Adjustable Spanner E-Book

Ron Geesin

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 462

Beschreibung

The Adjustable Spanner is the product of thirty years' collecting and original research, fired by Ron Geesin's acquisition of the SLIK Adjustable Spanner that hung in his father's garage. At the core of this book is a concise history of this much-maligned tool. Serious and comical observations parallel its chequered life, from its bent beginnings in the blacksmith's shop to over-designed and lovingly engineered treasures from the small Birmingham machinist. Around this core are discussions and findings about components and construction on the practical side, and patents, registered designs and trade marks on the design protection side. Emerging from history, we take a closer look at uses and especially abuses, immerse ourselves in an analysis of types and styles, and dive deeply into the histories of the inventors and makers. You will be amazed at the engineering diversity required to produce these most fanciful but essential supports to the Industrial Revolution. This entertaining account is the result of the author's findings, stemming from his collecting over 3,000 examples and will be of particular interest to engineers, those concerned with industrial history and collectors of hand tools. Superbly illustrated with around 300 colour photographs.

Leseprobe

The

Adjustable Spanner

History, origins and development to 1970

RON GEESIN

First published in 2016 by The Crowood Press Ltd Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2016

© Ron Geesin 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 036 2

Registered Design images on pp. 25, 26, 71, 76, 77, 104 and 154 are reproduced by arrangement with The National Archives. All other images, photographs and new digital versions are by the author.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

1 Components, Descriptions and Construction

2 Patents, Registered Designs and Trademarks

3 The Name

4 Concise History

5 Uses, Abuses, Customizations and Applications

6 Main Types and Styles

7 Inventors and Makers

8 Factors

9 Apprentice and Test Pieces

Appendices

Appendix A: Original King Dick Style Changes Analysis

Appendix B: Lucas Girder Style Changes Analysis

Appendix C: Analysis of Second-Generation Clyburns

Appendix D: Brookes Bros Staff Cricket Match

Appendix E: Reports of the Murder of George Kilby and the Trial of his Father, William Kilby

Appendix F: Names Impressed on Tools

Appendix G: Unidentified

Endnotes

Index

There will probably never be another period of manufacturing absurdity and exaggeration in hand tool design such as that paralleling the Industrial Revolution, but the insatiable human need to create encourages fanciful designs from each generation, many of those design ideas having already failed when tried and tested by previous generations. Could this process be the engineer’s version of the artist’s activity of building models of brain activity in order to understand it better and therefore to make more sense of the outside world and our temporary occupation of it?

Acknowledgements

Tools and Trades History Society (TATHS): £500 Salaman Awards towards expenses travelling to the National Archives and other archive sources.

Roger Hancox: fellow collector offering detailed observations on unusual mechanisms; alerting me to others and providing those examples not in my collection for photographing.

John Hawking (Australia): information, observations and photographs from many years of amusing and provocative dialogue by email and face to face; finding rare UK-manufactured items in Australia.

Ken Hawley: dialogue with a ‘proper character’ and full access to his catalogue collection in Sheffield; his trust in my ability to clean all specimens sensitively off-site, photograph and return. Fond memories.

Stroud Museum: access to its small but significant collection of early adjustable spanners; its trust in my ability to clean all specimens sensitively off-site, photograph and return; and supplying copies of rare catalogues.

Bill Whiteley: most convivial dialogue sharing details of the early history of Abingdon King Dick; alerting me to the Transactions of the Royal Society of Arts.

John Jewitt: enthusiastic memories of his family’s involvement in running Footprint Tools.

Christopher Jewitt: equally enthusiastic continuation of his father John’s involvement in running Footprint Tools; providing excellent photograph of T. R. Ellin.

John Collier (Monument Tools): observations and memories of the industry; full access to his collection of early tool catalogues and rare adjustables for photographing.

The Monday Club, Sussex (beer and conversation): for offering many reasons why this project should never have been undertaken.

The EnginBeer Club (or Old Nuts), Sussex (beer, tools and conversation): for offering several reasons why this project should have been undertaken; for combing car boot sales and occasionally raising a hair or two.

Alison Roper (Heritage Centre): information from early Lucas catalogues.

eBay dealers: those who kindly and generously offloaded their rusty buckets; those who unscrupulously sold ‘backstage’, before I could get to them.

National Archives: for managing to keep the records of Registered Designs in reasonable shape for reference.

Foreword

I have always loved tools, and a set of them has followed me to every home and every place where I have lived and worked. The selection of these tools has mainly been driven by pragmatism, or so I thought, until I read this book. Now I am not so sure. The Adjustable Spanner has made me reflect more deeply about my relationship with tools and the influence that history and culture have on them. Ron Geesin comprehensively uncovers the fascinating back story of the adjustable spanner, and I won’t spoil your enjoyment by pre-empting some of the marvellous tales that take us through the Industrial Revolution, the evolution of the bicycle, and into modern times. The book provokes many questions; uppermost for me is whether these histories are somehow embodied in the form or function of the modern adjustable spanner, and whether it is this heritage and not its utility that makes it such a firm favourite with engineers, mechanics, tinkerers and the making fraternity.

Our emotional attachment to the adjustable spanner could be due to how it feels in the hand – cool and balanced, but somehow active, it imparts dynamism to those who have it in their grip. It is made of a single material, typically steel, and yet it is a proto-machine, able to adapt itself to the shape of the nut presented. It’s constantly ready for action whilst also being clever and companionable. That sense of its being animate is perhaps due to its mechanism, which never ceases to fascinate me, despite its simplicity. Adjusting it back and forth, and seeing the jaws open and close, brings it alive; it can, at times, seem that it is part of your own body. Perhaps that is too fanciful, but there is no doubt that the adjustable spanner, with its jaws and blunt head, is the most animal-like of all the tools. Different versions of it have been named after puffins and jackdaws, and of course monkeys, as the sections in this book on the development, evolution and history make clear.

