So the universal socket my dad gave me years ago has been rattling around the bottom of my toolbox doing absolutely nothing. I always figured it was one of those as-seen-on-TV kind of things. Today it earned its keep. I was pulling down the old gate hardware off my back fence, and the hinge bolts are those old square head ones. Every regular socket just spun on the rounded, crusty corners and a wrench kept slipping off. Popped the pin socket on there, and those little spring pins actually grabbed the square head fine, rust and all. Both bolts came out without me having to cut anything. Not saying it beats a proper socket for normal work, but for chewed up odd shapes it did the job when nothing else whould. Might actually keep it in the top drawer now instead of the junk pile.
Finally used the gator grip for real work
Oct 16, 2026
Last reply: 1 day ago
3 Replies
Mine sat in the same kind of limbo for years. I bought a universal socket off a clearance rack at a farm store about a decade ago, used it once, and figured I got hustled. Then last fall the blade bolts on my old lawn tractor had rusted and rounded off to the point where a 6-point socket just spun on them. Tried vice grips, tried hammering a smaller socket on, nothing held. The pin socket bit down on that rounded dome and backed both bolts out like it was nothing. Replaced the bolts with fresh ones and moved on.
I've also used it on some old square-drive screws holding a bracket in my shed where the heads were half stripped. It's not something I reach for weekly, but when a fastener is chewed up enough that nothing else grabs, it's the last thing to try before the extractor set or the cutoff wheel. One habit I picked up: run it slow with a ratchet instead of a driver, especially on crusty hardware. The pins seem to seat better and you can feel whether it's actually biting or just spinning. Mine lives in the drawer with the ratchets now instead of the loose parts bin, which I figure is the whole point.
Funny timing seeing this thread because I pulled mine out last weekend for the first time in probly three years. I was swapping out an old ceiling fan mount bracket in the bedroom and one of the nuts was some odd metric size that fell between my sockets. The pin socket grabbed it fine at hand-tight torque. My honest take though is the opposite side of the coin from you guys, mine has never held up under any real leverage. I tried it once on a seized trailer hitch bolt and the pins just pushed back into the housing as soon as I leaned on the ratchet. So now I treat it like a low-torque tool only, good for stubborn odd sizes on stuff that was never installed super tight in the first place. Mine lives in the truck door pocket rather than the main kit, wich honestly might be why it survives.
Before these pin sockets were a thing, the trick was hammering a big torx bit or an old chisel into the rounded head and praying. I did that for forty years and it worked maybe half the time. Still, I keep mine in the truck box now for water meter covers and valve packing nuts, stuff the county never used a standard size on. One tip from hard knocks, hit the fastener with penetrant the night before and let it soak. Saves you from snapping the head clean off when the pins finally bite.
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