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.

Not for Germany, and not in a prison.

Before China, before Japan, there was Germany.

Germany exported to a large fraction of the world. They exported anything and everything that could be manufactured.

And they were good, very good. They were masters at adjusting the quality to price ratio of any good to the exact, precise level for the country the good was being exported to.

Exporting to Britain? Make it 1st quality, price it accordingly, going to Spain? just a little shoddier, and a bit cheaper. Tribes in the Borneo rainforest? make it complete junk, sell it for a dollar...

Even the US with all it's manufacturing expertise couldn't touch them....

Rusty:

There is also a "7" stamped on the wrench shaft, which may be an internal quality code (7th quality?) or a country or region designation key.

I was aware of German-English commercial warfare in Africa in the late 19th century. This wrench is probably a relic from that period of German economic imperialism.


Thanks for the informed reflection on this wrench's historic provenance!

Old* Wrenchmensch

*Yesterday was my 74th birthday!

I have a 6 in. Monkey wrench that was made by Jordan.  Also in Germany, but the quality is considerably better than yours.  Maybe I was lucky and got a higher grade.

By the way, Happy Birthday!!

Mike

Thanks, Mike!