How long is yours?

[golden_labels]

A 300 mm long PH1 from Wera 350 series,⁽¹⁾ has just arrived. Dave’s Ridiculously Long Screwdriver™ looks like 400–450 mm.

What are the longest you have in your collection? How often you find them useful? For what, in particular nowadays, when boomboxes with silly screw holes are no longer present?

⁽¹⁾ 05008715001

[pcprogrammer]

16 

But joking aside, our Philips vacuum cleaner has deep screw holes and uses star (torx) screws. Had to open it twice already due to the power cord not coming out anymore. Needed to buy a longer screw driver for it. 


Edit: Forgot that the screw heads with the star shape are called torx screws.

[Nominal Animal]

What are the longest [screwdrivers] you have in your collection? For what [...]?

The non-lockless jigsaws (the tool, not puzzle) often have (had?) a very deep hole for the locking screw; often 120-140mm deep.  I don't have mine here anymore, but that was the one I needed a special screwdriver for.  I think another one had a hex key, though.

[Halcyon]

Mine's a mere 13cm long and is shadowed by some of you gents, but it's not the length that matters necessarily, it's the girth.

As a fan of retro computers, I needed this particular tool to undo the chassis screws in Macintosh Classic's. It's a standard Torx bit but the depth combined with the narrow channel make them difficult to remove with normal drivers. Even the extension part of my small iFixit kit doesn't fit in there.

[golden_labels]

You mentioning the other examples made me realize how monstrosities many I forgot.

Now I also recall some CRT computer displays. The holes weren’t particularly deep, but were so close to the side it was necessary to use a normal-sized screwdriver at an angle. And then there was no space for your hand, so loosening or tightening a screw wasn’t an easy task.

And all the devices with metal frames, like big printers, where a screw holding a part was 10 cm inside the mechanism, requiring maneuvring through cut outs and spaces between gears. This is still the case, I believe.

Both doable, but very inconvenient. And the most irritating part, when your screwdriver was short by just 3 millimeters.

[Halcyon]

And the most irritating part, when your screwdriver was short by just 3 millimeters.

This just means that whenever screws you do manage to wriggle out will be re-inserted 3mm short. 

[SiliconWizard]

As a fan of retro computers, I needed this particular tool to undo the chassis screws in Macintosh Classic's. It's a standard Torx bit but the depth combined with the narrow channel make them difficult to remove with normal drivers. Even the extension part of my small iFixit kit doesn't fit in there.

Oh yeah, I had one of those years ago, to open old Macs. No clue where it ended up though, I have lost it.

[Halcyon]

As a fan of retro computers, I needed this particular tool to undo the chassis screws in Macintosh Classic's. It's a standard Torx bit but the depth combined with the narrow channel make them difficult to remove with normal drivers. Even the extension part of my small iFixit kit doesn't fit in there.

Oh yeah, I had one of those years ago, to open old Macs. No clue where it ended up though, I have lost it.

https://console5.com/store/t15-macintosh-case-tool-for-128k-plus-se-se-30-classic-t15h-extended-1-4-drive.html

https://www.amazon.com/uoboeuq-12inch-Magnetic-Screwdrivers-Security/dp/B08L6DWJNN/

Seems like there are plenty still around.

[pcprogrammer]

What are the longest [screwdrivers] you have in your collection? For what [...]?

The non-lockless jigsaws (the tool, not puzzle) often have (had?) a very deep hole for the locking screw; often 120-140mm deep.  I don't have mine here anymore, but that was the one I needed a special screwdriver for.  I think another one had a hex key, though.

Oh yes, I forgot about that one. I still have my Bosh jigsaw that needs a thin maybe 20cm long screwdriver. Will be lying in a drawer somewhere.

[mendip_discovery]

I have some rather lengthy ones and they were collected just becuase we have had moments where getting to a screw was a nightmare. But I work on motorcycles and cars as well.

On the note about it's not always about length, I remener many times trying to take apart electrical things and the screw would be deep inside and you would end up using the wrong size screw driver just becuase you needed one with a thinner shaft. Even worse when they started to use special security bits and you had to spend an age trying different bits until (like plugging in a USB) you go back to the first one.

Btw I highly recommend people get JIS screw drivers, the ones I have are from Vessel but dam they are very nice to use.

[Zoli]

I have an old 350mm PH2 screwdriver(one piece; in addition, a Wera 393 S(028161), a DeWalt 200mm extension, and two 200m bits: PH2 and Robertson(square)2. Recently I had to use the Wera+DeWalt+PH2 to reach back-to-front in a computer rack within the babelcables.

[hexreader]

Q "What are the longest you have in your collection? "
A 450 cm flat blade - bought just because I saw it in local store and thought it looked cool. I had a million uses in my mind - zero uses in reality.

Q "How often you find them useful? "
A Never

Q "For what, in particular nowadays, when boomboxes with silly screw holes are no longer present?"
A No real use - useless

Long security screwdriver bits are really handy, but expensive. But by long, I am talking only 40 to 50 mm

Found my first use for the screwdriver 5 minutes ago, but only because I thought of this thread. I straightened up my stack of bench power supplies sitting on my bench when I noticed that they were sitting at a slight angle and causing no problem of any kind. Used the screwdriver as a poking stick, not as a screwdriver.

The only reasons for use were:
1) OCD - I like everything to be straight and organised
2) Too much alcohol
3) seeing this thread

Long screwdrivers are handy at work to reach from back of 19 inch rack cabinet to front of cabinet
No sensible use at home - other than general purpose poking device