I Couldn't Buy the Tool I Needed, So I Made It

After 25 years cleaning windows, you get a feel for what works and what doesn't. And for a long time, one tool worked better than anything else for removing fly screens: the Skreen Out. Thin plastic tip, right shape, got behind even the tightest screens. It wasn't perfect, but it did the job.

Then it disappeared. The patent expired, the maker vanished, and suppliers couldn't tell me where to find one.

For window cleaners, this is a real problem. Many modern screens are designed to look flush with the frame, no clips, no protrusions. Clean lines, yes. Easy to remove, no. Some are held in with velcro on the back face, which looks great but means there's almost nothing to grip when you need to pull the screen towards you with real force. Fingers alone don't cut it. You need something thin enough to slip into a near-invisible gap, rigid enough to lever with, and shaped to follow the curve of the frame.

Without a perfectly made tool, tradies were reaching for car trim removal tools and whatever else they could find. Wrong shape, wrong stiffness. And the metal version scratches!

So I decided to make my own.

I'd invented products before, but always in materials I understood. This one pushed me into new territory: plastic injection moulding. I started locally, visiting several manufacturers in Sydney. The quotes came back at the equivalent of a house deposit, just for the mould. That answered that question quickly.

I found a manufacturer overseas and started the conversation. What followed was a proper education, and the more I learned, the more I realised how much there was to learn. Plastic moulding isn't just "make the shape you want". Every material has burn points, flow characteristics, and minimum thickness requirements. The prying tip had to be thin enough to find its way behind a screen, but the engineers pushed back hard. Too thin, and during injection the molten plastic simply doesn't reach the end of the mould. You get an unfinished edge, a gap where the tip should be. Not a flaw you can fix after the fact.

The engineers had a hard limit: 0.8mm at the tip. Go thinner and the molten plastic simply doesn't reach the end of the mould, you get an unfinished edge where precision matters most. I was nervous, that narrow prying end is the whole point of the tool. But the material was the upgrade. By adding glass fill to the plastic mix, we got the stiffness and strength the original never had, without sacrificing the tip.

Fly Screen Remover factory sample

Two rounds of mould modifications, back and forth on draft angles, tip geometry, surface texture. The first sample arrived smooth, too smooth. Under pressure, grip matters. The final sample had a matte texture, and the moment I held it I knew we were there. The strength, the narrow tip, the feel in hand. It took a few days before I was on a job where I could properly test it. It worked perfectly.

The response since launch has been better than I expected. Window cleaning suppliers have ordered several hundred straight up. Individual tradies are buying two at a time online, which tells its own story: one for the belt, one as backup.

If you're a window cleaner who's been making do without the right tool, or an inventor who's wondered what it actually takes to go from "I need this thing to exist" to holding it in your hand, that's the story. Sometimes the product you need just isn't out there. Sometimes you have to go make it.