Heap of diminutive screwdrivers and nutdrivers [Vessel, PB Swiss, Athlet, Wera, and Wiha]

You can’t really have too many of certain basic tools or or too much of certain consumables. In our household, it’s stuff like scissors and box cutters, tape (e.g. masking tape, strapping/packaging tape, and regular transparent Scotch Tape [UK equivalent: Sellotape]), rulers and measuring tapes, mechanical pencils and pens and markers, rubber bands, and zip ties (and flush cutters for snipping off the excess on tightened ties. Flush cutters, by the way, are not the same as side cutters but both are useful (see Pliersman’s YouTube video Side Cutters vs Flush Cutters: Differences and Uses for more).

There are additional sorts of tools and materials that a largely-clueless but enthusiastic tinkerer such as myself will employ while trying (and sometimes failing) to make, modify, or fix things. Those which get used often enough have a tendency to go a-wandering around on their own and can be perversely difficult to find again the next time they’re wanted. There’s a lot of wisdom in the saying that Two is one and one is none. and sometimes having even more than two of a given thing will make your life significantly easier. For example, while it’s possible to imagine having too many pairs and too many types of pliers, the idea seems far-fetched. The same applies to vices, clamps, and vice grips (locking pliers). One step in a project can easily require using multiples of the same type of holding tool. Drill bits are another example, but for different reasons. They come in an wider variety of shapes (number of flutes, type of point, and more) and composition (HSS, HSS with cobalt, carbide or HSS with welded-on carbide pieces, etc.), with different combinations more or less suitable for different purposes, and they break and get dulled to the point of uselessness.

Screwdrivers are another type of essential tool that I think I’d be hard-pressed to own in excess and today we’ll briefly review some of my recent small screwdriver and nutdriver acquisitions. Though I am fond of all of these tools and will put them to use, I do have some complaints and suggestions for improvement, which will be shared towards the end of this post.

Most of the Wera nut drivers winged their way to me from Amazon Deutschland, but all of the other tools (along with the two largest nutspinners) were purchased from Taobao sellers.

Here we go.

Vessel Torx and ball-end Hex screwdrivers

Vessel is a Japanese tool manufacturing powerhouse that reportedly makes the majority of screwdrivers sold in Nippon. These Torx and ball-end hex tools are all from the Power Grip series and a fine pebbly texture is molded onto their transparent cellulose resin handles, except for smooth depressions that seem intended as finger grooves.

These are T5 (#122854) and T6 (#122855) Power Grip TORX Screwdrivers from Vessel’s 5400TX series. All of the larger 5400TXes are compatible with hollow, 6-pointed tamper-resistant Torx aka Security Torx fasteners. These smaller Torx tools have solid tips. The markings printed in black on the handles for these tools match the ones in the product images on the Vessel site and accurately feature a plain-Torx silhouette. Larger-bore 5400TX screwdrivers with hollow tips are shown printed with Torx drive silhouettes containing a central post.

Above we have some Vessel ball-end hex drivers: B-5400BP Power Grip UltraBall screwdrivers. From bottom to top: H1.5 (#267565), H2 (#267566), H2.5 (#267567), and H3 (#267568).

The handles are the same as the ones on the Torx drivers and both types of screwdriver feature 2-centimeter-long knurled regions on their shanks but this is listed as a bullet-pointed feature on the Vessel site’s product listings only for the B-5400BP drivers and is not mentioned on the Torx tools’ pages: A knurled shank keeps hands from slipping in fast turning.

That’s a close-up photo showing some the knurling on the H3 ball-end driver in better detail, as well as a sticker bearing an interesting slogan. Let’s, with a yellow leaf symbol standing in for the apostrophe, stands for Line-up, Ecology and Timely Support. Searching online for that phrase doesn’t turn up anything relevant.

One design feature not called out on the product pages but which I sincerely appreciate is the manufacturer’s wise decision to engrave, rather than laser, the company’s name and the tool’s size into the shank, midway between the knurling and the tip:

These engraved details are tiny enough that you’d need a magnifier or the zoom function on your phone’s camera app to read them, but they won’t fade away through routine use and cleaning, unlike laser-etched markings.