The adjustable spanner has another animal trait: it is a pack leader. Nipping down four flights of stairs to adjust the brakes on my bicycle, I grab bicycle multi-tool and adjustable spanner, knowing they can handle most jobs, but of the two it’s the wrench that has seniority. It seems to call the shots, not just because its jaws clamp onto the nut, but also because it can’t resist nibbling away at it and leaving the nut slightly maimed, as if physically exerting its authority. As is often the case with such an adjustment, some part of the brake mechanism may be stuck and it is without hesitation that I use the adjustable spanner as a hammer. It is somehow in its nature to throw its weight around. This is not an accident: as this book shows, the multifaceted uses of the adjustable spanner in the hands of those who have used it and loved it have evolved its design over many years. Thus The Adjustable Spanner is a worthy companion on the shelf next to The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petrovski.

That this book reads like a love affair with the adjustable spanner is entirely appropriate, then. Other types of spanners come and go, some are more or less useful, but somehow none of them has what the adjustable spanner has: our undying affection.

Mark Miodownik FREng Director, Institute of Making, University College, London

Introduction

‘Adjustable spanners? But surely you would need only one?’

Well, no, actually, you would need at least three to cover most jobs. And once you have three or more of anything, you are a potential collector. So fascinated was I by an unusual wedge adjuster hanging in my father’s tool rack, the SLIK by MEC (q.v.), that I stole it, or euphemistically ‘liberated’ it, or probably more politely asked for it sometime in the 1960s and used it a lot after that, supplementing it with other types to ‘cover most jobs’. It was not until the car boot sale got under way as a phenomenon in the 1980s that I started noticing other enticingly odd mechanisms poking their heads out of rusty buckets, their mouths imploring for air and light, and I was forever trapped in their jaws, gripped, wrenched in their direction, my life forever adjusted by their seemingly endless diversity of form.

I define this much-maligned mover as a hand tool, specifically designed with at least one adjustable jaw so that the tool can accurately grip and turn a square, hexagonal or octagonal nut or bolt without tearing it. The jaws should be parallel or form at least three sides, or the angles of at least two adjacent corners of a square, hex agon or octagon. The material of manufacture is usually iron or steel, but hard alloys, aluminium and plastic are also used for anti-spark situations. Chocolate is used for novelty. Also included are combination tools where one of the functions is as previously defined. If the sole function of pipe wrenches and grips is to do as they are described, they are excluded, even though manufacturers often made both.

Although the specialist engineering world has constantly denigrated this enigma of a tool, the rest of us have conducted turbulent affairs with it, alternately loving, misunderstanding, hating, abusing and returning to loving, to such an extent that we have conjured its likeness in bracelets, necklaces, earrings, perfume dispensers, cufflinks, tie clips, keyrings, cigarette lighters, pepper and salt sets, squeaky toys for dogs and door handles and knockers. And just to finish it off, we have moulded it in chocolate and eaten it!

Soon after I started collecting, it became clear that no history existed of these gadgets – and what little scraps that could be found often carried misleading or wrong information. Rather like the casual user’s confused attitude to adjustable spanners, and in particular to their correct use, their history has tended to fall between the cracks of classification. Searching for, finding and then making sense of details has therefore been difficult but continually rewarding. The process stemmed from what little could be got from the tools themselves, mainly after the deciphering of any impressed Registered Design and Patent numbers, leading to my immersion in the National Archives and the Patent Office, the latter now partly absorbed into the British Library. This led to the collecting of information from tool catalogues, trade directories and specialist magazines (about engineering and velocipedes).

Startlingly missing were any memories from designers, manufacturers and workers. After many years of ferreting, I have increasingly used my knowledge of what I call ‘lateral genealogy’ to investigate the lives of just some of the pioneer makers, greatly aided by the Internet and its allowing access to Census Records and certain newspapers. As you will see, some fascinating twists and turns loom out from the fog. I went into some archives backwards too: relevant numbers were the first to be looked up; these often led back to an index, which is where I should have started. Then there was no index for some periods. The whole exercise has been, and still is, one of immersion and understanding: read, do, think, discuss, write, change, cross-reference – in any order.

Rather like the diverse uses to which this tool has been subjected, it has been called many different names through the years, as well as many expletives by modern mechanics sitting at their trays of gleaming fixed varieties. But in earlier times, before the comparatively recent standardization of nut and bolt sizes, spanners were more useful if adjustable, particularly through that period of frenzied velocipede development between 1875 and 1910. Terms of descriptions for the many and varied parts have never settled either, so I have attempted to set some standards. Although I will refer to the specific terms used in individual Patents where necessary, I have had to invent, or appropriate from other branches of engineering, terms that may help to standardize future descriptions for overall clarity, or to provoke heated discussion.

While this book reassembles the evolution, life and progress of the adjustable spanner, revealing its history and evolution of types and styles, it also illustrates something of the human being’s affairs with tools in general: it may even be taken as a convenient microcosm of human perplexity with material technology, that unhandleable monster that knows no philosophy. As I clambered and staggered through the untidy alleyways, I could feel our confusion in attitudes to hand tools and their uses, and now certainly understand some of the constant conflicts and misinterpretations among makers, sellers and users, and sometimes just among makers.

