It is probably that the wrench benefits from the stength of forging the sides, so that casting the wrench's large flat surfaces doesn't result in any diminished qualities.
Almost all wrenches are 100% forged. I'm an engineer. I've helped design products and something shaped like a wrench would be forged all the time. It's not cost effective to cast a wrench handle then forge the ends on it - that's two operations. Wrenches start out as a round blank of material that's heated, then hot forged into their final shape.
I ran this by a fellow engineer who used to work for a company that makes tools in the USA and often come in
green plastic boxes. I won't mention any names but this company begins with S and ends with K.
He said every single one of their hand wrenches was drop forged just as I described and no f'n way would any part of them be cast.
On a slightly different tangent, forging does result in a metal that often has better characteristics for the type of loading hand wrenches are put in, as the metal grains are pushed out of shape along the irregular boundaries instead of being cut if they were machined. Any wrench that is cast would require finish machining around the ends that grip fasteners and would be far too expensive (especially if it were cast to the tolerances needed in good quality wrenches), not to mention there would be a parting line along the middle of the tool.
Trust me (and chad s and Merkava_4). These (and all other) wrenches are forged. I have a pile of forged parts right next to me that have a very similar surface finish, black oxided to boot!
) if they had been chrome at that price, but the industrial finish just doesn't thrill me in a wrench set. I would have removed the red paint.
