Wrench, Monkey

A “monkey wrench” is a hand-forged adjustable wrench from the early 1900s.

The monkey wrench is a type of adjustable wrench, a 19th century American refinement of 18th-century English horse-drawn coach wrenches. It was widely used in the 19th and early 20th century. It is still occasionally used in maintenance and repair when convenient.

The term monkey wrench is sometimes used loosely, usually by non-tradesmen, to refer to the pipe wrench because of their broadly similar shapes. A wrench with smooth jaws is not used for turning threaded pipe.

Wrench, Monkey - image1The largely US idiom “to throw a monkey wrench into…” means to sabotage something. The British English equivalent is “to throw a spanner in the works”.

Adjustable coach wrenches for the odd-sized nuts of wagon wheels were manufactured in England and exported to North America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They were set either by sliding a wedge, or later by twisting the handle, which turned a screw, narrowing or widening the jaws.

In 1840, Worcester, Massachusetts knife manufacturer Loring Coes invented a screw-based coach wrench design in which the jaw width was set with a spinning ring fixed under the sliding lower jaw, above the handle.

After 1939 companies manufactured monkey wrenches until the mid-1960s. Monkey wrenches are still manufactured and used for some heavy tasks but have otherwise been mostly replaced by the shifting adjustable wrench, which is much lighter and has a smaller head, allowing it to fit more easily into tight spaces.

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