A Simple Trick to Get Fasteners Tight on Your Rigger

Many fasteners on rowing shells only need to be gently tightened. For example hard-torque is not required to tighten the nuts that hold a rigger to a hull, or to keep a footstretcher from moving. Snug yes, hard no!

Yet there are a few rigger bolt/nut combinations that need to be very securley tightened due to the nature of the forces on them. If they aren’t hard tightened—they will come lose. One example is the fastener that secures the pin to a rigger, or a bracket that locks an insert inside of a rigger tube.

There is a simple trick to get these fasteners tight. It is called a “two-hand squeeze.”

The image below shows how most folks would tighten a bracket. Using two wrenches they would push their two hands together—trying to torque down the fastener. This method works fine if you have the hand strength of the Incredible Hulk. But most of us mere-mortal rower types do not, and that is where the “two-hand squeeze” comes in.

By interlocking the fingers of the both hands, as shown in the next image, and then squeezing the hands together (instead of pushing them together) you can generate significantly more torque and get that fastener tight. Besides generating more torque this method also can save some valuable knuckle skin if a wrench were to slip off of the fastener.

You can generate even more torque by sliding the hands to the ends of the wrenches. This system also works well, very well, when loosening fasteners.

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