Rotary club!

Ralph’s back with Tool of the Month once more, and this time it’s small rotary multi-tools

I remember friends waxing lyrical about the Dremel many years ago, but I didn’treally ‘get it’ for a long time. I ended up buying a rotary multi-tool for one specific job – removing the security screws from the back door of my printing workshop 20 years ago. Long story, but the Police had battered my back door down, realizing they’d got the wrong place! The end result was that I needed to cut a slot in hardened counter-sunk, non-tamper woodscrews. The only tool I could see that would do the job was a very small abrasive cutting disc, so I bought a Dremel with some baby abrasive cutting discs that did the job admirably. After that, I discovered that it was the most astonishingly useful tool I never knew I wanted.

From the moniker, I had always assumed it was Germanic in origin but was actually developed by an Austrian immigrant based in the USA, who founded the Dremel Company in 1932. Originally known as the Moto-Tool, it has always been a premium product with a name for quality. There are myriad attachments and accessories available for this most flexible tool.