Rattle guns

I must say that any sockets over 22mm that I buy as a "additions" are always
impact, coz if I'm not going to use a rattler, a ****-off big breaker bar
will be used and I don't like it much when they overpower sockets.

 

They will be here, too, now that I've got a rattler...

 

You can still use normal sockets with a rattler IME.

If the sockets are of decent quality, only the really high end (and high
impact/torque) rattlers will split them, and by "split" I mean just that.
One side will simply open up. I've never seen a socket actually shatter, coz
that would need something really quite brittle and no sockets I've ever
used, seen or heard of are brittle. Most rattlers under 100 quid apply
around 250lb/ft tightening and 300-350lb/ft tightening and you can piss all
over that with a regular sized breaker bar.

 

Of course you can and I frequently do, when I CBA to get the impact set
out from the bottom of the drawer. I'll also use a normal socket when
an impact socket just won't fit in. Dunno about old 12-point deep
Draper sockets, mind - that might be chancing it.

I've had one socket break into bits with some enthusiasm, but that was
a mid '80s vintage Draper POS and I've had one come into two pieces -
the socketty bit still wrapped around the nut, the 1/2" bit still
attached to the rattler - but again, that was an elderly Kamasa (but
not old enough to be of the 'good era' Kamasa stuff).

I've broken/split/twisted a lot of sockets with breaker bars and
scaffold poles though - but not nearly as many as fasteners that have
sheared/twisted/spun/vanished off the face of the earth when subjected
to extreme leverage or impact (or both at the same time).

I have still to rip apart a Snap-On socket, though. I bought my impact
sockets in between rattlers, because I was dealing with a lot of shitty
old cars at the time with massively stuck bolts and I wanted something
that would take a lot of leverage without turning inside-out or
rounding the fragile bolt head. They've never let me down, although I
lost the use of the 13mm one for a while when a nut became wedged in it
and refused point-blank to come out without extreme persuasion.

 

In fairness, my nasty experience involved a Snap-On rattler, 120 psi and
a 1960s vintage 19mm Elora cheap socket on a stuck wheelbolt on a
Mercedes 307 van. The wheelbolts are specified to be torqued to 175 lb/ft
at fitting and it was well rusted in so something had to give.

It would take some fancy high speed photography to analyse what actually
happened, but the result was spectacular and bloody painfull.
Agreed, the cheap Aldi guns are unlikely to acheive enough power to
duplicate the experience at the recommended 90psi and modern sockets
unless you are unlucky enough to get a brittle one but why take the
chance, I was lucky not to lose an eye.