Yesterday, we stopped in at a local flea market where we found 5 crystal champagne flutes for $2.
I also picked up a $2 monkey wrench that, although roughly finished, had the inward curve of the old Girard monkey wrenches. I saw no marks on it, so I knew it wasn't Girard. I got it home, cleaned it off, and discovered the wrench was covered with rough casting marks, grinding wheel marks on the sides of the jaws, and a pyramidal grinding pattern on the top of the top jaw to obscure the weld. The beech handle is also misaligned with the metal at both ends. The knurling on the adjusting screw is thin. The wrench is 9 3/4 inches (25 cm.) long.
I thought the wrench had been made in the Russian Gulag, then I found the tiny "Made in Germany" stamp at the end of the top jaw (picture II). So maybe it was made in a German prison at some unknown date in the first half of the 20th c.
Has anybody else found one of these wrenches? Is it purposely made so crudely to be sold at discount stores either around the globe, or in the 4th World, or in Europe, or just in Germany?
Today, August 13th, I found another, diamond-shaped, stamp on this wrench's upper jaw. The only letters I could make out are the four surrounding the upper point of the diamond stamp: DP ^ WA.
