Turning Wrenches

Does it matter which way you hold a wrench, The answer is, of course, use a box end, you block head or a socket, obviously, but when on the application you can't, or there's not enough clearance and seemingly where all the questions and feedback from your coworkers start to come into play is on the old open end, people seem to have thoughts. I've always been told it matters, I've always called them Crescent Wrenches. Crescent may have made these popular, I think their technical name is Knuckle F***ers, but anyways, these have one fixed jaw and one adjustable floating, I'm ass So first we're going to test that principle, is it true? Does it still apply to modern tools, we bought two of each of a couple brands to test them both ways and then throw the book of standards, Pushy's Way, to see what they can do. Then we see, also, is there any change on a traditional open end wrench based on the direction it's oriented when turned? We got two snap-on 17x19 wrenches to find out, and even a classic model of the same snap-on wrench from days past for the winner to go up against simply because we're curious and Pushy's practically pining at the idea. So are these old wives' tales or best practices being passed down to the next generation? Let's dive into it. There's a reason on every wrench there's a long jaw and a short jaw sort of end. You can either be rotating with the long jaw on top here, pulling or pus Those are the two camps. On t But there is a purpose to t Once there's an obstruction, The offset head gives you twice as many angles of approach. So let'see, starting off with crescent, I mean, how do you include crescent wrenches without including crescent? The bako is made by Snap-on Industrial Brands in Spain. It looks a bit nicer, it feels a lot smoother, a little less slop in the jaws, and the crescent is made by Apex Tool Group who owns that brand, it's made in Vietnam. Up first is the crescent, with the recommended force supplied pus The crescent tool is snugged up against the hex as much as you can with your fingers, then wrenched on with the hex starting at the very bottom of the throat opening. We're starting with a 17mm regular grade 5 class 8. 8 type fastener for now to see what it slips at, but we'll be going up until they all break. The crescent eventually gets up too, and we'll be using the ASME spec coming up, so we're using newton meters here so far, 207. 9 newton meters before its jaws let the hex turn enough to no longer climb an applied torque. Now is that good? Let's use the bako to compare and find out, also on the same common ve A lot of these setup here is just making sure the head of the wrench doesn't get pinched by the arm, have to maintain a gap here even if it is paper t But yeah, keep in mind all the torque is being measured up here at the hex. The bako gets up to 155. 6. Hmm, didn't see that coming, I'll be honest, the jaws just sort of open a little, then slide a little. Not all that Maybe the bako prefers turning with the wrench in the other orientation, force being applied to the handle towards the longer fixed jaw, not away from it. No, 148. 9, and yeah, it's broken. The th Let'see how the crescent gets on. T 147. 3, yeah a lot less now than that 208 or so it made before, didn't break, but you can see how the jaws were wedged apart, all these are sort of just sliding so far on that hex. And all the wrenches turned that second way, made less, one of them a lot less and the other one broke from it, whereas it didn't from the original way that even crescent points out here on the wrench that you should be turning it. We're gonna call this myth confirmed, just seems That difference between them though, I'd say we're not done exploring that, both tools used in the correct orientation are still working so let's address that. By opening up the good book of Feosmee standards, how engineers designing tools gauge the performance of these, there is an adjustable wrench section and a 10 inch class calls for an incredible 508 Nm, that's 375 foot pounds from a 10 inch adjustable wrench. I mean I know ASME is typically more stringent than DIN metric European standards but damn I don't know how they expect that from these tools. They recommend a 1 and an 1. 8 inch hex mandrel to test these with so we'll be using that and if they don't break here, we're gonna continue testing until they do. The crescent hugging t It's no longer just slipping but starting to bend open those jaws and push the hex away from that lower throw area in the process despite it originally starting down here in the throat. But is able to stack on 389. 3 Nm or just 77% of the ASME spec, 287 foot pounds is way north of where we figured these would reach. Let'see if these Spanish made snap on owned bako can improve, maybe it doesn't prefer smaller sizes w The bako starts out well, it really doesn't want to bend or budge, that reluctance to open causes that hex though to wiggle its way up and increase leverage out on those working jaws. T Leaving us in a smoky disappearing act. A hand tool making smoke that's when 9 Nm, just 55% of that standard somehow. But miles above the 148. 9 it broke at Lascaux, really But t It didn't break on 1. 8 hex but on t 4 t 3 so maybe it's awesome damage, its Before we settle this wrench side debate with traditional wrenches, we do have some scores This isn't a best adjustable wrench episode, let us know if you'd T 25-10mm or so tapered jaws for now, t And hardness, that was strange, not somet On the Baco wrench taken to over 1 inch hex we get mid 30s, that's pretty soft. And on the other wrench, run sort of upside down we get mid 40s, what you typically see, low 40s, that's not a good sign 30s is too low. From what we've seen it would appear Baco Spain has some work to do spot checking these tools and double checking treatment processes, small sample size I know but that's almost more relevant if you're only buying two and you still see t You don't expect to find that the best vise grips are necessarily from vise grip anymore, maybe a topic for another day but surprise to see the cheaper one clearly on top. T And t 8 equivalent hex hardware to see where it would slip first for you, the jaws are oriented in a way we're calling basically standard here, the way you're encouraged to swing a Crescent wrench, force going away from the longer wraparound jaw. The wrench here makes it to 132 newton meters, no idea if that's good, haven'tested a regular class bolt in 17mm before, but we do have another wrench we can slide onto here, the other way, force going towards the longer wraparound jaw, and this isn't something we expected to find, but the hex starts to, Instead of the points on the hex cramming into the jaws and slipping, some of t 4, not a huge difference all said for how much different it looked, but larger difference than we expected. From what we can tell, turning it to simulate a constant force down on the wrench to prevent it coming out, we're going to put a smooth jaw clamp here that will resist but eventually push out of the way a force to, and t 9 it's getting here, pretty bang on to about even with the first test. So we're going to test the 19mm end just to be sure, but first we wanted to give you a quick shot of a subject we thought might be a cool factoid for you, our snap on wrench is getting worse, getting better. T In t 4, w The last t And that makes for 197. 2 here with that wrench flipped over and some for supply down. And with the longer jaw further away from you now, we see 198. 3, about back to even again, though slightly getting those bragging rights again. From what we can tell from our data is t Does that mean it's always going to better? We don'there's a reason wrenches have the default way may be awkward and cause you to slip off that bolt head, so use what you feel is going to do the best job. And let's be real, something probably is in the way That's just life. But we can at least with our data give two recommendations. One, if you're using a wrench this way and the bolt or nut is giving you grief, like going to need a lot of torque, push down onto the fastener with a constant but not massive force while you crank on it, we find that will basically even the score from what any h And two, if you have the option of either way all the same, this orientation seems to, and this is our main discovery, so don't quote us Unless it's an adjustable wrench, then go t I hope you learned somet I know I did. We make episodes Click some t