As my research progressed, the issue of tool need reared high: there was often no real practical requirement for yet another design, but, into any one example, several devoted people would put a lot of time and money designing, registering and/or patenting and manufacturing said tool. In the Birmingham area particularly, and with Sheffield not far behind, there seems to have been a constantly running and escalating competition amongst the designers and manufacturers for increasingly novel designs. However, while the identification and classification of these wondrous mechanisms brings bright coloured lights to this book, they often had a short and abused life. The average of the hundreds of thousands of ordinary users, whether mechanics or not, had no idea of this bubbling underground activity and would still pick the poor thing up, twist it the wrong way and finish it off as a hammer.

Certain vivid characters appear: there is the inventor of the lawnmower, Edwin (Beard) Budding, and the first test rider in England of the newly invented American ‘motor cycle’, Thomas Blumfield. The man who married his adopted daughter, Joseph Asbury, and William Kilby, the coach wrench maker accused of murdering his son. Separate books could be written about some of these personalities, particularly the man who produced the most influential adjustable spanner design ever, Richard Clyburn, and two pioneering racing cyclists of the 1890s, the Osmond brothers. ‘Gentlemen’ and ‘grocers’ vied with ‘engineers’ to invent something unique. No one could settle on a name. Surely a fascinating pot into which there is much more to stir.

I am focusing on the United Kingdom for several reasons:

♦

the very earliest examples are from these islands

♦

I live here

♦

America is so vast and the subject is being covered gradually; that is to say that some research has been done by enthusiasts and some data and images have been compiled in books

♦

hardly any research has been done in Europe, particularly into the important early developments in France, Belgium, Germany and Sweden, together with these countries’ trade and design exchange with the UK and, although I would love to dive into their respective archives, I would need to find some kindred spirits in these territories to unearth details – which will not be readily accessible due to the general disruption caused by two world wars

♦

while the Industrial Revolution demanded many and varied hand tools that made or serviced its infinitely complex machinery, there has been too little examination of their evolution and manufacture.

It is inevitable that I will refer to several important foreign connections in this book, but cannot yet go into full details for the above reasons. There was a great deal of intercontinental copying and modifying of designs that fed, and still feeds, the seemingly endless quest to come up with a new, improved or novel way to turn the humble nut.

Despite having immersed myself in this subject for some twenty-five years, new specimens, variations and information continue to appear, so I know that the moment this work is in your grip, it will encourage you to find something important in the workshop or under the bed. In any event, this book will be further enriched, whether by contribution, criticism or condemnation.

Rather than try to weave one convoluted path through the maze, I have arranged the chapters to allow you to focus on defined strands or themes, using Chapter 4, ‘Concise History’, as a hub reciprocally supporting the specific focal points around it.

Components, Descriptions and Construction

1

In parallel with the makers’ confusion over what to call their particular type of adjustable spanner, they could not settle on what to call the parts.

Components

Knurled adjusting nuts (1), (2) and (3).

In Patents, the adjusting nut that is confined in a recess either in the main body to move a shaft running through it or in a part of the moving jaw where the nut runs on a threaded rod has been called:

♦

finger screw

♦

thumb screw

♦

milled collar

♦

milled nut

♦

nut

♦

knurled nut.

We will call it ‘adjusting nut’, possibly prefixed by hexagonal or knurled.

In Patents, the worm in a rack and worm system has been called:

Worms (1), (2) and (3)

♦

nut

♦

screw

♦

screwed wheel

♦

worm or screw roller.

We will call it ‘worm’.

Knurled-headed screw.

We will call a screw with a milled, or knurled, head a ‘knurled-headed screw’.

Threaded barrel.

We will call a ‘milled barrel screw’, such as the adjusting barrel in the 1861 Palmer wrench, a ‘threaded barrel’.

Descriptions

In those types where there is an obvious top and bottom jaw, they shall be called ‘upper’ and ‘lower’.

In those types where there is an obvious upper and lower jaw, or where the jaws are angled even slightly off the handle axis, as in the Clyburns and Crescents, the tool will have a left (L.) and right (R.) side when it is held facing away from the viewer like a human head. This is to enable features unique to each side to be described in the correct place. For example, the impressions on all 1861 Palmers are unusually on the R. side of the head, where most others are on the L.

The term to describe any maker’s indented markings shall be ‘impression’. This is so as not to confuse the action with ‘stamping’, which is more accurately a manufacturing process.

Construction

Although there are many books describing the processes used in mechanical engineering, to which you should refer for details, here are brief descriptions of the main processes used in the manufacture of adjustable spanners.

Broaching The method of accurately enlarging and shaping holes, usually of rectangular section, through solid bodies, as in the Clyburns and any collar that had to slide precisely on or through a shaft. A broach is a tapered bar with laterally formed cutting teeth that is pushed or pulled slowly through a roughly drilled aperture in the work until the widest part of the bar has moved through, when the aperture is then of the correct dimensions.

Die Stamping The process of forming a shape by pressing a shaped block through a sheet of metal and into a corresponding shaped aperture: a kind of guillotine action. The resulting shape may then be further pressed into its final form, after which it is machined and hardened.

Drop Forging The process of forming a whole shape by means of a mechanical hammer. Rather like swaging, top and bottom moulds are made, one on the anvil and one on the hammer, but the item is formed with one immense blow. This enables the mass production of parts. There may be some imperfections round the joins between the two moulds, which, in quality manufacturing, would be ground off.

Filing The process of using hand files to finish work. In most early constructions of adjustable spanners, this process amounted to an art and the only way to achieve a good fit for sliding parts and a good finish in general.

Hand Forging The main blacksmith’s activity on the anvil to fashion the earliest type, the simple wedge, whereby the metal is beaten with hammers into the required shapes. The shaft or handle is formed from a bar; the head is formed from a block, a hole is punched through it for the shaft and the two are joined either by ‘shrinking’ the hot head on to the cold shaft, or by hot welding, assisted by hammering. The lower jaw and collar are formed similarly to the head, but probably the collar part is hammer-formed from bar. The wedge is cut out and hammer-finished. Some of these forging processes were used in later types, particularly the coach wrenches.

