![]() The following story was widespread from the late 19th and early 20th centuries: They are still used by aircraft technicians, mainly when large but low- torque fasteners are involved. ![]() These are also known as a Ford wrench as this type of wrench was included in the tool kit supplied with every Ford Model A. Monkey wrenches are still manufactured and are used for some heavy tasks, but they have otherwise been mostly replaced by the shifting adjustable wrench/spanner, which is much lighter and has a smaller head, allowing it to fit more easily into tight spaces, and the tooth-jawed, torque-gripping pipe wrench. After 1939, its successor companies manufactured monkey wrenches from Coes designs until the mid-1960s, a production run of over 120 years. The Coes wrench designs were acquired by the toolmaker Bemis & Call of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1928. In 1909, the Coes Wrench Company advertised a six-foot-long "key" wrench, shaped like a monkey wrench, for use on railroads. Some Coes wrenches could be bought with wooden knife handles, recalling the company's earlier knives. For the next 87 years a very wide and popular range of monkey wrenches was manufactured by Coes family partnerships, licensees and companies, which filed further wrench patents throughout the 19th century. This was patented in 1841 and the tools were advertised and sold in the United States as monkey wrenches, a term which was already in use for the English handle-set coach wrenches. In 1840, Loring Coes, a knife manufacturer in Worcester, Massachusetts, invented a screw-based coach wrench design in which the jaw width was set with a spinning ring fixed under the sliding lower jaw, above the handle. They were set either by sliding a wedge, or later by twisting the handle, which turned a screw, narrowing or widening the jaws. ![]() Monkey wrench (left) compared to Stillson or pipe wrench (right)Īdjustable coach wrenches for the odd-sized nuts of wagon wheels were manufactured in England and exported to North America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
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