Silca HX-One Home and Travel Tool Kit

Silca's HX-One Home and Travel Essential Kit is a genuinely lovely thing, so much so that its travel opportunities will probably be limited; I wouldn't trust it to the vagaries of baggage handling. It's expensive, but functional and beautiful. You pays your money, and so on.

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What do you get? The most useful hex key sizes (2mm, 2.5mm, 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, 6mm, 8mm, 10mm) as well as 10 driver bits (Torx T8, T10, T15, T20, T25 and T30 plus two sizes each of flat and Phillips screwdrivers) presented to you in a fine wooden box made from sustainable beech wood and featuring a magnetic clasp to keep it shut. You also get a hex adapter to use the 6mm key as the handle for the driver bits; it's magnetic at both ends to hold everything together.

The hex keys are made from S2 tool steel, and then coated with thin-dense chrome, 'a process generally reserved for mold tool components or optical grade surfaces inside molding tools' according to Silca. 'This coating provides the hardest, most dimensionally stable finish possible on each hex key,' it claims. And the hex keys are an excellent snug fit in the relevant bolt holes and they're showing minimal signs of wear after being the day-to-day office hex key set for the past four months. The only part of the keys that is starting to suffer a bit is the red, grippy polymer coating. That's been knocked off a few of the edges on the most-used keys. Functionally it's not an issue at all, but they don't look quite as pristine in their snazzy box.

The bigger keys are long enough to impart plenty of torque, although once you're tightening cranks together or doing anything else that requires a bit of elbow grease you do notice they're not as comfy to use as a big T-handle at that end of the range. That's the only real point at which they're not the go-to option round here. They sit on the side and get used all the time, and everyone eyes them jealously because they're also very pretty.

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The bits work well too. If you're really tight for clearance on something like a Torx bolt on a disc calliper then there's the odd occasion where you find the magnetic adapter inhibiting you a touch, but that's been a very rare occurrence. The bits, too, are extremely well made with tight tolerances.

The 'travel' part of the name is up for debate. I don't think I'd take these as a travel set because they're too nice for that. They deserve to be very much on show in your home workshop. It's the kind of set that you hope someone will buy you for a significant birthday, or a work leaving present, or something; you might baulk at the £120 asking price if it's your own pocket you're emptying. If you like lovely things and you have a bit of disposable income, you won't be disappointed by the quality or the performance.

Verdict

A high quality tool set with all the bits you'll need for a modern bike. Pricey, but lovely