Tools, Stand, & Safety Culture

In every shop class, there's a moment when the room goes quiet.

One kid is holding a tool he can't name. Another kid is staring at the bottom bracket like it owes him money. And someone in the room is about to teach them what their hands are doing. That person is wearing an apron. The pockets are full of allen keys.

This is RideWitUS. I'm Brand Anthony McDonald. Season One starts here, on a single-speed cruiser. It's the simplest bike at the donation bay. It's where every apprentice at FreeWheelin' starts. Episode One. Tools, the stand, and the safety culture that makes the rest of the work possible.

The apron itself

Let's start with what you're wearing.

The apron is the credential. Not the certificate they hang on the wall when you finish a course. Not the patch sewn onto the chest, though FreeWheelin' uses both of those too. The credential is the apron itself. The pockets. The way the 15mm wrench lives in the right hip pocket. The way your hand knows where to find it without your eyes leaving the bike.

That's the credential. You earn it by showing you can use it.

The pockets are not random. Each one has a job.

The chest pocket holds small allen keys. The four, five, and six millimeter sizes. They're light. They're flat. They don't pull the apron sideways.

The right hip pocket holds the 15mm wrench and a flathead screwdriver. The 15mm wrench is for pedals and for axle nuts. Pedals come off turning the wrench towards to back. You'll reach for that wrench thirty times in a Saturday shift.

The left hip pocket holds a pen and a sharpie. The apprentice who can't write down what's wrong with the bike is the apprentice who fixes the wrong thing.

The big front pocket holds rags. At least two. Different colors for different jobs. Red rag for chain grease. White rag for bearing surfaces and degreaser. Black rag for whatever's worst.

This isn't fussiness. There's a reason for every pocket.

A tool you can't find is a tool you'll drop. A tool dropped on a derailleur can cost money to replace. A tool dropped on your foot can cost you the rest of your shift.

Somebody figured the pocket layout out a long time ago. They dropped a wrench. They dropped another one. They figured out the heavy tools belong in the hip pocket and the light ones in the chest. They figured out the pen goes nowhere near the rags. A pen leaks through a rag. A leaked rag ruins the next chain you wipe. So pen and rag stay apart.

You get all of that figured-out work for free when you put on the apron. You don't have to learn it from your own mistakes.

FreeWheelin' has four apron tiers.

Green Apron is the first. You can change a flat tire. You can adjust a brake. You can put a bike on a stand without dropping it.

Red Apron is the next one. You can do everything a Green Apron can do, on bikes you've never seen before. You can also teach a Green Apron candidate the things you just learned.

Purple Apron means you can teach. You're at every Saturday open shop. You're co-teaching with the senior staff.

Black Apron is the top tier. You're the one the cohort calls when nobody else knows the answer. Every shop has two or three Black Aprons. Most have fewer.

This whole season is Green and Red work. Season Two starts the Black Apron material. Season Four covers Purple. The apron tiers are a ladder, not a menu. You climb them in order.

Today is Green. The first rung.

The repair stand

A bike on a stand is a bike that can be diagnosed.

A bike on the floor is a bike you're guessing about.

Everything in this season starts with the bike off the floor. Finding a flat. Adjusting a brake. Tensioning a chain. Truing a wheel. All of it needs the bike at working height first. The stand is the start.

Park Tool makes most of the stands you'll see. There are three you should know.

The PCS-9.3 is the home-shop default. It folds up small. It holds most bikes. It costs less than the others. If you're setting up your garage, this is the one to buy.

The PCS-10.3 is one step up. It's heavier. The clamp tilts more directions, which helps with bikes that have unusual frames. Many apprentices end up wanting one within a year.

The PRS-25 is the shop-grade stand. It's anchored to the floor or has a heavy wheeled base. It holds a heavy bike for a full service without flexing. This is what you'll see at FreeWheelin'. This is what you'll see at any community shop that takes its work seriously.

