“I needed a tool that didn’t exist. So I went to my shop and built it.”
Built from a Problem No One Else Would Solve
Johnny Pinell didn’t set out to build a tool company. He was a working guy with a machine shop, stuck on a job with a fitting he couldn’t remove and a wall he couldn’t afford to cut. Every store came up empty. So he built what he needed himself.
Other plumbers saw it, and they had the same problems — the same flanges, the same walls, the same lack of options. That’s how Pinell Tools became two products: the Hub Remover and the Toilet Bowl Flange Remover, both patented, both made in the USA, both born from real jobs with no good solution.
Every tool we make starts the same way — a tradesperson hit a wall, and we refused to stay stuck.
Two Problems. Two Tools. One Machine Shop.
No Tool Existed. So Johnny Built One.
Johnny was mid-job — a hub fitting buried in the wall, backsplash intact, no room to cut. He checked every hardware store and plumbing supplier he could find. Nobody carried a tool for it.
So he went back to his machine shop in Houma, Louisiana, and made one himself. That’s the Hub Remover: the first tool of its kind, built to pull PVC hub fittings clean from the wall without touching the pipe or the backsplash behind it.
Word Spread. The Next Problem Followed.
Plumbers who saw the Hub Remover had another problem: stuck toilet bowl flanges — glued tight into Schedule 40 PVC and ABS pipe, no clean way out without wrecking what was underneath.
After a lot of trial and error, Johnny engineered the solution: a cutter with 5 staggered inserts, precision-designed to remove the flange without damaging the pipe. The Toilet Bowl Flange Remover went from shop floor to job site, and plumbers have been saving pipes with it ever since.
Built in the Same Shop Where It All Started
Every Pinell tool is designed and manufactured in Houma, Louisiana, in the same machine shop where Johnny built the first prototype. Anodized aluminum, precision-machined, built to take the abuse of a real job site.
Patented, American-made, and built by someone who actually does the work.
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Two tools. Two problems solved. Built in Houma, Louisiana by someone who actually does the work.