Originally Posted by
jgedwa
There is no good substutute for that little tool. They are all crap; made of stamped steel. But you need it.
If the threads are all clean (thread and unthread them about 20 times each while watching TV to polish those threads), and greased, you can usually get them on without the tool. But it really is something you should have.
jim
It's more important that any surface which the NUT resides is clean of grease. I'm not convinced "chasing" the threads in the manner you describe does anything. The last hundred chainring bolts i've tightened to spec, none have needed that chainring bolt tool.
Hozan makes a spring loaded integrated hex key/chainring bolt tool that was meant for removing seized bolts (it fails at that) that is really nice to use.