You don't need the PRS-25 to start. You need a stand. Any of these works. The brand matters less than having one.

How you clamp the bike matters more than which stand you bought.

Clamp the seatpost. Not the top tube.

Steel cruiser frames can take a top-tube clamp. Aluminum frames sometimes can. Carbon frames cannot. A carbon top tube in a stand clamp is a frame about to crack. You'll feel the crack through your hands before you see it.

Always clamp the seatpost. About an inch below where it enters the seat tube. Tighten the clamp until the bike is held. Not until the seatpost is squeezed flat. There's a feel to it. The first time you do this, you'll tighten it too much. A senior apprentice will laugh and back it off two clicks. The next time you'll do it right.

Once the bike is in the clamp, set the height.

The handlebars should be at your sternum. That's the flat bone right in the middle of your chest. Not at your chin. Not at your belt buckle. Sternum. Right where your ribs meet in the front.

This is about your back. A bike too low means you stoop. An hour of stooping over a bike is a back that hurts when you're fifty. A bike too high means you reach up. The shoulder muscle you reach with is the shoulder muscle that gets sore in your forties.

Sternum height. Every bike. Every time.

One repair won't hurt your back. A thousand will. The way you set the stand for your first repair is the way you'll set it for your thousandth, because it becomes muscle memory. Get it right now.

Spin the wheel. Both wheels. The bike should rotate freely. If the rear wheel drags on the seatstays, the bike isn't sitting square in the clamp. Back the clamp off, square the bike in the jaw, snug it again.

Now you have a bike on a stand at the right height. You can begin.

The first ten tools

Ten tools.

This is the list every Green Apron at FreeWheelin' learns in the first month. These are the ten you'll reach for the most in those first weeks. The ten that teach you the most about how a bike works when you hold them in your hand.

I'll walk you through them one at a time. Each tool comes with a short story, because the stories are what make the tool stick.

Number one. The 15mm wrench.

This is the wrench for pedals. It's the wrench for axle nuts on every cruiser at the donation bay. You'll reach for it thirty times in a Saturday open shop.

A short story. An apprentice in his second week grabs an adjustable wrench instead of the 15mm. He tightens it on a pedal. The pedal won't budge. He cranks harder. The adjustable wrench rounds off the flats on the pedal. Now no wrench in the shop can grab that pedal. The bike's owner has to buy a new pedal and a new crank, because the only way to get the rounded pedal off is to drill the spindle out.

Forty-dollar mistake. Could have been avoided by walking one drawer over. Always the 15mm. Never the adjustable.

Number two. Allen keys. Four millimeter, five, and six.

These three sizes cover most of what you'll touch on a modern bike. The 4mm fits brake lever clamps and water-bottle bolts. The 5mm fits stem bolts, seatpost clamps, and brake calipers. The 6mm fits some bottle cages and some brake bolts.

Park Tool makes a folding hex set called the AWS-9. Three keys for two-fifty. Fits in your chest pocket. Many apprentices end up with one in the first week.

A note on the name. Allen key. Not aileen. The Allen Manufacturing Company patented the hex socket in 1910. The name stuck. You'll also hear hex key. Same tool.

Number three. The pedal wrench.

It looks like a 15mm wrench with the head bent at an angle. The angle matters because pedal flats are tight against the crank arm. A regular 15mm doesn't fit in there. The bent head reaches in.

The long handle matters more. Some pedals come off easy. Some, especially old cruiser pedals that have been on the bike for thirty years, come off only with a long handle. A long handle allows you to get more leverage and apply more force.

Pedals turn toward the back to remove. Always toward the back of the bikes.

Pedal threading. We'll cover the why in Season Two when we talk about bottom brackets. For now, pedals turn toward the back to remove.

Number four. Tire levers. Plastic. Three of them.

Park Tool's TL-4.2 is three for less than five dollars. They last for years. You don't need fancier ones.

