Originally Posted by
79pmooney
I know and appreciate the history, but still - the end result is poor from this engineer's view. (Like narrow chains and big wheel dish. Yes, it all works but the simple 1/2" x 1/8" chain and no or velodrome levels of dish; now those are clean solution!) (I never did like the need to unscrew the right locknut. I like that side near permanently tight and do everything from the left.)
It's all about history in this case. When Campy developed their hub axle back in the 1950s, notched freewheel removers were in vogue. We all learned to avoid putting Atom freewheels on Campy hubs to avoid having to pull the axle every time you wanted to remove the freewheel, but I'm pretty sure that Campy's hub locknuts came out long before Atom's splined remover. Along comes Phil Wood with his axle that is devoid of both spacer and locknuts, and he produced that ultra-thinwall remover for Atom FWs so you wouldn't be "screwed" if you thoughtlessly threaded an Atom freewheel on a Phil Wood hub. Suddenly, we all had to buy these because they allowed us to use the superior splined remover. Forget about the even better Normandy-style spline--you couldn't go below a 14-tooth cog and real men rode 13s. Soon several European freewheel manufacturers had adopted the Atom spline while Shimano, always looking to do everyone else one better, enlarged their existing spline slightly so that they, too, could have a remover that could be used on a Campy Record hub without removing the axle. Shimano's remover was just a bit thicker walled than the Phil Wood remover, but it was still a bit fragile, especially when compared to the original, smaller diameter version. So, it's history and incremental evolution that gave us fragile freewheel removers, all traceable back to the Campy Record hub locknuts and the desire for ever smaller freewheel cogs.
With the Phil Wood / Atom remover, you were wise to use a vise to hold it so you could evenly apply force turning the wheel to avoid side-loading the tool. This is good practice with the Shimano tool as well. Of course, that means you need access to a decent bench vise, which not everyone has. If the freewheel is already trashed, my approach is to disassemble the body and clamp the inner body in my giant, 19th-century vise (yes, I got that right), and put the beef into it. I messed up a nice hub once before I learned that the vise can provide so much force that it distorts the thread and that I needed to back off the pressure of the jaws as soon as the freewheel broke loose.