Crescent Wants To Be Your Monkey Wrench
By Benjamen Johnson
Crescent may not call it a monkey wrench, but many of their retailers do. It’s clear their Auto Wrench — John Piccone gonna sue somebody! — evolved from the wrench Charles Moncky patented. Witness its flat toothless jaws and how the lower jaw adjusts instead of the upper. This is no pipe wrench.
Crescent designed this wrench for automotive work. They forge it from tool steel and machine it to exceed government specifications. Then they chrome plate it to protect the wrench from corrosion.
Although it’s available in 9″, 11″, 15″, and 18″ lengths, I’m recommending the 18-incher next time you need to throw a “monkey wrench” into the works. It has a jaw capacity of 4-3/8″ and runs almost $90.
Crescent Auto Wrench [Manufacturer]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon
December 1st, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Ha, ha! Clever title!
Automotive work? For anything more sophisticated that a Model T, I don’t see it. And $90 (granted thats the price for the big one) will buy you enough wrenches of the Snap-On truck to cover about 80% if automotive fasteners.
I have worked in one trade and watched and talked to people in other trades, and have never seen that tool used once. (Maybe an oilfield worker would use one?) And anything more than $2 is a lot to pay for something that’s sitting in your grandmother’s kitchen junk drawer that she’ll let you have for free.
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I am in the Air Force and we use them all of the time. We use it for large hydraulic lines. The 90 degree offset gets into a lot of places a regular wrench won’t, plus the handle readily accepts “Torque Extenders,” (also known as cheater bars.) It is easier to deploy with a few Ford wrenche, as we call them, than with a dozen different size open end wrenches. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t grab one of these babies to loosen a battery cable or try to loosen a nut, but it has it’s place
December 4th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
The Ford wrench is also quite common in civilian aviation, and as mentioned, is a standard tool for large hydraulic lines. The wide, smooth, flat surfaces spread the load and reduce the chance of damaging expensive fittings. It’s useful enough that it is included in the minimum list of tools that my employer requires me to carry.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:17 am
I use one of these in plumbing. It works great, usually, for taking apart flush valves. Quick to change size and it doesn’t leave tool marks.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
I originally posted this because when I found this tool searching around the net, I couldn’t get the Foo Fighter’s Monkey Wrench song out of my head (the refrain was the original title). That and “Monkey Wrench” just conjures up all kinds of images when you say it.
Its really cool to see people posting how they use this tool. I suspected they were used in in applications where you didn’t want to damage the nut or fitting, but I had never seen one in any body’s toolbox before. I’m not likely to go out and buy one for my toolbox either.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
It is not a “moncky wrench”, “monkey wrench” or variety thereof. Those are different in design.
The wrench design in question, usually called a “Ford” wrench (because Ford supplied them for adjusting water pump packing gland nuts among other parts and they are often found with Ford script stamping) has been available for many years. The classic USAF “Ford” wrench was made by Diamond Tool until a few years ago (as I found out when trying to order more for our F-16 aircraft maintenance tool kits) and is famous in the military. They rarely bend, break, or wear out. The Crescent shown is almost identical, and they are uniquely useful for their right angle design combined with short jaw length and wide adjustment. They are not for small hardware, but are VERY nice to have in a well-equipped mechanics tool box.
August 26th, 2009 at 4:56 am
The Charles Moncky thing is an urban or pre-urban legend. No wrench patent issued to him has ever been found. Also the Crescent wrench is not even a monkey wrench but has always been called an auto wrench by he various manufacturers and now by collectors. This is also what Crescent is calling them in their ads.
They were included in the tool kits of numerous cars over the years including ever Ford Model “T” and “A” produced. These were low quality and probably gave the wrench a bad reputation, But there were higher quality ones made by Diamond Tools, Mossberg, Billings & Spencer, and Crescent, (they made a 9″ and 11″ back in the 1920’s). The Pierce Arrows had high quality 11″ and 14″ Billings & Spencer auto wrenches in their tool kits and Indian Motocycles has a little 5 incher.
I have used a big Diamond on many a hitch ball nut, These Diamonds in excellent condition can still be found used for a fraction of the new Crescent price.