Why three? A tire bead has to be unseated from the rim and walked off. That takes one lever to start, one lever to anchor in place, and a third lever to walk around the rim until the bead is fully off.

A note we'll repeat in Episode Two. Tire levers are for taking a tire off. Not for putting it back on. When you install a tire, you use your hands. Tire levers on installation pinch the inner tube. A pinched tube goes flat in minutes. Always hands on install.

Number five. Floor pump. With a real gauge.

Not a hand pump. Not a frame pump. A floor pump with a base you can stand on and a pressure gauge you can actually read.

Tire pressure is printed on the side of every tire. The gauge on the floor pump tells you when you've hit the target.

Park Tool, Lezyne, Topeak. All of them make floor pumps that last five years or more. Don't go cheap on the gauge.

Number six. The cable cutter. Park Tool CN-10.

This one matters more than most apprentices think.

A brake cable or a shift cable is a braided steel rope. Each strand is about a tenth of a millimeter thick. There are dozens of strands in one cable.

If you cut a cable with regular pliers, you don't actually cut it. You crush it. The strands separate at the cut. They fan out into a frayed mess that won't thread back through anything.

The CN-10 has hardened jaws built to shear the cable in one motion. Clean cut. No fray. Then the cable end goes into a small metal cap, and the cap gets crimped on with the same tool's crimp jaws.

A short story. An apprentice cuts a brake cable with regular pliers because the CN-10 is on someone else's bench. The cable frays. He tries to thread the frayed end through the brake housing. He can't. The fray jams. He has to replace both the cable and the housing.

A three-dollar cable becomes a fifteen-dollar mistake.

Always the cable cutter. Never the pliers. If you have to walk to the next bench to find one, you walk.

Number seven. Cone wrenches. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen millimeter.

Cone wrenches are thin. That's the point. They fit into the narrow space between the cone and the locknut on a cup-and-cone hub bearing. A regular wrench doesn't fit in there.

You use them in pairs. Two wrenches at the same time. One on the cone and one on the locknut. One holds while the other turns.

Park Tool's DCW-1 covers 13 and 14 millimeter. One wrench, both sizes, one on each end. The DCW-2 covers 15 and 16. Two of those wrenches together cover most cruiser hubs.

We'll service a hub with these in Episode Six.

Number eight. The chain wear indicator. Park Tool CC-3.2.

A chain stretches as it wears. Not because the steel actually stretches. Steel doesn't stretch in any meaningful way. The bushings inside each link wear thinner over time, which makes each link slightly longer than it was new.

Stretched chains chew up sprockets. Stretched chains skip on the cogs. Stretched chains break.

The CC-3.2 is a go-or-no-go gauge. You drop it into the chain. If the half-percent end drops in fully, the chain is starting to wear. Watch it. If the three-quarter-percent end drops in fully, the chain is past its safe life. Replace it now. Keep using it and you'll wear out the cogs and chainring too.

This is one of the most-used tools in any community shop. We'll cover the whole procedure in Episode Four.

Number nine. Screwdrivers. A number-two phillips and a flathead.

You'll use them on derailleur limit screws, brake-pad pivots, headlight clips, water-bottle cage screws, kickstand bolts, and sometimes cable end caps. Number-two phillips because most bike screws are number-two heads. Flathead because some old bikes still use flathead screws.

A nice phillips with a soft handle costs five dollars. Don't go fancier than that.

Number ten. Rags.

Lots of them.

I'm not joking. The single most-undervalued tool in a community bike shop is a clean rag. The mechanic with eight rags in their kangaroo pouch fixes more bikes than the mechanic with two.

Different colors for different jobs. Red for chain grease. White for bearing surfaces and degreaser. Black for whatever's worst.

Old t-shirts work great. So do shop towels from the auto parts store. Don't use paper towels. They shed fibers, and chain lubricant grabs the fibers and turns them into grit.

