On Thu, 3 Jan 2002, Lawrence Walker wrote:
> 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".
I got out of auto (Honda primarily) repair 20 years ago. But in THOSE
days, in northern California (and presumably a few other places),
"Crescent" WAS used by otherwise competent professionals to refer to any
of that type of adjustable wrenches, regardless of manufacturer. (Simple
lapse of trademark into common usage, like "Xerox") In extremely formal
usage, manufacturer would be specified (again, just like usage of "Xerox")
"Adjustable wrench" was used some, but was considered to be not a narrow
enough term.
"Vise-Grips" and "Swiss Army Knife" were used ONLY for those specific
brands. That was because the imitations were NO GOOD, and no professional
mechanic would be caught dead with such poor quality.
BTW, there are two brands of Swiss Army Knife: Victorinox and
Wenger. With a few exceptions, for certain special models such as
left-handed, Victorinox is the better one.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin_at_xenosoft.com
Received on Thu Jan 03 2002 - 16:44:23 GMT