What's the Difference Between Nut Drivers and Nut Setters

A lot of tools have funny names. A lot of tools are called by multiple names and some tools have names that are kinda similar to the names of other tools. There are untold variations of hammers, saws and drivers. The crowbar is called several other names as are various pliers and cutters. Then there’s tools like nut drivers and nut setters. How exactly do you tell one apart from another? A little bit of study and a lot of experience will get you a long way, and to help you with the study part, today we’ll take a look at nut drivers and nut setters. What exactly is the difference?

At first glance, they both seem to do more or less the same thing. A first look might also show you that they are used in slightly different ways. One has a handle the other doesn’t. What are you supposed to do with that? Use your fingers? Turns out there’s an easy way to remember this, and you may have some leeway for the uses to overlap depending on how much torque you need.

Nut drivers, the ones with the handles, are used for low torque applications. Since they’re powered by you and your hands, you won’t get a lot of torque and you’ll have really precise control over it. That’s basically a nut driver in a…nutshell… it’s a hand tool and you have really exact control over it. Nut drivers are probably used most often in appliance repair, HVAC, hose clamps, car dash fasteners, small gas engines (landscaping equipment), and bicycles among other things. This would also be good for situations where you don’t need a fastener super tight.  

On the other hand, nut setters have no handle, you won’t be using it with your hands. Not unless you’re an old time strongman anyways. Nut setters are basically the same as drivers except for the fact that they’re used with an impact driver instead of as a hand tool. This of course means that this is for a higher torque applications and you can sometimes find nut setters with a hollow shaft which makes it easy to fasten a nut onto a long screw. Some uses for nut setters include self-tapping screws, lag bolts, car repairs, basically any job where you need to drive something with a hex head and you need some reach and high torque. Since they’re used with impact drivers you’re not going to want to use it on something delicate. Be careful.

Nut drivers and nut setters have some key differences. If you’re doing any sort of repair work, chances are you’ll probably use one or both in your work. We carry both and the brands we carry are used by industry professionals so take your pick from high quality brands like Klein, Ideal Wiha and Wera.

Are you using nut drivers and nut setters? Let us know what you use them for!