How to Get an Inline Speed Skate Axle Out When the Usual 4mm Hex (Allen) Wrench Will Not Work

[This is not rocket science, as they say, but a simple solution that made a frustrating delay eventually go away. The lever is your friend, except, of course, when it's not...like when it allows you to break things. In this story, however, it's all good...about the only good found in this particular weekend.] After 95 miles on the railtrails in Georgia and Alabama, we looked forward to being back in North Carolina for the Tour to Tanglewood training ride at Spinz in Archdale. But it was maintenance time first, so after the drive up from the land of Peachtree streets, we had an evening of frustration while upgrading our brake pads and wheels. We stayed up so late working on our gear that we gave up easily the next morning when the rain came through and decided not to skate after all. In addition to my brake hardware and pad upgrades, eebee had stuck axles in the second position of both her frames. The 100mm wheels had come out easily, but the 84mm wheel axles would not budge. [I'm wondering if this has to do with the fact that we've both had trouble with hub cracks in the 100mm wheels, and this has perhaps put undue stress on the 84mm ones?] Usually they're stuck until I get real about breaking them loose, then I can hear that snap and smell the cap gun fragrance of the bonded metal surfaces letting go, and it's all good. This weekend, nothing we tried could break them loose, and we sort of broke/cracked/stressed at least one 4mm Allen hex wrench handle trying. We did try a bit of spraying but didn't get into soaking the axles overnight. That might've worked. What we did the next day was go to Harbor Freight to look for cheap tools we could afford and would likely need only a few times in life...the ones that say CHINA on them. Eebee wanted a right angled 4" x 4" or so 4mm wrench of the plain old style that sometimes came in the box with skates in the previous century. We found lots of not so adequate seeming solutions. Most hex wrenches had one end much shorter than the other. We felt sure we wouldn't get a good grip on these with the vise grip damaging devices. Some were anodized looking and sparkly but didn't seem like they'd apply any more force than what we already had. The problems we had with our existing wrenches were either they were too long and actually started twisting like a candy cane when we tried to loosen the axles, or the handle was too small (the T part), or it was painful to grip the wrench and try to get enough force to loosen the axle. In some cases, we were simply afraid, very afraid, of the handle breaking and some skin damage or worse being the outcome. I had looked around my house for the ton of screwdriver bits and other junk, most of which has been robbed of anything with 4mm on the side of it. We found lots of Torx star bits and thought of TomB and ninjaskater and their Powerslide axles. So I was out of 4mm stuff other than the long-stem T-handle wrenches that were letting us down. After looking at all the options, we picked up the Pittsburgh Metric 6-Pc 3/8" Drive Hex Bit Set (Item 35183, 6 point, sizes 4mm, 5mm, 6mm, 7mm, 8mm, 10mm) for about $10 and looked around at a bunch of other stuff, including some very long hex bit sets that we felt might twist like the long Allen wrenches we'd already tried, but did have the advantage of seating further into the hex bolt head. We voted for the shorter items listed above. Back at the skate hovel, I found an old Skil Wrench (no longer a power wrench, but still a 3/8" socket wrench of the manual sort) that I've kept because it has a long fat handle and is pretty hefty too, so it feels powerful even if it's not. Without any huge effort, I was able to get a nice grip on the socket wrench handle and almost gently loosen both of the stuck axles. This was about the only thing that worked all weekend, so I thought I'd share this small success. It's possible the B'Laster PB Penetrating Catalyst we sprayed on the night before helped loosen things, but I think we did that so poorly it likely didn't help. The important factors were likely a more direct application of the power without twisting, a more comfortable grip, and of course the most likely greatest factor, the long, solid handle of the socket wrench. Any long socket wrench would have done the trick, but it was fun to use a powerless power socket for a useful project. [The socket wrench in the photo is a trusty Sears Craftsman 43784 3/8" unit with an 6.5" handle. It's good for using first to limit the torque you can put on an axle or other bolt or nut. The Skil Wrench has a handle just under 12" long, and it's boxy and flat at the business end, but round and knurled at the handle.] We didn't find the Loc-tite blue I thought I had, and neither did we find anti-seize compound I imagined I had purchased along the way, but we did see the Teflon plumbing thread tape lying about and decided to wrap some onto the aluminum threads to see if this would help in keeping the axle from seizing to the frame. Time will tell but it felt buttery smooth winding in. Hope this helps! What do you guys use, by the way, if anything, for keeping these axles from seizing and for getting them loose.

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