Posted 8 years ago
hdl261olds
(1 item)
Wrench is 8 inches long and about 3/8 inches at the widest part.
Why does this wrench have a heavy canvas pouch??
W-8 means early Winchester according to some sources.
Military item ???
Mystery wrench | ||
| Tools and Hardware5062 of 9815 |  |  |
It's a pipe wrench.
Technically, it's a monkey wrench. The W-8 means "wrench - 8". There would have been other sizes like W-6 and W-12. The pouch is probably because it was marketed to be carried in an automobile in the early 20thC . The pouch protected it and prevented it from "rattling around" in the trunk.
To me, a monkey wrench has the swivel jaw for grabbing (such as pipes). This is an adjustable wrench in my world. Yes, I looked up the diff. & it is controversial.!
It's not controversial to guys who have been using tools for over fifty years. The fixed, parallel-jaw wrench is a monkey wrench for turning large nuts with flat parallel sides. The pipe wrench is so-named because of the specific action of the rocking jaw which makes it ideal for gripping pipe, for which a monkey wrench is useless.
The point is there is loads of miss-information on the 'net written by people who don't have any experience with what they are writing about. (Virtually every one of the category headers with the little pictures, which appear at the top of listing like this one, is obviously written by someone who is more interested in being clever than accurate. Many of their statements - in areas with which I am familiar - are dead wrong.) In the words of a famous pundit, "Words have meanings." If we don't use the proper terminology we lose our ability to communicate.
Don't get your bowels in an uproar, Ron. I've found these names interchangeable in diff. regions & now diff. countries. I hear a common screwdriver called a "flat", a revolver a "spin-barrel", a phillips is a "cross-point", Mobile, AL is Mo-byle etc. . I quit cringing years ago . LOL ! You are right in a "swivel-jaw" being a pipe wrench. Remember, I live with "Yahoos". You don't have a "brand new" car, you have a "new-brand". Translations can get tricky. LOL !!