Impression The process of registering, or pressing, information on to flat surfaces, usually on the pre-hardened tool. The information may be that of maker, company, identifying logo and/or any Design or Patent numbers.

Knurling A metal lathe process in which a very patterned and hardened wheel, or a formation of wheels, is firmly pressed into the rotating surface to impress a pattern, typically straight or cross-hatched, usually to facilitate the finger gripping of worm, nut, threaded barrel or screw head.

Malleable Casting The process of, or product resulting from, casting a basic shape in the required iron or steel and then machining it, after which it is hardened to finish.

Pressing: see Stamping

Stamping The older term for the process of producing work by, or product resulting from, pressing dies together in, or under, a hammer or press to form a shape by means of dies in a mechanical press, prior to any riveting or other fixing process and final assembly.

Swaging The method of hand forging used on the handles of the earliest forms of coach wrenches. The cupola-like decorations on the end of the handles were made by this method. A two-part (top and bottom) mould was made up to the required shape. The bottom part was secured in the anvil, the roughly formed handle placed on it and the top part, held by the master, hammered down on it by a ‘striker’ or two while the master turned the work, pausing to reheat it when necessary. This process saved iron at a time when it was expensive. After the early nineteenth century, the strikers were replaced by mechanical hammers in larger manufactories and after that any decorations were usually turned on lathes.

Turning The process of forming round bar sections and cutting threads of various contours using a metal lathe. This process superseded the blacksmith’s early tap and die method for forming the threads in coach wrenches. The thread contour was often square, or ‘acme’ (very nearly square). This process also superseded the swaging of ornaments when iron was cheaper and could be recycled.

Patents, Registered Designs and Trademarks

2

The existing document collections of these three main forms of intellectual property protection can be very useful in gleaning details about an inventor, manufacturing company or the particular origins of one tool, but a lot of study and physical travel is necessary to get to a coherent level of information, and running up and down stairs at the National Archives is included. Increasingly, detailed sources are becoming available on the Internet, but I do not think that the many thousands of Registered Design images contained in huge volumes at the National Archives will ever be digitized by its already strained forces – and that is just one instance. At the end of this chapter, a minor though important repository of prototypes is also described.

One of my earliest and continually important routes into the labyrinths of British industrial history was stimulated by the desire to root out any Patent and Registered Design information impressed on a tool. This activity soon led to the reverse: searching for a manufactured example of an amazing Patent or Design, often believed never to have been made – many finds subsequently wrenching me from my earlier suppositions. Later, the investigation into trademarks became equally important. To date, I have collected all UK Patents, most Registered Designs and am still working on trademarks.

There is much confusion amongst tool collectors in the United Kingdom surrounding the history and functions of Patents and Registered Designs in particular; trademarks are obviously visually recognizable, often being simply a typesetting of the company name, or a stylized image (logo) that may include its name or brand name. Finding the information is another matter. Basic information about the process through which it may be found and the locations of existing research material of all these three forms is given here.

Some of the confusion about Patents and Registered Designs can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution’s unpredictably erratic mushrooming, which overshadowed and stunned bureaucratic traditions and is clearly reflected in the several changes in format of Registered Designs between 1840 and 1908. Patents fared rather better, since they demanded a stricter and more defined set of criteria to be fulfilled before being granted. The confusion is compounded by our archive systems’ constant struggle to conserve and catalogue the ever-increasing piles of material, while hampered by continual budget constraints. There is also no one reference source that ties it all up.

An oversimplified description of the basic difference between the first two most important forms of copyright protection is that a Patent tends to protect the inner working of a product, while a Registered Design tends to protect its outward look. Of course, intellectual property items like scientific formulae and chemical combinations can be protected only by a Patent; and wallpaper and textile designs only by a Registered Design. At the start of Registered Designs in 1839, many applications for practical items were beautifully handwritten around an even more beautiful drawing, sometimes coloured, and often describing both inner and outer workings: a mini-Patent in fact. A good example is Richard Clyburn’s registration of his ‘Improved Screw-Wrench or Spanner’ in 1843.

Patents

The first published Patent date was 1617. As Stephen van Dulken has said in his comprehensive reference work, British Patents of Inventions 1617–1977, ‘A Patent is a negative right (that is, a right to prevent others from using your invention), not a positive right to use it.’ Patents from 1617 to September 1852 were retrospectively numbered 1–14359 when printed in the 1850s, so no Patent numbers would have been impressed on tools for this period. The first Patent for an adjustable spanner was that of Joseph Stubs in 1840. A new system started on 1 October 1852, when numbering began at 1 each year; this lasted to the end of 1915. Another new series started at the beginning of 1916 with the first number 100001 and continued until the end of 1977.

So, any Patent number impressed on a tool between October 1852 and the end of 1915 will be that number, possibly followed by an indication of the year. There was no obligation or conformity. Recently, due to the establishment of the European Patent Office, whose database can be accessed via the Internet, a suggested conformity is now in use. Take the Patent number impressed on TERRY’S TURBINE SPANNER, 7671/10; this could have been impressed as 7671–10 or 7671.10 or even 767110. The new conformed version is GB191007671 (country/year/Patent number prefixed by zeros to fill out to five digits). Post-1915 numbers are country/full number; so the conformed version of the Patent for the first ‘pressed-tube’ type, THE BOSS, is GB132278.

