I do believe that's a hamster you're tightening, not a bolt..... Just be careful it's not a Syrian hamster. They tend to go "pop" sometimes.
Simples: a force of 1 lb on a lever 1 ft long equals 1 ft lb. Likewise, 2 lb at six inches or 1/2 lb at two feet. In other words, multiply the force on the lever by the length of the lever to get the foot pounds - or use a torque wrench!
I use Britool. I have 3, one 0-26ftlbs, another 20-100ftlbs and Big Daddy 100-500ftlbs. You can buy these on ebay for not a lot consideing how good they are. Robert
What's a spring balance? I've seen these electronic adaptors that I think you just attach to a normal socket so I'm guessing they do the same thing. No one seems to recommend them though.
I have a Mac tools one and and a britool one, they are both fine, any torque wrench you buy will be fine, when I was an apprentice and our company were going for bs 5750 standard all our measuring equipment was tested and calibrated, some had very very expensive and some had the absolute cheapest, there was lots of ******* taking of each others gear, but when they all came back they were all within tolerance and there was no difference between cheap and mega expensive, the difference is in the quality of ratchet mechanism and for a seldom used tool, cheapys are fine. We had the same a few days ago as a a friend bought I new snap on electronic torque wrench, another guy has a torque testing tool. The snap on(several hundred pounds) was no better than his kicked around the workshop used daily and abused cheapo one , oooooo how we laughed
I've got one of them. Used once when I caught a carp when in Barnet Angling club when I was young. 3lb. I thought at the time I'd landed Moby Dick. I smiled for a week
I bought a second hand snap on 3/8 one, cost more to have it calibrated than to buy it. Also have a 1/2" from Aldi I use for wheelnuts
As Andy says always zero it aftewards and it will last years. I have two Snap-on ones I used to use every day so needed a good one. But for occasional use I would buy something less expensive Draper, Facom, Seeley, Teng or similar would be fine (even one from Aldi will do )
Typed up an 'invoice' and obtained a Halfords trade card yesterday. I think there's a recent thread on here somewhere about them. Thanks for your offer. It sowed a seed. Every little helps.