One bullet point on the product page of each of these drivers aroused my curiosity: Champagne gold plating keeping the precise tip quality. I don’t notice any finish just on the tips, but these Vessel drivers’ shanks as a whole look a bit yellowish compared to those on most of the other, non-Vessel, tools (except for the little Athlet Phillips-heads, which also seem to have a touch of the ol’ champagne-gold). I snapped today’s pics in one go and gave them all the same visual tune-up in an image editor, so it’s not an image processing artifact. Eyeballing the actual tools again now, the yellow tinge is real. Markings on the handles indicate the metal is hardened chrome-vanadium steel, but the shanks look like they’ve been coated with something. Actual gold may be involved (e.g. a layer of titanium gold alloy may have been applied) or perhaps something like titanium nitride was deposited on their shanks.

Through a contact form on the company site, I’ve just now fired off a request for more info on this point. The automated confirmation email containing a copy of my inquiry showed up moments later, so my question has hopefully been slotted into their customer service system and is awaiting a reply. I’ll update here if I receive a response.

PB Swiss Cross-handle hex drivers

Some PB 1206 Cross-handle screwdrivers, not ball-end:

One of the feature bullet points for this line of drivers on the manufacturer’s product page is laser-marked serial number, lifetime guarantee and here’s a close-up of the shafts of two of them. The markings on the H4 driver read 4 [1cm distance] S/N 331262 and the other even-sized ones also have their sizes marked on the shaft, but the H2.5 tool are slightly different: PB207.2,5 S/N 325789. The copywriters behind the product pages for these tools would like us to know the metal is a special alloy based on spring steel, exceptional elasticity coupled with with high hardness.

I am not a fan of lasered-on markings because they are typically impermanent, liable to gradually disappear over time through normal use and cleaning that removes only an infinitesimal amount of metal. Engrave (as Vessel does, see above), don’t laser.

Athlet Phillips head screwdrivers (PH0 and PH1)

Athlet-Qualitätswerkzeuge (Athlete Quality Tools) is a German tool brand. Or, rather, was a German tool brand. Athlet got bought on May 1, 2021 by a Dutch company (Rotec BV) that makes and sells cutting tools for the metalworking and construction industry (that’s from the subheader on Rotec’s homepage). These two unremarkable-but-fine, petite-sized Phillips head screwdrivers with transparent red acetate handles, squared-off so that they don’t roll on flat surfaces.

Wera 1569 ESD Steckschlüssels (aka Nut-spinners or Nutdrivers)

Now we come to the Wera Kraftform Micro nutdrivers. Here’s my incomplete set of 1569 ESD-safe Steckschlüssels, arranged from 5.5mm (at the top) down to 1.5mm, in order of decreasing size:

Why doesn’t Wera sell a complete set of Wera 1569 ESD Steckschlüssels? Or even a complete set of their non-ESD micro nutdrivers (the 2069 series, which sport green overmolding instead of yellow)? Wera does sell a 6-piece set of 2069 Steckschlüssels (the 2069/6 Screwdriver set and rack for electronic applications) but it’s limited to the 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, 4, and 5mm tools and omits the 1.5, 1.8, 3.2, 4.5, 5.5, and 6mm nutdrivers. It’s annoying.

Precision (teensy tiny) German-but-made-in-Czechia ESD nutdrivers may be fairly niche tools, so it probably shouldn’t come as a shock to me that only a couple of Taobao sellers carried any Wera 1569 nutdrivers and those few who did stocked only the largest two sizes: 5mm and 5.5mm (the top two in my photo). That being said, they were a bargain at a little less than €8.5O apiece compared to the well-padded (€14-15 each) Amazon.de prices for 1569s so I ordered them and bought the rest of the series on ‘Zon Deutschland. And then I waited.

Three of them (the 3, 3.2, and 4.5mm Steckschlüssels absent from my photo) didn’t ship and, once I’d decided more than enough time had passed, I cancelled the unfulfilled remainder of that order. Amazon.de currently claims to be out of stock of the 3mm nutspinner and nearly out of the other two. Amazon.com is out of stock of all three. There’s currently no pressing need, but when the time comes and I wind up using pliers to hold or turn a very small nut or a tiny hex-head fastener, It will suck a bit for me. Idle thought: I wonder how much of the spotty stocking situation here is something Wera could remedy on their end (i.e. by sending more tools to Amazon warehouses) or whether it’s a matter of Amazon not wanting to stock some stuff or of Wera not manufacturing enough tools to keep Amazon and other distributors reliably supplied.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed the obvious inconsistencies between the visual styling of the drivers in the group photo: larger yellow printing on some versus thinner/smaller gray text on others. The appearance of the hex silhouette also differs and some of the gray-printed tools also sport a ® (the registered trademark symbol).

