Rare examples of 19th century adjustable wrenches

An adjustable wrench is a universal tool that almost any man has in the house, in the country, in the garage. And this instrument has its own history and development of construction, forms. I propose to look at which adjustable wrenches were used 100 and even more years ago and what development of adjustable wrench designs can be seen now.

Pre-revolutionary adjustable hammer wrench from the Westfalia plant. The design was invented by the American engineer Frederick Seymour and patented by him in 1883.

Made from rolling rod. Forged twisted handle. It is remarkable in that they can hammer in small nails - a 2 in 1 tool, as they say now. For some reason, even Chinese manufacturers are in no hurry to look into the past and return to the release of such keys according to the principle: everything new is well forgotten old.

Also an adjustable hammer wrench from the early 20th century. As you can see, the engineering thought of that era was at its best. And you can see this by considering other examples:

English adjustable wrench, late 19th century. Sponge displacement - with auger on the handle. Also an interesting design.

A very old adjustable wrench. It is possible that from the middle of the 19th century. After all, the studs on the metal structures of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg were twisted with some kind of keys. I don’t think the nuts were made with carbon copy accuracy, there was an error. And monkey wrenches were indispensable.

A set of German adjustable wrenches that were also used by their mechanics during World War II. Modern offers in stores are far from such an assortment of various designs.

This is generally a masterpiece of engineering - an S-shaped double-sided adjustable wrench. It may be inconvenient to hold it in your hand and twist or unscrew it with effort, but the very fact that 19-20 century engineers invented such keys, and almost handicraft production of those times made them - striking.

There are many examples of adjustable wrenches from the past. The ones shown above are far from all.

This is almost a modern adjustable wrench, but also double-sided. Agree, it is not always convenient to unscrew the M10 nut with large jaws of an adjustable wrench.

These are also not so old, but non-standard keys of different sizes. The modern design is, of course, more optimal. But this allows you to make a hammer out of a key.

If you type a monkey wrench in a search engine now, you will see a number of almost the same type of sentences:

Before preparing the information for this article, I thought that the monkey wrench was always something like this. As it turned out, the history of this universal tool is diverse. Only recently, alternative designs have begun to appear, for example, electronic (where without it) and with a vertical auger and a quick-moving principle:

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Photo taken from open sources, from Yandex. Pictures

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