Sure you can seek out a lab to calibrate your torque wrench, but lets have some fun with this. Torque simply is force x distance. That's any force x any distance. If you take a known weight, and suspend it from the end of a cantilever, you can compare its torque with your wrench. Here's what I would try. Lay your wrench on its' side on your bench. Attach your vice-grips to the drive square, horizontally, and lightly. Now slide a piece of pipe over the handle of the vice-grip, so you have a cantilever, maybe 3 feet long. Now, if you hang a 5 gallon bucket of water from the end of your cantilever you have a torque to compare to. 5 gallons water weighs 40 pounds, and if you measure the distance from the drive square to the bucket handle to be 35.5 inches, you just multiply 35.5 inches x 40 pounds which gives you 1420 inch pounds or 118.33 foot pounds. Now, depending on the wrench, you may have to find a more suitable weight, or cantilever distance. Add in a foot pound or so for the pipe itself. Well, some of the purists out there may be scoffing still, but the same physics applied for Uncle Isaac a few centuries ago, and that's about all he had to work with! PS, I am an engineer. |
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