metric taps

Hi, this may interest some of you, but may make some of you cringe, by some of the posts in this thread.

Today a colleague and myself were somewhere in England away from civilization, fitting an access assembly to a structure, which was made in our workshop. Two components of the assembly were to be bolted on with four 12mm nuts and bolts each, however, because of the way the scaffolding was erected, it was not possible to reach the other side of the holes that we had to drill for the bolts, to put on the washers and nuts. We were around 50 miles away from the workshop and the job had to reach the first stage today, so the only way was to drill and tap the holes.

We had not intended to do any tapping of any nature, so the gear was not loaded on the van, therefore we had to look in our tool boxes to see what we could find. Between us we found a 10.2mm twist drill, a 12mm plug tap and a double ended swivel car brake adjusting spanner, which one end fitted the square of the tap. (I had a tap, wrench but it couldn't be swung in the position where the holes are)

I therefore proceeded to drill and tap all 8 holes which were needed, which have a depth of 25mm with the gear we had with total success, without breaking even one of the cutting teeth or tap and all the bolts fitted in without any straining what so ever. (Didn't break my wrists either)

Regards Nick.

Good one Nick.

Neil