Wera seems to have changed the styling of their 1569 ESD Steckschlüssels and all of the other Wera Kraftform Micro screwdrivers (and maybe the rest of their products), for the worse.

One salient detail are the two-digit codes molded onto the tools’ handles:

These nutspinners’ handles all exhibit Wera’s distinctive overmolding pattern (for ESD-safe tools, it’s a yellow, softer/grippier polymer filling voids in a harder black plastic base). The diameter of the handle varies along its length, but the cross-section is circular throughout, except for an anti-roll feature at the bottom of each handle, just above the metal shank. There, the plastic flares outwards into a hexagonal ring. Of the six flattened faces there, the one on the same side of the handle as the printed markings bears a two-digit code which I’m pretty confident corresponds to the tool’s year of manufacture. All of the pictured 1569s are embossed with one of these three two-digit combos: 23, 22, or 20. Some of my other Kraftform Micro screwdrivers are older (showing, for example, 18 as in 2018) and some are newer (sporting, for example, 24 as in 2024). All of my ESD Kraftform Micro screwdrivers showing 20 or a lower number exhibit the yellow-printed style of markings while tho 22 or 23 tools have all got the gray printing. I haven’t seen any 21-marked screwdrivers so far, and thus I can’t say whether the change was made in 2022 or in 2021.

Incidentally, AFAIK, the anti-roll feature and the presence of a two-digit manufacturing year code in that region is a common feature of all Wera screwdrivers.

Wiha T4 and T5 Torx screwdrivers

These two screwdrivers, which I think are NOS, still look grungy along their shanks near their tips and close to their translucent red acetate handles. They were originally phosphate-coated from tip to handle, but the ethanol-wetted Kimwipe that I ran over the shafts came up rust red. This is why I dislike phosphate coating on metal parts of tools. The phosphating seems to do more to conceal superficial rust than it does to actually prevent corrosion.

I used a fine-abrasive 3M handpad to remove most of the phosphate coating and the powdery spot rust, but left the tips alone and didn’t go hard near the handles out of an aversion to scratching up the plastic. At some point, I will try to address the latter, probably with a strip of fine-grit sandpaper but I’m wary of trying to clean up the tips and removing enough metal that I make them less useful as Torx screwdrivers.

Knurled shanks (Vessel Power Grip) vs. spinny handle end caps (Wera Kraftform Micro)

First, to eliminate any confusion as to what I mean when I refer to spinny handle end caps, here’s an animated GIF of one of the Wera nutspinners being turned back and forth while the end cap is held stationary:

One way to use little spinny-end-cap screwdrivers is to apply downward pressure on the fastener through the tool, by resting the pad of muscle at the base of your index finger on the concave face of the end cap, and then turning the screwdriver using the tips of your thumb, index finger, and middle finger. Or, instead, you could go two-fisted, with the tip of a finger of one hand pushing against the end cap and fingers on the other hand turning the handle.

These Vessel Power Grip screwdrivers have elongated teardrop-shaped, smooth-faced flutes molded into their handles, near the handles’ butt-ends, that seem intended for thumb + index finger + middle finger gripping (fingertips resting in the shallow depressions) and turning, as one would turn a larger screwdriver. The knurling-facilitated alternative way of using them be to twirl one of these screwdrivers by pinch-rolling the knurled section of its shank between your thumb and forefinger, in the same manner that many people use hex keys.

Knurling part of a screwdriver shank, as on the Power Grips, may be a common feature, but before getting these Vessel tools I’d only ever seen it on a set of o-ring picks. It’s interesting and the knurling is

Like a lot of other hand tool manufacturers, Vessel does sell precision screwdrivers and nut drivers with spinny end caps (see Vessel’s Vessel’s Precision Screwdrivers category page) so the company has its spinny end cap precision screwdriver bases covered and the argument could be made that I’ve compared apples to oranges. OTOH, the Vessel T5 and T6 and the H1.5, H2, and H2.5 screwdrivers (but not the H3 tool) are all roughly similar in size (in terms of length and girth) to Wera’s Kraftform Micro screwdrivers and there’s overlap between them — e.g. Wera makes Kraftform Micro T4 and T5 screwdrivers and ball-end hex precision screwdrivers (2052/6 Hexagon screwdriver set ) in the same drive sizes as the Vessel ones I’ve shown here.

