Does anyone know this manufacturer?

[Bockscar]

I was digging through a box of wrenches that I picked up the other day and the google machine tells me nothing about this wrench.

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[welder4956]

Possibly this:

http://alloy-artifacts.org/bonney-forge-tool-p5.html

 

[Oldtuleguy]

That's probably a service wrench that came with some equipment. Krieger machine is a defense contracter and machinery company. I would speculate made for krieger by bonney?

 

[Bockscar]

That's probably a service wrench that came with some equipment. Krieger machine is a defense contracter and machinery company. I would speculate made for krieger by bonney?

Interesting in reading the linked alloy-artifact.... that the 1032A was the only style known

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[Oldtuleguy]

Yes I find that interesting as well. Perhaps krieger ordered a number of those wrenches only in that size?

 

[Advan]

http://progress-is-fine.blogspot.ca/2013/08/vanished-tool-brands-krieger.html

 

[Oldtuleguy]

http://progress-is-fine.blogspot.ca/2013/08/vanished-tool-brands-krieger.html

Nice find! The mystery continues....

 

[four.cycle]

^ I love that website!

Hey, there's one listed on Ebay if you want to add to your Krieger collection!





Because, you know.... a 1-7/16" open end always comes in handy!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Kr...-Wrench-1039-A-V-1-7-16-x-1-1-4-/302590842989

 

[Oldtuleguy]

There seem to be a number of nice examples! Perhaps krieger was just a wartime line of bonney?

 

[Private Lugnutz]

It's no surprise that these wrenches all bear a late 1943 (e.g., "JU") or a very early 1944 (e.g., "AV") date code. Krieger Steel in Long Island City, NY, had two (2) small contracts for "Engineers Wrenches" with the U.S. Army Ordnance Dept in late 1943. They obviously outsourced the production to Bonney, who marked them with forged-in date codes accordingly. This is on a long list of things that I need to add to the database at ToolsArchive.com.

See thumbnail for the contract record and some idea of what else Krieger was supplying. They were not a tool mfgr.

 

[Oldtuleguy]

So krieger ordered wrenches from bonney and sold them to the military

 

[four.cycle]

^ sounds about right.

they most likely were not the only company doing that. (see RTEC / Randolph Tool Equipment Co.)

war is big business. I'm sure there were lots of people trying to get their own little piece of the pie.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

So krieger ordered wrenches from bonney and sold them to the military

No. Or at least I wouldn't put it like that. That sequence implies that Krieger bought wrenches on spec, with their own capital, and then went out and found a customer for them. The US Army Ordnance Dept contracted with Krieger to supply a number of engineers wrenches, at a certain price, within a certain schedule, and Kreiger subcontracted with Bonney to fill the orders. The US Army Ordnance Dept got their wrenches at their cost. The Bonney cut is on Krieger.

^ sounds about right.

they most likely were not the only company doing that. (see RTEC / Randolph Tool Equipment Co.)

war is big business. I'm sure there were lots of people trying to get their own little piece of the pie.

I don't agree with the R.T.E.C./'piece of the pie' analogy in this case, BK. R.T.E.C. went into the business of subcontracting during the war, went after some crumbs that the Signal Corps was leaving in the wake of its dealing with bigger manufacturers directly, and was immediately out of business as soon as the war ended. Krieger Steel Sections was making steel truck bodies (tankers, trailers, vans, etc) before the war, during the war ($13M worth), and after. In fact, they still had a CAGE code in the NSN system well into the 1990's.

Note that both of their contracts with the US Army Ordnance Dept for wrenches were let in the same month (8/1943) and terminated in the same month (12/1943), which looks like a workaround for a single contract threshold to me.

Note also that the government, including the Treasury Dept (Lend-Lease, Federal Standard Stock Catalog - forerunner to post-war GSA NSN system), and the US Army - both Quartermaster Corps (QMC) and Ordnance Dept, had several direct contracts with Bonney for wrenches and other tools throughout the war, starting in April 1941. (As an interesting factoid that not many people know and only a Bonney aficionado, a WWII collector, or any technical details nut would appreciate, the "585" forged-in to the shank on Bonney's model number 585 series of DOE engineers wrenches is the QMC drawing number for a DOE engineers wrench in a 1940 specification for on-board truck toolkits. You won't find that kind of information on Alloy Artifacts. )

Note also that Krieger did not make a habit out of their brief 5-month excursion into the tools business, with no contracts for any tools of any kind with any other agency.

Finally, note that except for one Navy contract for truck bodies, Krieger had no contracts with any agency other than the US Army Ordnance Dept (i.e., they were tight, nearly exclusively).

In short, whether these contracts were at the behest of the US Army Ordnance Dept, Bonney, or both in collaboration, it looks to me like it was a one-time deal that was worked out between all parties to get wrenches from Bonney that for whatever reason they could not get directly at that time.

 

[leg17]

Possibly the military did not contract simply for wrenches.
The contract package included wrenches.
The winning bidder then put the package together, often with the major item(s) by themselves and the ancillary items purchased by other appropriate suppliers.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

The War Production Board Major War Supply Contracts books I have, published in 1945, covering all contracts at $50,000 in value and above, from mid 1940 to late 1945, are over 1,000 pages long, with hundreds of contracts on each page. That's where this excerpt came from. I have transcribed all the data from all the contracts by the Treasury, all Navy bureaus, and all Army branches with all the major and minor tool manufacturers in these books into an Excel database where the data can be sorted by any of the fields (mfgr, agency, value, dates, and contract content) and studied. Some contracts were very general (e.g., "Tools", Tool-Sets"), and some were very specific (e.g., "Engineers Wrenches").

