How to Use an Adjustable Crescent Wrench?

Those that can't teach, teach gym. Woody Allen

Steve

An adjustagble wrench has to have a little clearance in the adjustment track, or you will not be able to move the jaw easily. When the wrench is loaded, this clearance will cause the jaws to go slightly out of parallel. Having the corner of the nut pressing on the movable jaw at it's base will have less bad effect than having it press near the tip. How important this is depends on how well the wrench was made, how worn it is, how many times it has bee overloaded.

OTOH, if the manufacturer demands that you use the wrench one way and not the other, why do they make it with the same 15 degree offset that fixed open-end wrenches have? This angular offset allows you to work in area where the swing is restricted, by flipping the wrench over.

It's simple. You have the metric versions.

Steve

I'm 21 years into my machinist trade, and my oldest brother has 8 years on me as a machinist and self-employed auto mechanic. We got into this one tonight. I was taught that the load should bear closest to the fixed part of the wrench, if you reverse it, it puts the force futher from the "hinge"

On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:50:37 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, Jeff Wisnia quickly quoth:

Hey, that's a good school. I graduated from there in '73. It would have been '72 but my appendix had its say and I took some time off.

That's how I've always used them, toward the adjustable jaw. Do NOT attempt to slide it like the Modern Marvels animation does on the History Channel. That's as bad as the Searz commercial showing the channel locks on the nut backwards and shearing off metal on the bicycle axle nut. I was in tears with laughter when I saw that commercial. The commercial was shot again, almost immediately, but it was out there for awhile. You could see a dozen slivers of nut falling to the ground from the horrible fit of a bad tool being used in the wrong way, and backwards to boot.

Ideally, the mating surfaces keep it from springing open at all. That means you have to wobble the Crescent on the nut as you tighten as you create a nice fit.

Perhaps because that only matters when the nut or screw is tight. Once it is cracked loose or before it is tight the orientation of the wrench does not matter.

You don't *ever* want to let a teacher hear you say that . My wife teaches , and is very dedicated to making sure her students are prepared for the world we live in . Oh , and she is very capable ... she "can" .

"and them that cant to anything..administrate"

"Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide"

- James Burnham

And when those gym teachers become too old to get out and run with the kids, they're promoted to principals. My cousin's late wife, 32 years a junior high math teacher in one of the nation's biggest school systems, used to complain bitterly that she never knew a math, science or English teacher who became a principal...

Jerry

After some more cogitating overnight, I'm beginning to think that the "preferred direction" for using that kind of wrench may have something to do with the angle of the jaw opening relative to the handle keeping the fastener pushed towards the "crotch" of the opening.

If you increase that angle all the way up to ninety degrees then you have the equivalent of a "monkey wrench" *.

It seems (to me at least) intuitive that you'd want to orient that kind of wrench so the force you applied to the handle also kept the jaw opening pressed "onto" the fastener.

Howzatt?

Jeff

• The original name was 'Moncky.' after Charles Moncky, the inventor of that kind of wrench.

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 11:40:00 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, Jeff Wisnia quickly quoth:

Ayup. Eez pozzible.

But that is so _yesterday_ in style, duuuude.

Woiks for me. But in reality (I read it on the Internet!), the angle was to make the wrench easier to use in closer quarters.

Whenever possible, use a 6pt socket, sir.

Well, that's a good point. Because the jaws are at an angle to the handle and not perpendicular to it, the normal perpendicular force applied to the handle to cause it to rotate around the nut will cause it to push against the nut if you turn it the way the crescent wrench is marked, and cause it to slip off the nut if you apply the opposite force. And as you say, in the extreme case of a monkey wrench where the jaw angle is 90 degrees to the handle, it's easy to see that the force in the reverse direction simply removes the wrench from the nut - and would turn it only if there were enough friction to prevent it from slipping off.

Someone else posted that turning in the direction to make it stay on the wrench was the answer and I now think they were right.

I think this is probably the best justification for which way is best to turn it. It has nothing to do with strength of the jaws or where the force is applied to the adjustable jaw. It's simply because you are more likely to allow the wrench to slip off the nut when turning it backwards.

Probably just an urban legend (see below):

Also from that page is the comment:

There is evidence that adjustable wrenches and even the term monkey wrench were used long before.

which points to:

from

Of course, over the years, some speculation indicated that the original inventor, a man named Monk or Monck was responsible for the name. However, this has been refuted by diligent historical and patent research. New England industrial pioneers, Loring Coes and Laurin Trask, around the end of the 19th century related the more plausible account. They indicated that the term "monkey wrench" was already in use prior to Goes' early patent (1841) and referred at that time to the earlier English type of adjustable wrench where you turned the handle to adjust the jaws.

I now provide some further evidence to back up Coes and Trask's allegation, in that a wrench labeled "Monkey Wrench" was depicted in the English tool catalogue issued by Timmins & Sons, which hails from the early to mid-1840s. Also, I show a very early English wrench from my collection that I reckon to be from about the same or an even earlier era. This item, with its rounded head and "twist the tail" (handle) to adjust the mouth feature, could easily inspire the image of a monkey. I conclude that the name came along with these early wrenches when they were shipped to America. This particular wrench is marked "5. Johnson Sheffield" with an "S.J." in a flag logo and exhibits the very fine detailed workmanship characteristic of early Sheffield tools.

Now perhaps I can quit monkeying around and finally put this matter to rest.

"Jerry Foster" wrote in news:KxUJh.14887$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr17.news.prodigy.net:

That's because they have more sense than the jocks: the jocks are clueless about all of the headaches that come with administrative positions.

Budgets/Fiscal Issues, playing Politics with the School Board Members/Superintendants/Administrators, Teachers' Unions, Parents, Media, Alumni, State Education Department drones, Federal Education drones, etc., all take up a lot of time that, otherwise, could be spent dealing with the teaching staff and the students.

Then there's the other "minor" drawback: the proper spelling for the word "Principal" is "S C A P E G O A T" insofar as School Administration is concerned.

When a school operates strictly in accordance with the policies and procedures dictated by the School Board and the Superintendant and those policies/procedures prove inadequate/improper, the Principal gets fired.

Only after the public is able to discern that it's the politicians and their appointed stooges that are the real problem - and replace THEM - will the heat be reduced upon the individual principals.

Okay, so I'm late and catching up, but Gunner wrote on Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:54:04 GMT in rec.crafts.metalworking :

Technology is managed by those who don't understand it. Be the technology electronic computers, or hand set printing press. Or that new fangled "writing".

tschus pyotr

I tend to think of the correct way as being the same as the author described.

If the wrench is forced the opposite way, the adjustable jaw might tend to pull out of the slot that it rides in. Some of the force, maybe not much though, might tend to spread the slot (particularly in the not excessive, but larger range of adjustment).

In the direction the author describes, the adjustable jaw is holding force against the wrench body, with most of the force applied to the worm/adjuster and the body of the wrench.

WB metalworking projects