How the heck do you take this apart????

I need to disassemble this nice lab grade ammeter.



It's basically just a nice panel meter attached to a matching bakelite housing. The threaded studs common to panel meters pass thru and are held on with nuts, thus attaching the back half.



Here's the catch. How do I remove the nuts??

I *believe* they are 1/4" nuts, can't tell as they are so far down in the "wells". NONE of my nut drivers fit in the small holes. What on earth did the factory use?

I thought about grinding down a nut driver, but it would almost have to be paper thin by the time I ground it down enough. To give you an idea of the diameter I have to work with, I thought about taking a standard round BIC pen and making it into a nut driver. But the diameter of that is even a bit too big to fit down these 1"+ wells.

Any thoughts???????

I have some very thin drivers but can't remember where I got them...it was many years. Not much help, I know.  

I have a set of Snap-on ultra thin, ultra deep sockets that should work just fine. 'Course, they cost about $200 bucks for the set when I bought it 25 years ago. Mine are 1/4 inch drive, and I would be willing to bet that Craftsman makes something similar. Ultra deep, ultra thin nut drivers would work as well, but I don't have a set of those.

Regards

WC

Here is a idea,I don't know if it will work but might be worth a try. If you don't find a nut driver that will work could you take a piece of copper pipe just barely big enough for a 1/4 nut to slide into it. Then just take something like a brass hammer and tap it around the pipe so that it forms to the nut size and make you own socket. Then at the top of the pipe drill a hole in it to slide a nail into it to use it as a handle. Then see if it will turn it so it will get loose.

Got it!

I was looking it over and noticed not just one corner was loose (there was a missing nut in one corner to begin with), but the whole side was loose. I used one of my "dental picks" to spin the lower corner nut and noticed the threads were "jumping around". Apparently the stud was broken from the meter face. That would explain the mysterious masking tape residue on the bottom...

So, figured I didn't have a lot to lose, I carefully/methodically used the pick to "push" on the corners of the nut on each of the two remaining retaining nuts. They weren't tight (luckily!) and I was able to work them out!

So, it's now apart, I'm going to thoroughly clean and repair the meter and then figure out how I'm going to reassemble.

Boy, I'm glad I didn't waste my time on grinding down a 1/4" socket---turns out the socket that would have been needed was 7/32" !!!

I have used a pair of tweezers on recessed nuts that small.

This is where the baseball bat in my tool repertoire comes in.  

Although I did find Willy's copper pipe idea very innovative. A bit of trouble, but innovative.

I was glancing through the old entries and remembered a tool that would have come in handy for this...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Precision-Screwdrivers-Nut-Drivers-Set-Watchmaker-Jewelers-Repair-Tools-11Pcs-/231323197888?pt=US_Srewdrivers_Nut_Drivers&hash=item35dbefe1c0