Crescent wrenches (was: Nomenclature (was: NEXT Color Printer find

From: Lawrence Walker <lgwalker_at_mts.net>
Date: Thu Jan 3 14:58:06 2002

 Well I've worked most of my life with tools, including Garages, machine
shops, construction , the oil-patch, the film industry as grip and "electric",
the railways, had a bicycle shop, and many other mechanical things and in
Canada it was always specifically referred to as a crescent wrench. Before I
learned that Cresent was a company I always thought it referred to the
shape. A request for a"adjustable" wrench would have elicited a momentary
pause and then a caustic "vice-grip" or "monkeywrench"?
 Then again each region has it's own language like "tubes" and "valves".

Lawrence

> ! From: Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) [mailto:cisin_at_xenosoft.com]
> !
> !
> ! On Tue, 1 Jan 2002, Chris wrote:
> ! > I know the facts, and I know exactly why it carries that
> ! > name (much like
> !
> ! It's a nice analogy, but only partially relevant for this particular
> ! issue.
> ! I don't know what they're teaching kids these days, but in
> ! the time period
> ! for which this list is relevant, mechanics did/do indeed refer to any
> ! adjustable wrench of that particular design as a "Crescent
> ! Wrench". They
> ! do NOT use the term "Crescent Wrench" to refer to any other style of
> ! adjustable wrench, and would consider THAT misuse as comparable to
> ! referring to a box-end wrench as a "socket".
>
> Maybe I'm dating myself, or just sounding stupid, but with my basic
> hands-on mechanic experience, I always called them 'adjustable' wrenches,
> because that's what they did. They adjusted to the size you nedd.
> Never quite realized what exactly a Cresent wrench was...
>
> --- David A Woyciesjes
> --- C & IS Support Specialist
> --- Yale University Press
> --- mailto:david.woyciesjes_at_yale.edu
> --- (203) 432-0953
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