Vintage Bonney Tools

Founded in Philadelphia in 1877 as the Bonney Vise & Tool Works, the company that would become known as Bonney Forge & Tool Works began as a manufacturer of vises and anvils before winning acclaim for a dizzying array of wrenches. By 1885, inventor Charles S. Bonney would leave the company he had founded and which bore his name, although his patents would be used until the early 1900s. For example, in 1903, Bonney secured a patent for a combination pipe wrench and cutter designed by the company's founder, although this tool would be eclipsed just a year later, in 1904, with the release of an adjustable pipe wrench and cutter designed by Joseph G. Baker. Known within Bonney as "The Masterpiece," Baker's tool proved immensely popular with customers. Like many tool manufacturers in the early 20th century, Bonney produced scores of specialized wrenches for use by automobile mechanics and machinists. There were elegant S-shaped open-end and adjustable wrenches, pipe wrenches with wooden handles with the words "Stillson Pattern Wrench" stamped into them, and pipe wrenches without wood and the word "Automobile" forged into their thinner handles. Bonney made wrenches designed to grab battery terminals, open-end "Reverse Gear" wrenches designed to fix the brakes on Model T Fords, and wrenches designed to work on equipment made by a company called the Textile Machine Works. There were also wrenches designed for the repair and maintenance of Chevrolet engines and Dodge and Studebaker brakes. In the early 1920s, Bonney moved from being a manufacturer of carbon-steel tools to being a producer of tools forged from new steel alloys. For Bonney, Chrome-Vanadium, or CV, was its first foray into this new alloy world. Naturally, its tools such as tappet and obstruction wrenches were now forged with these words prominently displayed on their long handles, along with the familiar Bonney shield logo. Tools also had decals on their handles, though most of these have long since worn away. Bonney also made numerous waterpump wrenches, whose wide, short handles and offset heads made them useful in tight spaces. Like Snap-on and many other vintage tool manufacturers, Bonney went big on socket wrenches and ratchets. By the end of the 1930s, some of these tools were labeled as Bonaloy, which joined another Bonney branded alloy from earlier in the decade called Zenel. That moniker was used quite a bit in the company's lines of box-end and offset box-end wrenches. A less expensive version of Zenel called TuHex was also sold.