‘No conformity’ is aptly illustrated by a neat little specimen impressed with THE “ASHTED” PATENT across the side of its upper jaw. A name search for ‘Ashted’ will find nothing. When the Patent was eventually stumbled upon, it turned out that the two Patentees, Llewellyn Augustus Parrock and Benjamin Waldron, worked in Ashted Row, Birmingham. Another real teaser was the fairly common self-adjust LORVIS by the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA). All specimens have ‘Patent No. 32–48’ impressed on the handle. After much puzzling, the Patent was again stumbled upon, and it had Application Number 32 in the year 1948 near the top. The Patent number that should have been impressed on the tool was 646943.

After a Patent number has been identified, it has to be found. At the time of writing, the European Patent Database holds 99 per cent of GB Patents starting about 1894 and very few before that. This is because the entries are supplied voluntarily and Birmingham Central Library managed to enter a lot of what is there. This most useful resource really ought to be completed prior to 1894 by those libraries and official organizations like the Intellectual Property Office that hold all the documents. This period that most interests our investigation has been addressed by a rudimentary database that exists on CD,1 but it reduces forenames to initials and does not always state the full title of the Patent.

If you have a sense of humour anything like mine, you will enjoy the Charles Dickens short story, ‘Poor Man’s Tale of a Patent’.

Registered Designs

Since 1839, several Acts have been passed, each changing the format of design registration. Before 1839, there was some very limited short-term protection for printed textiles. At 1839, some provision was made for objects. Simplifying, there were two categories, or Classifications: ‘other than paper hangings’ and ‘paper hangings’. This was the First Numerical Series, which I am calling ‘RD(1)’ for the purposes of our specialist study in this book. On 1 September 1842, the Classifications were expanded: Class 1 – Metal; Class 2 – Wood; Class 3 – Glass; up to Class 13 – Lace. The numbering continued from the previous format, so I am still calling this RD(1), adjustable spanners being under Class 1.

From the beginning, the recording of all registrations was split into Representations (visual drawings, photographs later, sections of wallpapers and textiles, and sometimes the actual items such as small pressed metal objects like buckles) and Registers, which, even in themselves, were split into names and addresses, summaries and category (Class) indexes, sometimes complete, sometimes not, and sometimes missing outright. Just to stir up further confusion, the format changed with each Act or Series. All this has to be learnt if sense is to be made of the system and actual information extracted.

Here starts the real complexity. An 1843 Act introduced the Useful Series, which ran from 1 September 1843 to mid-1884 in parallel with RD(1). I am calling this Useful Series ‘RD(U)’. This series encouraged applicants to describe the details of the design, in addition to the image, amounting to a mini-Patent, and many examples will be shown later. Richard Clyburn had registered his famous adjustable spanner design in the ornamental RD(1) on 15 and 18 August 1843 with drawings and no descriptions and, although he must have seen some benefit in these, he very soon took advantage of the new series with his RD(U)3, complete with description. Although it is possible that some metal tools were registered in RD(1) after 1 September 1843, none has been found.

Another Act was passed in 1850 introducing Provisional Designs, divided into ‘Ornamental’ and ‘Useful’, each with a separate numbering system. In at least two cases, ‘Provisional, Useful’ designs were listed in indexes, but missing from the Representations books. These were later found in the Useful Series, having been converted from Provisional.

Yet another Act was passed in 1883. This started a new series from Number 1, which I am calling ‘RD(2)’. The Class format remained, but the books were further divided into ‘Sculpture’ and ‘All Designs except Sculptures’. The Representations books in their present form are enormous, just manageable by a strong person. Some are up to 1ft thick and are packed with wallpapers and textiles, sometimes stuck down and sometimes loose, the whole interspersed with drawings and photographs of everything from cast-iron fireplaces to buttons – actually some real buttons too. The system had got out of hand! There are over 700 books of Representations alone, just to cover the period 1884–1908, and there are no Class indexes, so you can appreciate the major problem of finding anything: throughout this period, you really need the RD number and you cannot leaf through all the books. On top of all this, the National Archives has a further problem, in that the books are starting to fall apart; the original paper was poor and acidic, so it is gradually turning to ‘cornflakes’. The books are kept in huge archival boxes, which at least contain most of the contents. Soon, they will not be accessible at all.

A further Act was passed in 1907. This at least split off ‘Textiles’, which now ran into thousands of books. As far as our subject is concerned, the numbering continued through from the previous Act, so is still RD(2). From this point on, there are Class indexes where one can actually focus on the specific area of interest.

Trademarks

Trademarks registration started in 1876. The only existing reference source is the Trade Marks Journal, issued twice a week, settling down to once a week, which may still be accessible in the original in some of the regional libraries, but is available only on microfilm at the British Library, mostly in negative. There is little use in approaching this area until one knows most of the manufacturers’ names because the indexes are annual, preceded by an alphabetical list of names and issue number and/or page number for each application. The earliest years have a separate column for Class, in our case Class 13, and another column in which a declaration is made of the particular mark’s first use. So, John Bedford and Sons registered their lion holding a globe on 4 April 1876 and declared that it was used ‘Twelve years before 3rd Apr. 1876’. The Abingdon Works Company Limited registered its famous bulldog head with the words KING DICK below it on 24 September 1881 and, in the ‘First use’ column declared ‘Not so used’. From both of these examples, one gets an accurate plot on the first use. Any change of a trademark’s circumstance, quite often a slight change of the company’s name, address or a change of ownership, is also registered. Altogether, a very useful source of information, but one can get through only about six years in a full day, if the eyeballs don’t fall out.

Here again, the documenting system was strained at the time and shortcuts were made, making subsequent research very difficult. Through the early part of the twentieth century, the Class number was dropped from the indexes, then the full company name was shortened.

