque (so less pressure for the same tightening force); the softened edges are just the cherry on the top really.
Nice drawing, though I fear it may summon the Disney people.