Magnetizer/Demagnetizer

A magnetized screwdriver tip is the difference between a five-second screw replacement and a five-minute hunt for a dropped screw inside a frame. The Magnetizer/Demagnetizer is the small tool that makes that difference, and it's the kind of thing most shops don't buy until they wish they had.

The block has two openings: the one marked + magnetizes a steel screwdriver tip, the one marked – demagnetizes it. Push the screwdriver through the + opening once and the tip will hold a #2 Phillips, a Torx T25, or a small flat-blade screw against gravity. Push the same tip through the – opening with a light wipe along the inner wall, and the magnetism comes off cleanly. The screwdriver doesn't have to be ours; any standard hardened steel tip works.

The magnetization isn't permanent, which is the point. In a normal shop environment the magnetism holds for weeks, long enough to install or remove a tray of small bolts. In a strong magnetic environment (working near an e-bike battery, near a motor stator, near an electric cabinet) the field demagnetizes the tip faster. Push it back through the + opening and reset.

When you'll reach for it

• Installing or replacing small flat-head or Phillips screws on shifters, brake levers, derailleur bodies; anywhere the screw is a half-meter from the workbench and three centimeters from a chain stay
• Recovering a dropped screw that's gone into the bottom of a frame's bottle-cage cavity or into a fork's brake-arch recess
• Picking up small metal pieces (clip washers, retaining rings, broken pin fragments) from inside a workpiece
• Demagnetizing a screwdriver that's been working near a motor and is now too magnetic to use on a near-magnetic fastener (rare but real)

Specs

• Magnetizer and demagnetizer in one block
• Works with any standard hardened steel screwdriver or bit tip
• Article number: 633

Built in Zreče, Slovenia

Unior has been forging hand tools in Zreče since 1919, and is the official technical partner of multiple World Tour and downhill teams. The Magnetizer/Demagnetizer is one of those small workshop fixtures Unior has been making for the broader hand-tool trade for decades; the cycling-tool catalog inherits it from the parent forging-and-hand-tools heritage.

Pro tip from our mechanics

Most home mechanics underestimate how often a magnetized tip pays for itself, especially on internal-routing frames where a dropped screw vanishes the moment it leaves your fingers. Our workshop hand tools guide walks through the small workshop tools that quietly carry half the daily work: Workshop hand tools every bike shop needs →