The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (later: The Royal Society of Arts)

This society was formed in the mid-1700s to do as its title describes, by offering prizes that it called ‘Premiums’ for individuals to propose innovatory designs under the several categories that it stipulated. Three designs for adjustable spanners have been found in the Society’s Transactions between 1808 and 1824. For mechanical designs, models or actual working specimens were submitted along with the drawings and kept in the Society’s Repository, which no longer exists. Some of the models were transferred to the Science Museum, but no adjustable spanners exist.

The Name

3

One of the most significant facts about this maligned tool is that its name in the English language has never yet really settled globally since it appeared before 1800. At the present time, the name is usually ‘adjustable spanner’ in the UK, ‘adjustable wrench’ in the USA and sometimes ‘shifter’ or ‘shifting spanner’ in the west of England and in Australia. If we look at the term in other languages, some of this is historically significant and some is just more confusing.

There is no doubt that the term ‘wrench’ started in the UK and was carried to the USA by emigrants. The term ‘spanner’ had certainly appeared in the UK by 1830 and very gradually proceeded to dominate ‘wrench’. That process of dominance in the UK seems to run in parallel with the increased sophistication of mechanisms and their refinement of accurate adjustment. The term ‘wrench’ was kept alive in, or fed back to, the UK because of the power and magnitude of American imports.

Looking back at the earliest conception of the name, there are at least two main points of view: those of the user and the maker. To get an idea of user perception, here is a non-comprehensive survey across UK newspapers between 1815 and 1900.2 The relative occurrences are shown as percentages:

♦ screw key

♦ screw wrench

♦ coach wrench

♦ screw spanner

♦ shifting spanner

♦ adjustable spanner

♦ adjustable wrench

♦ adjustable screw-key

♦ key wrench

55 per cent

28 per cent

6 per cent

6 per cent

2 per cent

2 per cent

0.6 per cent

0.2 per cent

0.2 per cent

The terms with ‘screw’ in them all occur earlier than the others and continued to be used up to the end of the survey period. The term ‘key’ is significant in that the name in most industrially active European countries was translated from ‘English key’: clef Anglaise (French); llava Inglesa (Spanish); chiave Inglese (Italian); and Englander (Key implied) (German). But with the wane of the UK as an industrial leader through the latter part of the twentieth century, the term has changed in France to clé à molette (key with wheel) and to the juicy Schraubenschlüssel (screw key) in Germany. Tying up also with earlier British terms, there is the skiftnyckel (shifting key) of Sweden, the regulowane klucza (adjustable key) of Poland, the ‘telescopic nut key’ of Russia (leaving the hieroglyphics out) and the Moersleutel (nut key) of Holland.

To get an idea of the makers’ ideas of the name, here is a full survey of its name described in UK Patents by UK inventors and manufacturers from the first one in 1840 to 1900. There were several American patentees who invariably used the general term ‘wrench’ in GB Patents: these have been left out in an attempt to give a more accurate picture of the UK’s thinking. As a side note, there was one application in 1855 from the USA through an agent, but it was not until 1879 that Americans applied directly for British Patents. The other times that the general terms ‘wrench’ and ‘spanner’ have been used was usually to avoid any specific pronouncement of style, or, in the case of ‘spanner’, to use the term in its definition of ‘that which spans’ – and the fact that it is adjustable is implied. In a few cases, the general term is qualified by phrases like ‘for axle nuts’. Many of the applications used the dual term ‘adjustable wrenches or spanners’. The years of those Patents in which two or more names were used in the title are underlined.

Occurrence of Tool Name in the Title of GB Patents

Name

Years

Total

Adjustable key

1875, 1899

2

Adjustable lever spanner

1866

1

Adjustable locking spanner

1885

1

Adjustable moving spanner

1892

1

Adjustable screw key

1894, 1895, 1897 (×2)

4

Adjustable screw spanner

1889, 1891 (×2)

3

Adjustable screw wrench

1891 (×2)

2

Adjustable spanner

1871, 1875, 1878, 1878 (×2), 1879, 1879, 1881 (×2), 1883, 1884, 1884, 1885, 1886 (×2), 1887 (×3), 1888, 1889 (×2), 1889 (×2), 1890 (×2), 1890, 1891 (×2), 1891 (×2), 1892 (×2), 1893 (×2), 1893 (×5) 1894 (×6), 1894 (×4), 1895 (×3), 1895 (×2), 1896 (×6), 1896 (×2), 1897(×5), 1897 (×6), 1898 (×2), 1899, 1899, 1900, 1900

79

Adjustable wrench

1863, 1867, 1871, 1878, 1878, 1879, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1889 (×2), 1889 (×2), 1890 (×2), 1890, 1891, 1891 (×2), 1892, 1892 (×2), 1893 (×4), 1894, 1894 (×2), 1895, 1895, 1896 (×2), 1897, 1897 (×5), 1898, 1900

41

Adjusting nut spanner

1887

1

Adjusting nut wrench

1887, 1894

2

Adjusting spanner

1870, 1872, 1873, 1887

4

Adjusting wrench

1887

1

Automatic spanner

1885, 1895

2

Automatic wrench

1885

1

Bedwrench

1845

1

Claw spanner

1898

1

Clyburn spanner

1873, 1906

2

Coach wrench

1855, 1891

2

Lever wrench

1864

1

Mechanical wrench

1862

1

Monkey wrench

1874, 1888, 1895

3

Movable wrench

1893, 1893

2

Moveable key

1895

1

Moveable screw spanner

1892

1

Moveable screw wrench

1892

1

Mov(e)able spanner

1860, 1861, 1867, 1891, 1893 (×2), 1893, 1895, 1897

9

Moving spanner

1886, 1887,1890

3

Nut key

1871

1

Quick adjustable rack spanner

1894

1

Screw key (or ‘screw-key’)

