The missing 16mm socket

[oldpine]

Fellow Garage Gazette Guys (and Gals if present),
I recently sold a craftsman set of metric sockets from the 1980s and the buyer asked me a question that I am not sure of the answer.  He asked "why did the set not come with a 16 mm socket?".  It was a set I had owned since new and hadn't used much so I had never missed the 16mm.  Could someone here school me on this?

Tom

[oldnslo]

Yep, happy to add my 2c (and welcome to the board).

Back in the day......(varies by mfgr and decade) metric sets for the general retail population were missing a few sizes. Take for example 16mm (as there were others). Those sizes were so rarely used that retailers didnt add them to the set to keep costs down.

Now, thats not to say that 16mm was not out there, but they tended to not be on automotive or industrial machines. Bicycles? Sure! But thats a fringe market to retailers like Sears, MW, Pennys (gawd, remember them days?) etc.

Thus a small "set" would start at 10mm, skip 11, skip 16, skip 18 and end in 19mm.Skips vary by mfgr.

I have many a set in the OE boxes/tins that have those skips. I even have an imported (in the past 10 years) that didnt have a 15mm impact socket in the 3/8" drive set. Yes....go figure. I hate having to hunt for a Taiwan socket to round out the set (and have it NOT fit in the box).

Now..in TODAYS world, it's almost never seen to skip a socket. Tho I do have a NOS Kobalt set that didnt come with 16mm.

Hope that offers some insight.

[goodfellow]

16mm wasn't a common fastener size back then. Most sets from the 60s,70s. and 80s didn't include 16mm and 18mm -- went straight from 15 to 17 to 19mm.

The import cars we were working on back then were mostly Euro and Japanese. Most common Euro sizes were 10, 13, 14, 15  while Japanese cars were 10, 11, 12, 14 --

17 and 19mm were included because both Euro and Japanese cars used the sizes for heavy duty frame and chassis purposes. 

[bonneyman]

I'm missing the 16mm combo wrench in my Thorsen set. Where's the love for the sixteens? 

[oldnslo]

You've not looked hard enough.

I have them squirreled away in the satin finish and v-groove versioned sets.

 

[fatfillup]

Where's the love for the sixteens? 

Now that could get an old fellow in trouble


Yes it was quite common to have skips in sets.  Still see it today

[oldpine]

Thanks everyone,
That makes sense.  I guess it is kind of like the various 32nd sizes which were included in the earlier sets and aren't included now.  Including rarely used sizes just needlessly increased the cost of the sets.
Thanks for the welcome, I expect I will continue to pretty much lurk here (as I did before the crash on the old board   Thanks again
Tom

[goodfellow]

Thanks everyone,
That makes sense.  I guess it is kind of like the various 32nd sizes which were included in the earlier sets and aren't included now.  Including rarely used sizes just needlessly increased the cost of the sets.
Thanks for the welcome, I expect I will continue to pretty much lurk here (as I did before the crash on the old board   Thanks again
Tom

Welcome!!

32nd sizes were actually very popular in the late 19th and early 20th century manufacturing era. At that time there were many thread standards around the world and the US manufactured to meet that demand. You could use 32nd tools on US and foreign standards -- (ie metric and Whitworth) without much trouble. The tolerances were close enough to cover many standards at the time.

[J.A.F.E.]

The reason for it is a lot of it involved standards organizations - at least that is my theory. In the early 1900's through maybe the early 80's DIN standards (German) ruled and DIN didn't use much 16 or 18 (and other sizes really the application is based on the diameter of the threads not across the flats but the size across the flats are determined by the diameter of the threads). JIS (Japan) used 16 and 18 more than 17 and 19 and modern ISO (more or less international) is a mix but is more like the JIS with the fastener sizes.

So modern sets may skip some sizes that used to be common.

I have a set of Snap-on sockets from 5 to 21 with every size except 5.5 and over the years they've all been used so even the oddballs do turn up every now and again.

oldpine I encourage you to hang out but please don't be shy about posting.

[Andrewhr]

Don't forget 16mm is the same size as 5/8 so interchangeable

Sent from my SM-T719 using Tapatalk

[oldnslo]

oldpine, your buyer probably was not looking for all this quality information supplied at no cost, but hopefully by passing it on, they will be the wiser, and you will feel good about not shorting a socket in the set (along with offering them the 5/8" alternative).

 

[Rural53]

My metric experience is mainly with Japanese vehicles. 17mm and 19mm are the head sizes for M10 and M12 bolts. When I started using engineering bolts (ANSI/ISO) for bull bars, winch setups etc is when I found I needed 16mm and 18mm sockets and spanners.

[oldpine]

Thanks again everyone!  Now I know more than I ever thought I would...
Tom

[goodfellow]

Thanks again everyone!  Now I know more than I ever thought I would...
Tom

That's often the problem around here -- information overload! You get it, even if you don't want it -- old farts mostly work like that

[oldpine]

Really, I love it here, so much good info.

              Tom