Brown: Crescent wrench a wonder tool

Christmas time is here. It is the wonderful season of friends, family and joy. It is also the season of giving. And if gift-giving is in your plans, I’m here to make my recommendations.

What do you get the person who has everything? Something that you can never have too many of.

Audra Brown

Down on the Farm

There is not one perfect gift, but there are things that are approximately close enough. Such a gift must be flexible in potential application, useful in a wide range of situations. We want a gift that lasts a long time and does not fail, falter, or accidentally insult someone unintended. (Indiscriminate insolence is sloppy. I suggest careful targeting.)

While more than one item fits this bill, it prompts me to recount the value of one tool in particular that I have found indispensable across a wide field of times, places, and problems.

There is no substitute for a 15-inch crescent wrench. More generically, it is known to some as an adjustable wrench.

No matter the moniker, the fact of the matter remains. It is the shiniest part of the hand-tool trio equivalent to the trinity of consumable necessity that is duct tape, nylon ties, and some sort of rust-penetrating lubricant.

The 15-inch crescent is of an obvious length and weighs something like 3 pounds. Much lighter than a set of wrenches that would have to range from smallest to an inch and three-quarters, including the standard sizes, the sizes that are divided by 64 and 32, and the metric.

In one tool, all those flat-sided nuts and bolt heads of average or better condition can be effectively manipulated with one tool.

But wait, there’s more. It can be used as a sort of clamp, holding flat pieces of material. With a secure hold and the leverage of the 15 inches, you can grasp and bend a lot of stuff.

How about those situations when delicacy and the civilized concepts such as rotation are just too refined to get the job done? Never fear.

While not the perfect instrument of pounding that is a hammer, a 15-inch crescent wrench is admirably adept at pretending to be a hammer.

It’s the proper size that most cheater-pipes will shove on the end and add leverage. It could even be a weapon if the situation arose.

You can rarely go wrong with a 15-inch crescent wrench. Add a hammer, a pipe wrench, and the trinity of consumables and the world is yours to take apart and put back together.

Audra Brown needs more of them. Contact her at: [email protected]