1852, 1856, 1864, 1866, 1877, 1880, 1887, 1889, 1894, 1896, 1897

11

Screw spanner

1840, 1859, 1861, 1862 (×2), 1866, 1869, 1877 (×2), 1881, 1884, 1891, 1895, 1897

14

Screw wrench (or ‘screw-wrench ’)

1840, 1855 (×2), 1856, 1857, 1859, 1860, 1860, 1861, 1861 (×2), 1862, 1862 (×2), 1864 (×2), 1865 (×2), 1866, 1866, 1867, 1869, 1869, 1877 (×2), 1878, 1880, 1881, 1881, 1883 (×3), 1884, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1893, 1897, 1899

39

Self-acting wrench

1863

1

Self-adjusting spanner

1864, 1868, 1873, 1874

4

Shifting key

1893

1

Shifting spanner

1845, 1877, 1890, 1892, 1893, 1895, 1896, 1897 (×3)

10

Shifting wrench

1865

1

Spanner

1864, 1873 (×2), 1875 (×2), 1877 (×2), 1880, 1883, 1884, 1888, 1889, 1890 (×2), 1892, 1893, 1893 (×4), 1894 (×3), 1895 (×2), 1896 (×3), 1896, 1897 (×4), 1897 (×3), 1898, 1898, 1899, 1899 (×2), 1900 (×3)

44

Spanner with moveable jaw(s)

1887

1

Spring-handled spanner

1890

1

Spring-handled wrench

1890

1

Universal spanner

1887

1

Universal wrench

1887 (×2)

2

Wrench

1857, 1864 (×2), 1867, 1873 (×2), 1875 (×2), 1877, 1878 (×2), 1879 (×2), 1884, 1884, 1886 (×2), 1887, 1890 (×2), 1891 (×2), 1892, 1893 (×3), 1894 (×2), 1895, 1896, 1896, 1897, 1897 (×2), 1898, 1898, 1899

37

From this table, it is clear that, although ‘adjustable spanner’ dominates, the inventors and manufacturers were struggling to fix a name, so what chance had the public after that? The pattern continues today when a non-specialist advertiser on any of the many selling media, from newspapers to eBay, picks up a name from a former advert for a particular type of tool and uses it wrongly for a different one: the favourite one at the time of writing is Girder, when the item is clearly a King Dick (classic style).

Somewhere between the two extremes of maker and user is the factor, whose catalogue would struggle to bridge the gap – and unquestionably further complicate any settled understanding, certainly not aided by the competition amongst inventors for novel adjusting methods. Further hampering this history is the fact that adjustable spanners in that hub of activity, Birmingham, were classed or hidden in the general term ‘steel toys’, further explained under Birmingham in Chapter 4, ‘Concise History’.

Monkey Wrench head, 1845.

As for the continued use of the term ‘monkey wrench’ and the extremely fanciful stories of its history in the USA, the fact is that the term travelled across from England in the early 1800s. The term appears in the R. Timmins & Sons pattern book of around 1845 and, even then, many of the engravings were made much earlier. ‘Monkey Wrench’ was engraved over an adjustable spanner with a head that looked like the profile of a monkey’s head, different from other types of the period. The fact that one would hold this tool by the ‘tail’ (handle) and twist it to adjust may also correspond to the growing English fascination for foreign animals and toy representations in the early nineteenth century. There is an unsubstantiated report of the use of the term ‘monkey wrench’ in 1807 among the papers of the Lancashire manufacturer and factor Peter Stubs,3 but the original has not been found and the report may have come from a misreading or the continuing misuse of the American term.

Opposing a recent American proposal that the name should be globally standardized to ‘adjustable wrench’ throughout the world, the term ‘wrench’ primarily means to tear or twist aside, or out of shape, often with violence. Well, that may have been how the tools ended up in the early nineteenth century, certainly after abuse by the brainless, but this book clearly reveals sophisticated and ingenious designs that were capable of fine action: it also reveals that it is mostly the ill-tuned operator that does the wrenching, not the tool.

Concise History

4

The adjustable spanner was not invented by any one individual – it evolved by necessity, with particularly rapid acceleration throughout the Industrial Revolution. It was even more certainly not ‘Invented by Bahco’, the Swedish company with the acronymic name derived from its founder B. A. Hjörth & Co. The man who came up with that design was J. P. Johansson in 1892: it was simply a restyling of the real invention by Richard Clyburn in 1843, which was not the first design by any means, but truly the first transverse rack and worm mechanism that fascinated many later designers and constantly challenged them for improvements through its 120 years of life. And although Leonardo da Vinci may have drawn some kind of screw mechanism that could have lent itself to our subject, neither I nor da Vinci scholars have yet found it.

Earliest type: simple wedge (14in; 12½in; 12in).

The first physical manifestation of an adjustable mechanism was the simple wedge adjuster. This probably evolved from the blacksmith’s need to bend, twist and turn bar and sheet metal. There is also a suggestion that Mediaeval invaders may have devised a similar tool to bend back the iron bars across windows, but I can give you no proof. The adjustable scroll wrench certainly existed in the blacksmithing world, although it was seldom used. The fixed scroll wrench, for curling wrought-iron work, was usually made up in differing spans by the blacksmith welding two short bars at right angles to the main shaft or lever-bar. The adjustable version had the upper one fixed, with the lower one protruding from a collar that rode on the main shaft and was locked by hammering a wedge in-between the back of the collar and the main shaft.