Eight rags per shift. Minimum. Trust me.

That's ten.

The 15mm wrench. The allen keys, four through six. The pedal wrench. Tire levers. The floor pump. The cable cutter. Cone wrenches. The chain wear indicator. Screwdrivers. Rags.

If you can name those ten by sight and reach for the right one without thinking, you're a Green Apron. That's the bar.

The second ten

There's a second list of ten.

These are the tools you grow into across the rest of Season One and into Season Two. You don't need them on Day One. You need to recognize them when an instructor says them.

Spoke wrench. Truing stand. Third-hand brake tool. Chain whip. Cone wrenches in additional sizes, like 17 and 18 millimeter. Torque wrench, but we'll defer that to Season Two. Bearing press, also Season Two. Grease gun. The rag of last resort. The headlamp.

Let me say a word about the last three.

A grease gun. For bottom brackets, headsets, and hub bearings. Anywhere grease needs to go in a controlled amount, in a specific spot, without getting smeared around. The grease gun has a small nozzle, a pump trigger, and a reservoir. You don't fill bearings by squeezing grease out of a tub with your fingers. You use the grease gun, in measured pumps. We'll use one in Episode Six.

The rag of last resort. Every shop has one. The rag that's seen everything. Soaked in grease. Stained black. Used for the worst jobs. The seized bottom bracket. The corroded chain that needs to be wiped before it can even be looked at. The rusty seatpost being persuaded out of a frame.

You don't keep this rag in your apron. It hangs on a hook by the bench. You don't share it. When it finally gives up, you don't throw it out. You hang a new rag on the hook and the cycle starts over.

This is shop culture. You'll learn it.

And a headlamp. Bike shops have lights. But bench corners have shadows. The bottom bracket shell. The inside of a brake caliper. The underside of a hub. Overhead lights don't reach those.

A small LED headlamp on an elastic band costs fifteen dollars at any hardware store. It puts the light where your eyes are. Your hands stay on the work. You don't have to set down a flashlight to use a wrench.

Most mechanics keep one in the apron's chest pocket next to the small allens. Black Apron mechanics have nicer ones. Any of them works.

That's the second ten. The first ten are the tools you reach for. The second ten are the tools you grow into.

Safety culture

Safety culture.

This is the part of Episode One I'd ask every apprentice, and every parent of a YEET apprentice, to read twice. It feels boring until the day it isn't. The day it isn't, it matters more than anything else.

Five things.

Number one. Eye protection. Always.

Cable ends snap. Bearing balls escape. Chain pins fly. A cable end at full tension is a small piece of metal that has hit a lot of mechanic's eyes in the last fifty years. The mechanics who lost an eye to one are the mechanics who weren't wearing safety glasses.

Get a pair. Cheap is fine. Five dollars at any hardware store. Wear them when any tool touches any bike.

If wearing them feels excessive, good. That means it's working.

Number two. Closed-toe shoes.

Tools fall. Bearing balls roll. Sharp parts get knocked off benches.

Closed-toe shoes. No sandals. No canvas slip-ons that don't actually cover your toes. No flip-flops. Ever.

Aprons go on top of hoodies, not under. Sleeves get tucked or rolled. Loose cuffs near a chainring become caught cuffs in a chainring. A caught cuff while the cranks are spinning is a cuff that pulls your hand into the chain.

These rules sound paranoid. They aren't. They're the rules a hundred bike shops figured out over a hundred years of injuries. Take the value of that figured-out work for free.

Number three. The second-person rule.

Never lift a heavy bike alone in the shop. Never hold a bike against gravity for service alone.

A cargo bike weighs sixty pounds. A long-tail family bike weighs eighty. You don't lift those alone. You ask the apprentice at the next bench. They come over. Two of you lift it onto the stand together. Your back stays fine. The bike stays fine.