Griping about tool markings

All of these drivers have plastic handles with printed-on markings that are all too easy to inadvertently rub or scrape off in the course of normal usage. The problem isn’t that more durable markings are somehow impossible. Wera molds date codes into the plastic of their screwdriver handles and the PB Swiss tools I’ve shown here have the phrase SWISS MADE debossed into the red grippy overmolding on the rear face of each of their handles, right beneath an unsightly barcode that consumes nearly all of the remaining usable real estate:

PB Swiss does laser the sizes of their hex drivers onto their shanks and Vessel does a bit better and actually engraves their brand name and the tool sizes into the shanks of their Power Grip screwdrivers. Unfortunately, you’d need a magnifying glass to read those markings.

A separate but related issue is the location of the markings. Tool drawers and tool trays and roll-up tool bags are fine, but at least when it comes to tools like screwdrivers, you really can keep more of them close at hand or fit more of them into a smaller storage space without losing much grab-ability if you go the stand-up (i.e. pens-in-a-cup orientation) route. Even if you’re content to store them flat, you’ve got to keep them turned in just the right way or else you won’t be able to see the markings:

I’ve used new-ish Wera Kraftform Micro (sometimes abbreviated WKfM from here onwards) screwdrivers of various drive types in the side-by-side pictures above to demonstrate this problem, but it’s not unique to Wera. The other screwdrivers in today’s heap have the same issue vis-à-vis markings printed only on one side.

To their credit, Wera and at least some of the other companies use color cues on the handle to help you at least be able to distinguish between tools for different drive types. Vessel Power Grip Torx drivers have yellow handles and their ball-end hex driver handles are purple. PB Swiss uses different shades of blue hard plastic for their Torx and Torx-Plus cross-handle drivers and purple for their hex cross-handles. The colored ring feature on WKfM screwdrivers is a very recent design improvement (missing from all my 2018-and-earlier WKfMs) but, unfortunately, it manages to be much less useful than other types of handle color differences. Why this is true is quite obvious: a thin ring at the base of a plain black spinny end cap that flares outwards at the end is completely occluded for anyone looking at one of these tools when they’re vertical in a cup or resting in a storage rack that exposes only the end caps:

A picture being worth a thousand words, I’ve included (on the right side of the image above) a quickly mocked-up version of the same five WKfM screwdrivers’ end caps with a more useful version of the color ring and screw drive type icons (embossed or debossed onto/into the plastic would be best). I didn’t add the fastener drive size information or the tools’ model numbers, but that could be done and would be a huge further improvement. The color rings’ near-uselessness is a Wera-specific problem but the rest is applicable to all of the other drivers I’ve shown in this post.

We’re not asking for the Moon here. Some tool manufacturers, including Wera, do provide more durable markings for other tools and mark the handle butts. For example, an older (date code 17, so likely made in 2017) Kraftform Plus 3350 stainless steel Phillips-head screwdriver that I just now picked up from a nearby benchtop has, molded into the plastic of the butt end of its handle (and painted in silver for increased visibity), the following information: PH1, a circled-cross Phillips-head-drive icon, and the word Stainless:

Wera has changed to a new style of tool markings and the handle butt marks have been hardest hit. Thumbs up to the larger numerals. Thumbs down to the removal of drive type iconography and drive type hints (i.e. the PH on the older driver shown above. Here are two newer stainless steel VDE screwdrivers (with date codes of 22 and 23:

Not all Kraftform screwdrivers have marks on the ends of their handles. The Kraftform Classic series, discontinued now but formerly Wera’s least expensive screwdriver line, had plain, monochromatic hard plastic handles, no overmolding, a visible mold seam bisecting each of their handles longways, and plain butt ends. Kraftform Chiseldrivers, still in production, have exposed hemispherical metal strike plates on their handle butts and there’s nothing etched or stamped into those strike plates. But the other Kraftform screwdrivers have had ’em and continue to have versions of ’em.

My screwdriver rant has run a bit longer than anticipated. Thanks for reading this far!

I’ve said my piece, so it’s back to work for me.