"Don Young" wrote:
"Bob Engelhardt" wrote in message
...
The jaws on this wrench are not parallel:

http://home.comcast.net/~bobengelhardt/wrench.jpg

Specifically, the face of the movable jaw is perpendicular to the
"ways", but the fixed face is not. But they aren't sprung or worn that
way. It seems that it was made like that. But why? Just plain poor
quality? But that's *really* bad. It's an old wrench, not Chiwandian.
It says drop forged, if that helps.

Bob

I think it was just not a very precise wrench. I have seen this type of
thing in very old tools. I imagine that when it was made its fit was
plenty good enough to turn the big square nuts in use at the time and its
strength might have made it a "quality" tool in spite of its imprecision.

Don Young

That's an interesting idea. Might a wrench with slightly open jaws like
that actually be easier to use on square nuts? With square nuts, you
certainly don't need as close a fit as you do with hex nuts to prevent
damage and slipping. With the slightly open jaws, you could just push the
wrench into the nut until it wedged on the nut and get a tight fit (at 3
points). A problem with adjustable wrenches is that when you adjust them
to be snug, they tend not to come off, and or are hard to put on, so you
have to either open them just slightly to use them, or tighten and loosen
them for every turn. Might an open jaw design actually make it easier to
get on and off and still allow a fairly tight fit and not risk much damage
if you only used it on square nuts???

So maybe it was intentionally designed that way if the expected use was for
square nuts?

Bob - got any square nuts you can try it on (I just searched my shop and
had a damn hard time finding a square nut - I found some holding one of my
metal shelves together....

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Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
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