The first simple wedge adjustable wrenches certainly existed in the eighteenth century. This deduction is from the styling of existing specimens, but not yet from any documentation in early mechanic’s books or paintings. The construction was like that for the adjustable scroll wrench: the top jaw was fixed at right angles to the end of the shaft. The lower jaw was formed with a collar that slid along the shaft and a wedge was driven towards the head between the back of the collar and the shaft. The wedge was usually formed with a foot at the narrow end to stop it falling out. Available evidence from specimens, most obviously that no two early ones have ever been found to be identical and that they vary widely in relative dimensions and contours, points to their all being made to individual requirements and specifications by blacksmiths up to about 1830. Even though the impression of a maker’s name on early examples was practically non-existent, the desire to personalize with non-functional features showed itself: ornamental grooves in the top jaw; a stylish curve to the main shaft or a pierced scroll at the end.

From about 1800 to 1850, there was a prolonged crossover period in all metalworking trades to increasingly specialist factory systems, from the extremes of father and son in one workshop, to a group of specialist workers occupying a few adjoining workshops, to all under one ‘factory’ roof. This progression embraced and developed mechanical improvements right through from new methods of basic forming of shapes to huge overhead drive rods and belts running such machines as lathes and grinders. Although this simple wedge type was still in some catalogues in the 1930s, no doubt due to its suitability in rougher non-precision situations, its method of manufacture changed, becoming more automated and standardized, with hand-forging being replaced by power hammers and shapes being formed by stamping. As evidence of this more modern method of manufacture, and of one of their uses, two specimens have been found virtually identical, impressed with World War I army markings.

Variations, ‘improvements’ even, to the simple wedge adjustable wrench include: the bracing of the lower jaw by forging a bar (between 1in and 2in (25–50mm) in length) to its underside; bearing on the front of the main shaft to keep the lower jaw at right angles to the shaft and so parallel to the top jaw; and a screw through the back of the collar to replace the wedge. In catalogues, this type has been called wedge wrench, wedge spanner or key wrench. The reason it lasted over 100 years is that it was suited to the rougher work on some parts of the early railway systems, on farms, in mills and on early steam mechanisms where there were only a few different-sized square nuts to adjust and not too frequently. It also suited the rougher operator where the necessary application of brute force and its doubling as a hammer would not stop the tool working. There is some evidence, mentioned above, that it was also suitable in World War I, where two bangs with a hammer were much quicker than any kind of screwed adjustment and may have meant the difference between life and death.

Back screw replaces wedge.

With the flowering of mechanical aids to man’s imagined ‘improved’ life came the screw thread. Nearly everything moved on, or was adjusted or fixed by it. By 1800, the single-bar coach wrench had appeared. There are no claimants to its birth. Although the nineteenth-century Western world demanded mechanization and was soon surrounded, carried and aided by machines for every purpose, many of them bristling with hundreds of non-standard nuts and bolts, the engineer’s focus was on improvements and inventions of ever-more complex machines to service machines. As a result, the comparatively simple little ‘key’, adjustable or fixed, vital though it was, got rather disregarded in the rush for reform and grand notions of progress. An example of a rare entry in a trade directory is that of one Thomas Green, coach wrench filer, High Street, Wednesbury, in the 1818 edition of Parson and Bradshaw’s Directory. There are no other references specifically to coach wrenches in this directory, so we can deduce that Green was working for a coach smith, who fashioned wrenches along with many more parts for coaches.

Early screw adjustment.

Single-bar coach wrenches (12⅞in; 9in; 8⅛in).

Double-bar coach wrenches (6⅝in; 8¼in; 15½in).

As its name suggests, it was used extensively on coaches, which, defining the term in the context of the tool’s use, meant anything going along a road on wheels. The upper jaw was attached to a shaft that was threaded at its lower end. This ran through a rectangular collar, linked by a single bar to a round sleeve. This held and secured the top of the handle, which was also threaded to receive the threaded part of the shaft. So, turning the lower handle adjusted the tool. While still able to operate after fairly severe abuse, these tools had two main weaknesses: the joint between the single bar and the round sleeve was usually too thin in the design and soon bent out of alignment, or even fractured, when force was applied; and the retaining ring on the top sleeve of the handle, which was shrunk and beaten on in manufacture, came loose. This style was soon ‘Improved’ by the advent of the double-bar coach wrench, sometimes called ‘French Pattern’ – an early, maybe the first, example of design exchange between countries in this field.

Most early specimens were blacksmith-made with hand-cut threads, often formed by a crude tap and die set made up by the blacksmith himself. Many handles featured non-functional cupola-like ornaments at their ends, a noticeable decoration that lasted much longer on French versions than on English. The main gripping part of the handle was usually finished off with facets in octagonal formation. The end ornaments were formed by the blacksmith’s skill in swaging, in which the top half of a mould of all or part of the shape was hammered down on to the corresponding bottom half, usually by a boy ‘striker’ on the anvil, while the body of the work was rotated by his master. The finished result can look as if it had been cut on a metal lathe, but the swaging method was used well into the lathe age since it lost no metal from the work in an era when iron was still precious. Another feature on all early single-bar coach wrenches was the hammer head formed at the back of the upper jaw: the makers were clearly indicating that the tool should, or would, double as a hammer. Sizes ranged from 6in to 20in, with the component parts usually in proportion, but sometimes unusually short handles were made for access into the increasingly tight situations in ever-more complex machinery dictated by the Industrial Revolution’s progress.

Barlow text (The Transactions of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Vol. 26).

Barlow drawing (The Transactions of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Vol. 26).

While these practical developments that relied on the use of the screw thread continued in the manufacture of adjustable spanners as required by engineers and fitters, a staggeringly prophetic design emerged due to the pioneering works of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, later to become the Royal Society of Arts, or RSA. This manifest its aims by offering prizes that it called ‘Premiums’ for innovatory designs that fitted its several stipulated categories. One such category was ‘Mechanics’, under which a Mr William Barlow offered his design for a ‘Wrench for screw nuts of any size’ in March 1808.