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An intact decal would clinch the wartime use of red for me — did any get out onto the civilian market? — but I'm not trying to nail down a typology. I'll leave that to others with much bigger collections of examples. For whatever it's worth, I have no intention of repainting the 6-inch wrench.

Don, as it happens I also have a 6-inch Ridgid pipe wrench with the same B-7-4 date code and it's painted red too, and scuffed to the same extent yours is. Perhaps I've missed it earlier in the thread (or others), but weren't these wartime wrenches factory-painted black?

No help with the OEM, but it looks like you have a #1 Robertson and some number Torx...

Regarding the cordless/corded wars, what matters is what you're doing and who's paying you to do it. If you're on the clock at a job, then you need the fast and flexible utility of cordless even if it means the nuisance of working out a battery management plan. However this straightforward...

My go-to chemical items are (in no special order): Evapo-Rust, Fluid Film, Ronsonol/Zippo lighter fluid, GooGone, 50/50 ATF/acetone, shellac, various stains, Titebond (I, II, and hide), Goop. I'll probably think of some others and will add as an edit. Lighter fluid is what I use first with a...

I have a Chinese-made but licensed Wilton 4-inch (not a bullet style) that had a crummy paint job when I got it. I took it apart, stripped off the paint, and used Rustoleum's Verde Green as a rattlecan substitute for Wilton's own color. (Little did I know at the time how rare Verde Green would...

Calks (also spelled as caulk) were standard on lumberjack boot soles: they made riding logs and breaking up jams in rivers easier and safer through better footing.

I agree with your last suggestion — a "field expedient" marriage. The result does make me wonder how much interchangeability there is for parts among same-size wrenches with the same design. Collectors treasure all original parts — but the plumber just needs to get the !!@##@! pipe problem fixed.

I mow about half an acre and use a gas-powered mower that I push. Mowing shoes are old NB cross-trainers (?) with a sole that grips well enough for the job. There's part of the yard that slopes, but in that area I do "contour mowing," to coin a term, so the push effort by me is pretty much...

I got one of those in an antique shop on Rt. 1 in Maine. (I paid maybe $10?) But like yours it is all but pristine. Maybe there was an unissued supply of these things that went out into the world when the Bell System was broken up — or perhaps they just weren't that useful for Bell's technicians.

Several solutions have been given for cleaning up the handles. I have found that shop hand cleaner Goop does a good job on getting off a lot, if not all, grease and grime from handles. For example, with Channellock's blue plastic, unless the covers are scuffed and grease is embedded in the...

Following up on my questions above, the Internet Archive tool catalogue site has flyers from 1939 and 1945 that show no stamped logos or model numbers. However they do show a decal or stick-on label on the frame at the main pivot point with the shaking-hands pattern seen in the later stamped...

Does anyone know when the '42 patent models started being marked with the Vise-Grip-two-hands-shaking logo? I picked up a 10-inch today, very heavily rusted with no markings visible. After wire-wheeling, the patent and name appeared but not the Vice-Grip logo. In Don's post above, you can see...

Can you get the seller to take a photo of it and send it to you? I have had two vises with bent handles. One was small and I could straighten it out almost entirely, the other is a 5-inch Craftsman with a smaller bend and I've left it as is. Both vises work without problems. Really, two things...

My vintage regular user is a Peck, Stow, & Wilcox 10-inch sweep bit brace, model #102. It's on the left in the image below. The brace belonged to my mother's father, who worked as a handyman in boatyards north of Boston. I think he acquired the brace second-hand because the model was put on the...

It took me a moment or two to realize those are instant coffee containers, not 5-gallon buckets!

This is pretty much how I handle files. Only instead of using a tool cabinet drawer, I have a tray (16" x 11" x 2.5" deep) of heavy cardboard that came from a local garden center when my wife bought a whole bunch of small flowers in pots. (I've made a habit of picking these things up on garden...

Nothing rare here, just a restoration job I did on a 442 that needed some help. Bought for a buck at a local ReStore, and I had to cut off the blue plastic because it had cracks where I could see some rust below. Off they came since I'm not a collector and don't mind the bare steel handles in use.

Might want to put the adjustment nut into the cage — it'll work a lot better!

White may look good on the web page and when it arrived in the shop, but what's it going to look like after a couple months — weeks? — of being opened and closed with inevitably grimy fingers?