Finally a good Press-Stud Tool

This one’s as much a note for me so I know what I did to make this finally work.

I’ve been looking for a decent way of fitting press-studs for things like boot covers. I’d tried the standard manual tap-and-hope tools that are supplied with the car and with SoftBitsForSevens kits. But that always seemed a less than ideal solution – smashing a hammer near the paintwork on the car, and not having something solid to hit against.

I also tried a home-brew g-clamp solution that worked reasonably well, but in the end led to a number of press-studs coming off after a year or two.

So when I found a new tool on Amazon, as I was looking for some spare press-studs, I thought I had to give it a go.

And it works.

The trick seems to be to put 4 “nicks” in the tube of the press-stud top – see picture. Then when the tool is used it splits the tube along those nick-lines and you get a good activation of the tube.

Without the “nicks” the press-stud top tube would deform and not crush uniformly. The “nicks” allowed the tube to deform the way I wanted it too and open out evenly.

I also found that the mole-grip tool needs to be set so the pin just touches the cap recepticle. This makes the mole-grip tough to compress but not so bad that a two-handed squeeze can’t do the job.

Also, here’s the link to the Hapden tool on Amazon…

Press Stud Tool

Here’s some pictures of what I did for future me 😀