Tiny Toolkits
Someone pointed me at a site dedicated to tiny toolkits. Like every other niche interest, there’s even a manifesto. The manifesto largely boils down to “a couple of small tools are better than nothing, and you can probably bodge it”. I don’t disagree with that - in fact, I have my own little toolkit.
What I put my stuff in
That’s a “LIHIT LAB” pencil/pen case. Yeah, tool rolls are cool. Everyone wants to feel like a rennaissance carpenter unfurling his cabinetmaker’s chisels. But it’s hard to find rolls with zip pockets and space for the sort of tools I usually carry about. I just happened to have this pen case already.
My Tools
I’m a sysadmin, or at least I say that somewhere on my homepage and CV. So I keep on hand tools useful for that sort of work. I don’t go to the datacentre all that often, but when I do, I take my tools with me. With that said - not all the tools I keep with me are sysadmin related. Let’s go through them.
Network stuff
My Klein Tools VDV226-005 is new. I used to have a VCE something-or-other that handled the fancy-shmancy through-hole RJ45’s (back in my day, you trimmed your pairs by hand before you put them in the wrong way). But the cutting edge blunted. To be fair, I’d probably done a hundred cables. Two half racks, three houses (with keystone couplers). Cables for the office and home here and there. Admittedly, for the price of the Klein I could have just bought two more VCELink’s (or, like five cheap crimpers). I figured as this is an important-enough tool, I’d like a nice one.
Oddly, the Klein doesn’t strip. So I carry about a Knippex 1665125SB wire stripper. It is practically impossible to bugger up with it. Put wire in, rotate, pull. It’ll handle telly coaxial, speaker wire, telephone wire - practically anything I’d need to strip. I’ve stuck to proper strippers since chipping a tooth in university on some 22AWG. Works great on practically any gauge.
Speaking of strippers - Klein Tools 2100-7 scissors. They’re my favourite thing I keep in the toolkit. Little scissors with a file on one side and little cutouts on the other to allow for stripping wire. They were maybe fifteen quid at the time. They aren’t as useful for CAT5/6/6A cables now that passthrough RJ45’s are common, but a good pair of scissors to trim the pairs to a uniform length made for a clean job.
I keep a small pack of VCE black passthrough RJ45 in the pouch. They’re black for no reason other than style. But I guess it helps me see which cables I’ve been involved with.
Kingston MicroDuo 64GB with an image of Finnix installed. Always have a Linux LiveCD (though I suppose they’re not called that any more) on hand - you never know when you’ll bugger up GRUB, or when your distribution will update the kernel and fail to build something essential into initramfs.
While we’re finishing up network stuff - you may have noticed I don’t actually keep a cable tester with me. I’ve not really found a point - just plug it in, see if it works, and run iperf while wiggling it about a bit. I’d like a nice one, one day. One that does tone testing / cable tracing. But it isn’t a priority.
Screwdrivers
Everyone likes a good screwdriver. While I have a selection of old cabinet screwdrivers at home, alongside one of those larger iFixit sets - I keep two small sets in the tiny toolkit.
The Wera 05051461001 1/4 Ratchet Screwdriver is just a nice 1/4 screwdriver that can handle a good amount of torque. I use it for most jobs - rack ears, cage nuts, arcade machine (dis)assembly, removing doors from their hinges. You know the sort of jobs. I use it with Wera’s 05057434001 - a 30-bit set. Though I’d be lying if I said I ever paid attention to the difference between philips and pozi (let alone JIS bits, but they aren’t in the set).
iFixit Minnow Screwdriver with bits is a shitty plastic screwdriver with sixteen 4mm bits. Notably, P2 and P5 pentalobe bits (Apple shite), TR6, TR8 and TR10 torx bits (old Macbooks use Torx for the SSD and Wifi card), and general Philips bits for every other laptop on the planet. It doesn’t see much use since I have the larger iFixit ‘Mako’ set at home, and we have some no-name set at work that I use when I can find it.
Not a screwdriver, but it kinda gets used as one - the (unpictured) ENGINEER TWB-05 Ball Wrench Set. Allen keys with ball-ends so you can use them at an angle (about 30 degrees off-axis). Everyone needs allen keys, and everyone probably has one in their second kitchen drawer. The one under the drawer that holds the cutlery. If it’s anything like mine, it’ll have manuals for appliances, screws of various sizes, and a couple boxes of matches. Anyway - they’re generally useful and don’t take up much space in a toolkit.
The other stuff
There’s a few things I’ve not mentioned, but that are in-photo. These things aren’t used as often as the others, but they’re genuinely useful at times. Like “I’d have been up shit’s creek without that” useful.
My Hammer Wrench. It’s a wrench. It’s a hammer! It’s unstamped - I don’t know what it’s proper tool-name is. Presumably 80 years ago you’d take it out and someone would go - “Oh, that’s a nice Krogstadting wrench” or something. Really, I just keep it for its use as a hammer. Drew Batchelor’s talk at EMF2024 made reference to a similar looking tool - although the one in his slides has a useful claw-head for removing nails.
ENGINEER TWM-08 are awesome stubby spanners. They’re tiny, but it’s not too hard to get a good grip in tight places. I don’t know how strong they are - their max span is pretty small (~20mm). I’d probably use something else if I was dealing with something that was very tight.
KOH-I-NOOR Clutch Pencil - a nice metal clutch pencil. Worth having something to write with. And with soft lead, you can even write on the side of a server rack.
MILAN CMM430 eraser are four quid for a box of thirty. Saves you getting in trouble for leaving your scrawl on the side of racks in colo datacentres.
Originally bought as part of a promotion while shopping for extra-wide paper clamps for my “M4” sheet music - the Hightide Penco GZ111 tape measure is a 2M metric-only tape measure. Fantastic little thing.
Finally, the Stabila 17773 spirit level. As stupid as it sounds - this is actually useful when racking servers. It’s surprisingly difficult to tell if you’re off-by-one on both sides at the front or back while installing rails. A marble would do the same trick, I suppose. But I picked this up at Axminster a long time ago, and just kept it about.
Stuff I sometimes want
Less about buying stuff, since I already own most of this stuff. More about considering what would be useful to me in a toolkit. It’s not about (as the material on the aformentioned tiny toolkit site explains) stuff you carry about every day. Things should justified their mass and weight.
- A larger plier-wrench would be good. Knipex do them in roughly propoprtional sizes.
- A multi-meter.
- Some electricians tape. Good electricians tape - the cheap stuff always leaves nasty residue on cables.
- Zip ties. I need to have my tools.
- A small torch would help. Something that uses an 18650 and has a USB-C charging circuit.
- A Black posca paint marker. Writes on anything, but isn’t permanent.
- Knipex Pliers Wrench XS 8604100BK. They really do look like a prop for a plumber’s doll-house. Same sort of span as the TWM-08, but way, way-heavier in duty.
Stuff I may remove
The minnow screwdriver set is useful - but I’ve never needed to take apart a mac outside home/the office. The tape-measure is an odd one, as it’s generally only used in situations where I’m just confirming something I’ve presumed. Like “yeah, that’ll probably fit”. Ditto for the spirit level.