Whimble braces - anyone use these?

[daniel lane]

I keep seeing whimble braces and I keep having the same two thoughts:

Who uses these things?
I wonder if that would help with my arm...

I suppose I'm outing myself a bit here, but...I have nerve damage and have problems with the pure Schwarzian hand tool gig. I try hard (I frequent this neander forum waaaaay more than any other), but sometimes you have to admit when you can't, and well, braces are a problem with me because an injury to my neck has caused an intermittent loss of strength to my arms, sometimes quite significant. I used a 10" MF brace to bore some 3/4" holes recently, and had a heck of a time with it after 1.5 holes...as you can imagine, a loss of arm strength complicates brace usage. (This, btw, is another reason why ratcheting braces rock.)

Anyway, I keep looking at whimble braces and thinking that they might be easier for me since I could use BOTH arms to twist, but I also look at them and think that I have as much of a chance of my boring a straight hole with one of those things as a snowball's chance in........lets say "Ecuador". (As in hot, not that I don't like Ecuador.) Anyone used one? Should I even be thinking about these things?



TIA,

daniel

[Shlomo Hoffmann]

I have never used a whimble brace, but I understand they are supposed to double the relative torque. However, I have read somewhere that they were not very popular, quite understandably, as both hands are in motion and the whole affair is prone to wobble more...

I would consider a larger swing regular brace first, something like a 14". Compared to a 10" brace, these will enhance your torque much better...

[Jonathan McCullough]

I don't think it would be easier on your arms Daniel. I picked up a whimble of recent manufacture at a flea market because I'd never tried one. If anything they're more physically demanding and less accurate than a regular brace, and take a little practice to use effectively. There's no central reference to keep things in line the way a pad acts on a conventional brace. Saw one in use when I was a kid--the lineman had a comical affect like he was furiously swatting at bees from a hive he'd just stirred up. Presumably a whimble might be more efficient if you're drilling big long holes in 8x8 for transformer bolts all day long. In some situations find it easier to drill by turning the work on its side and drilling horizontally with the pad against my abdomen. That way you're not straining both arms.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

For me, the accuracy with a brace, when using a lead-screw tipped auger is similar to a finely set saw - get it started going the right direction, and let the tool follow through from there - you supply the power in the needed direction (back and forth, or round and round) and stay out of the way - trying to steer once you've really started going just results in something binding somewhere. Once you get past those few initial strokes or revolutions that things are started, you can really just power through the rest of it.

But yeah, I think the whimble braces where aimed at installers rougher work and such, I'd imagine they'd be great if you were drilling big holes in construction material for pipes or what have you.