Gun Maintenance On The Go With Wheeler Engineering

How do you face gun trouble on the go? The Wheeler Engineering Micro Precision Multi-Driver Tool Pen is one of the answers.

How Wheeler Engineering Equips You For Small Jobs:

• Kit comes with 17 tips, including Phillips, slot, Allen and Torix.
• Driver’s handle is hollow and holds 5, the 12 others are held in a separate tray.
• The handle also doubles as a wrench.
• Comes with a handy sping clip to attach to a pocket or in a pack.

“My old man is a television repairman; he’s got the ultimate set of tools. I can fix it.”

That was the assurance Spicoli gave in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

He was wrong, of course, because it takes more than just tools to fix things. However, if you don’t have the tools, you’re out of luck—even if you have the skills.

And portable tools are more likely to be there than non-portable ones.

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Long Name, Small Package, Lots of Options

Enter the Wheeler Engineering Micro Precision Multi-Driver Tool Pen, whose name is bigger than the package. This kit comprises a pen-shaped screwdriver handle that’s hollow and a set of 17 tips. Twelve of those are in a separate press-fit tray.

The screwdriver bits are your basics: a Phillips head (curse the man and the widespread adoption of his design!), slot, Allen and Torx tips. The handle/wrench holds five of them; the others will stay in the tray.

These aren’t large tips. You’re not going to be able to snug the action screws to their proper torque limits on a precision rifle. However, what you can do is check the tightness of some scope-mount and ring screws. You can adjust the point of impact of a red-dot sight and tighten smaller screws on various optics. You can adjust the smaller screws on iron sights. You can make sure your various electronics attachments are still tight—and even, if the screw slots are close enough in size, make sure the grip panels on your pistol are tight (you polymer-framed pistoleros: Please ignore that last part).

All of this is in the pen and the 12-pack press-fit holder.

The beauty of it is that it will fit into a gear bag, web gear pouch, a cleaning kit or other range essentials and not be noticed until it’s needed.

I don’t go to the range without camera gear (a side effect of being a gun writer), and so the best place for me to stash this tool is in my photo gear case—and also because there are a lot of photographic items that are held on with small screws; the Wheeler micro-set fits those as well.

The last use of the Wheeler micro-set is one some might view as abuse, but I have found that some battery compartment covers are too tight to remove with my bare hands. The smaller slot-head screw tips are good for “convincing” the recalcitrant covers to budge.

Expand Your Gear IQ:

Some Suggestions

If you wish, you can simply dump the five bits out of the handle and replace them with the five most commonly used ones for a given application. Then, put the pen with the bits in the gear for that application and stash the unused ones in the general toolkit box.

You can do this for several applications, with several kits stripped and rebuilt, because the list price for this set is all of $27.

It’s not uncommon to spend that much just establishing a basic zero for a rifle, so having invested three or four lattés-worth of cash for a tool you can keep on hand at all times is just prudent.

Now, a pen-like handle is not going to provide you with a whole lot of torque. But how much torque do you really want to be generating with bits this small? Do you really think a 1/8-inch Allen-head screw is going to stand up to more torque than you can generate with a pen handle?

Spicoli was wrong … but that doesn’t negate the usefulness of tools.

Micro Precision Multi-Driver Tool Pen $27.99 at Wheeler Engineering

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the February 2020 issue of Gun Digest the Magazine.

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