Sometimes you have to perform one-time repair work, for which purchasing a specialized tool is impractical. In such situations, you can make do with homemade devices made from scrap materials.
1. Attachment for a screwdriver for twisting
To twist wires in junction boxes, you can make a special attachment for a screwdriver. To do this, you need to take an M8 washer and drill 2 holes in it. They should be slightly thicker than the stripped strands of the wires being twisted.
The drilled washer is placed on the bolt and tightly clamped with two nuts. The bit is then inserted into the screwdriver chuck. To use it, you need to insert the stripped wires into the holes, clamp the bundle of wires with pliers or fingers, and start the screwdriver. As a result, the strands will be woven into a perfect braid. If you need to twist 4 or more cores, then the appropriate number of holes should be made in the washer.
2. Gas crucible for soldering twists
To make the twisting of wires almost eternal, it needs to be soldered.It is convenient to do this by dipping it into a crucible. It can be made from a large cable lug, a pipe clamp and a stud.
The hairpin is bent in an “G” shape.
From the short edge it is screwed into the clamp. The clamp itself bends and tightens on the portable gas burner. A vertical cable lug is clamped onto the long end of the stud with a pair of nuts.
Now, when the torch is ignited, the flame will heat the solder in the tip. By dipping a twist into such a crucible, you can solder it in a matter of seconds. Before this, the wires must be treated with an alcoholic rosin solution.
3. Nozzle for warming up stuck nuts
The following homemade product will be useful to plumbers and auto mechanics for heating stuck threaded connections. It is made on the basis of a crucible for soldering twists. Only instead of a cable lug, a screen curved from a perforated mounting angle is installed on a stud.
In this case, the fire will fall on the anti-corrosion coating of the corner and stud, so it is advisable to remove it, since zinc fumes are harmful to health. These parts need to be kept in an aqueous solution of citric acid for a couple of hours so that it dissolves the coating.
Now you can easily unscrew everything and disassemble the connection.
4. Soldering iron for plastic pipes
For this homemade product, it will also be necessary to soak all galvanized parts in a citric acid solution.
First of all, the pin is warmed up and bent, as in the photo.
One of its edges will twist into a clamp on the burner. A threaded rod cut from a large bolt is inserted into the ring at the second end. It is clamped with a pair of nuts. The end nut should protrude away from the thread, so a spring washer is installed in front of it for rigidity.
The result is something like a soldering iron attachment.For best performance, you need to lightly sharpen its thread.
The nozzle is heated by a burner flame, then the pipes are heated from it and soldered.
To fully equip a homemade soldering iron, you will need to prepare M20, M25 and M32 bolts for it, corresponding to popular pipe diameters.
