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

From: Lawrence Walker <lgwalker_at_mts.net>
Date: Thu Jan 3 23:51:05 2002

 And then there is "Leatherman" the modern eqivalent of the "Swiss Army
Knife" of which there is no eqivalent I know qualitywise altho the quality is
declining as demand increases.

Lawrence

> 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
>



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