SPEED-HED and Quali-Kraft Wrenches

[Yadda]

Ratcheting wrench set from last weekend's estate sale.  The 9/16 wrench is a Thorsen Speed-Hed wrench. Alloy Artifacts points out Spped-Hed wrenches bear a stocking resemblance to  Vlchek wrenches. The others are Quali-Kraft, a Montgomery Ward tool brand.  They were manufactured in Japan.  Also, per Alloy Artifacts, the Thorsen Speed-Hed wrench is from the mid 50's making it close to 70 years old.  The Quali-Kraft wrenches could be from as late as the 90's.

[four.cycle]

Yes. The Thorsen "Speed-Hed" was a 1950s experiment.
The "Quali-Kraft" stuff was manufactured for Petersen. Originally they were producing product in country, and later went offshore and outsourced it.

Quali-Kraft / adjustable wrench see Petersen Tool Co., El Dorado, KS / first production run was U.S. made / https://www.datamp.org/patents/displayPatent.php?number=3555939&typeCode=0 /

The Thorsen ad is from 1952

[d42jeep]

A few wrenches and some more ads.
-Don

[Yadda]

Cool, thanks for rhe info.

[four.cycle]

Don's images don't show a year. That first one I posted is 1952. This one is from 1953. Curiously, they do not show up in any of the "catalog" pages I was able to round up from the 1950s.

[Bill Houghton]

Trying to figure out what the half-dressed lady has to do with wrenches.   

[Yadda]

I'm sure her mechanical aptitude is very high.