The second-person rule is also the first social rule of the shop. You're allowed to ask for help. You're expected to ask for help. The mechanic who tries to do everything alone is the mechanic who hurts themselves and damages bikes.

Number four. The sharps protocol.

Cable ends. Broken spokes. Chain pins. Anything sharp enough to cut a finger.

These don't go in the regular trash. They go in the sharps bin. Every shop has one. A small marked container, usually red, sometimes a coffee can with a slit cut in the lid.

Why? Because the apprentice who reaches into a trash can full of cable ends to push them down further is the apprentice who learns the hard way that cable ends are sharper than they look.

Sharps in the sharps bin. Always. Every time.

Number five. The first-aid kit.

This is the first thing an apprentice learns at FreeWheelin'. Not the second. The first.

Where is the first-aid kit?

Every apprentice should be able to walk to it from any bench in three steps. Most shops keep the kit on a wall mount near the entrance. Some keep one in the back office too. Either way, every apprentice walks to it on their first shift, opens it, sees what's inside, closes it, and confirms they can find it again.

We do this every cohort. Every Day One. No exceptions.

A short story. Years ago, at a shop I won't name, a senior volunteer was working on a bike's rear wheel. She was tightening a brake cable end cap with her fingers because the cable cutter was on someone else's bench. The cable end pushed through the cap and into the meat of her thumb. Not deep. But enough to bleed.

Bike shops are full of rust. Frame rust. Chain rust. Bench tool rust. Tetanus is a bacterial infection that lives in places like bike shops. The volunteer didn't know when she'd last had a tetanus booster shot. The shift coordinator drove her to urgent care. She was fine.

But the lesson is this. Small wounds in a bike shop are not small wounds. They are puncture wounds in a tetanus environment. Every apprentice should know where the first-aid kit is. Every apprentice should know who in the shop is trained in first aid. Every apprentice should know their own tetanus status, or know that they don't know, and update it.

The first-aid kit. The first thing.

The classroom dynamic

One last thing before we close.

The classroom dynamic.

A bike shop full of apprentices is not a classroom in the school sense. It's a classroom in the wood-shop sense. The kind of room where the teacher's job is to make sure everyone else is doing their work, not to be the smartest person in the room.

If you're going to be a senior apron, if you're going to teach in any tier, there's a thing you have to learn that nobody can put in a manual.

Reading the room.

Who's stuck. Who's confident. Who's about to break a thing they shouldn't break. Who's hiding the fact that they're stuck because they don't want to ask. Who's overconfident in a way that's about to cost them. Who's getting it for the first time, and you can see it in their face.

The instructor's job isn't to fix bikes.

It is to make sure the apprentices fix bikes.

Different job.

A senior apron who's at every bench fixing bikes for the cohort is a senior apron who's failing at the job. The cohort isn't learning. The senior is exhausted. Bikes are getting fixed but the program isn't growing.

A senior apron who's circulating, watching, asking questions like "what do you see?" and "what's your next step?", letting the apprentices struggle for the right amount of time before stepping in, that's the job.

We'll talk much more about this in Season Four, when the bike comes off the bench and the program itself is the subject. For now, plant the seed. The instructor's job isn't to fix bikes.

One concrete habit before we go.

At the end of every shift, every apprentice tells one thing they learned. Not "we replaced a tube." Not "we worked on bikes." A specific thing.

"I learned that the drive-side pedal threading is reversed from the non-drive."

"I learned that you don't use regular pliers on a brake cable."

"I learned that a bike on a stand is at sternum height for a reason."

The specifics stick. The general doesn't.

Make this a habit. End every shift with one specific thing. If you're an instructor, ask. Don't let the cohort leave without saying the day's learning out loud.

Outro

Next time we open the back wheel.

Single-speed. No derailleur. The simplest possible introduction to a flat tire.

That's Episode Two. Tires, Tubes, Flats. Until then, keep the apron on.

RideWitUS. Brand Anthony McDonald. Episode One.