With collaborators, I have spent endless hours using this data with secondary sources (US Army Ordnance Dept and QMC manuals, specifications, etc) and collected examples to re-construct the past, to help fellow WWII collectors determine the original contents of tool-sets. Often, when the sources are thin or ambiguous, analysis and theory is required.

This case is just the opposite. It can't be any more definitive than what I explained above.

We have an OEM (Bonney) who used date codes, we have a historical record of contracts for a specific product ("Engineers Wrenches") with a specific vendor (Krieger) for a specific customer (ORD in the contract number is US Army Ordnance Dept), with a very tight contract window (8/1943 - 12/1943), and we have examples of Bonney-made Krieger-stamped engineers wrenches, exclusively, with date codes that fall, exclusively, within that range. On top of that, we in the WWII world have never seen other examples of wartime tools with Krieger markings. There is no evidence of larger Krieger tool-sets (and, not surprisingly, no contracts, and no mention of Krieger in any tool-set manuals). Again, this case couldn't be any more cut and dried than it is. I only wish that every case was this unequivocally clear and easy.

 

[twertsy]

The War Production Board Major War Supply Contracts books I have, published in 1945, covering all contracts at $50,000 in value and above, from mid 1940 to late 1945, are over 1,000 pages long, with hundreds of contracts on each page. That's where this excerpt came from. I have transcribed all the data from all the contracts by the Treasury, all Navy bureaus, and all Army branches with all the major and minor tool manufacturers in these books into an Excel database where the data can be sorted by any of the fields (mfgr, agency, value, dates, and contract content) and studied. Some contracts were very general (e.g., "Tools", Tool-Sets"), and some were very specific (e.g., "Engineers Wrenches").

With collaborators, I have spent endless hours using this data with secondary sources (US Army Ordnance Dept and QMC manuals, specifications, etc) and collected examples to re-construct the past, to help fellow WWII collectors determine the original contents of tool-sets. Often, when the sources are thin or ambiguous, analysis and theory is required.

This case is just the opposite. It can't be any more definitive than what I explained above.

We have an OEM (Bonney) who used date codes, we have a historical record of contracts for a specific product ("Engineers Wrenches") with a specific vendor (Krieger) for a specific customer (ORD in the contract number is US Army Ordnance Dept), with a very tight contract window (8/1943 - 12/1943), and we have examples of Bonney-made Krieger-stamped engineers wrenches, exclusively, with date codes that fall, exclusively, within that range. On top of that, we in the WWII world have never seen other examples of wartime tools with Krieger markings. There is no evidence of larger Krieger tool-sets (and, not surprisingly, no contracts, and no mention of Krieger in any tool-set manuals). Again, this case couldn't be any more cut and dried than it is. I only wish that every case was this unequivocally clear and easy.

But what if, er, didn't the, er, aren't there, er, couldn't there be.......?

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[Private Lugnutz]

Snerk.

 

[twertsy]

do you have any information on Arcturus wrenches?

I don't RJ. I think I have a couple somewhere but that's where the info ends on those for me.

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[Bockscar]

I don't RJ. I think I have a couple somewhere but that's where the info ends on those for me.

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Hey twertsy
I filled out the registration for the tool archives....looks really good to feed my new obsession of vintage tools

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[Private Lugnutz]

do you have any information on Arcturus wrenches?

Yes. Located in Santa Monica Calif., having three contracts worth $512K between 8/44 and 5/46 with the US Army Ordnance Dept for "Engineers Wrenches". And, not surprisingly, every example of an Arcturus tool I have ever owned or seen has been an engineers wrench with its Federal Stock Number forged-in on the shank. EDIT: Infamously, no example of an Arcturus 723 (3/8 x 7/16), the smallest in the 5-wrench set in the on-board tool-set and 6-wrench set in the GMTK, has ever been seen.

 

[shanny19]

I have often wondered if the reason Snap-On and other manufacturers did not warrantee military tools was not because of the inferior quality of steel used during the war years. All tool companies would have had to deal with the problem.

IDK, interesting theory. I do know that collecting tools near a major AFB, it's pretty easy to come by no-date-code Snappy. (It's also easy to find a fanboy on this board with his sum total of wrenching experiences served in Nissan dealerships who wants to argue that no-date-code Snappy Does. Not. Exist. But I digress)

 

[Oldtuleguy]

My snap on dealer tells me it's because military tools are sold at a deep discount and sometimes made to different specifications.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

I missed Ricky Joe's post earlier in the Krieger discussion.

Coincidentally, snapmom and I are in the middle of some PM exchanges on the subject of Snap-On guarantees during the war. For years I have seen references to them being dropped in forums, and even the Collecting Snap-On site makes blanket statements to that effect, but that is not what the Snap-On catalogs P (1942) and Q (1944) indicate. The guarantees were in effect in Catalog P without caveat and in Catalog Q, with the exception of certain tools denoted with a *, and, those same tools have been found with a "NO GUAR" marking and/or no date code. That implies that other tools (not denoted with the *) were still guaranteed. We are in the process of pooling resources and trying to get a better reading of why the blanket assumptions have always been made.

Whether or not standard Snap-On guarantees (other than those denoted in Cat Q) were actually in place, I have never seen the quality of the steel used during the war cited as a reason. If anything, WWII was a pleasantly surprising forcing factor for the steel industry and AISI, discovering through a WPB-enforced consortium that "New Emergency" steel compositions, invented in late 1941 and early 1942, were equivalent and in some cases superior to pre-war compositions in strength, hardenability, and ductility, while using 4 x less amounts of the alloying compounds as their pre-war compositions. The war quite literally transformed the tool steel industry from expensive pet recipes to triple-alloys that still dominate the industry today. Other steels used in wartime (such as high Carbon and Mangenese alloys) to avoid the alloy restrictions on chrome, nickel, molybdenum, and vanadium, were used in economy lines pre-war.

If you’re interested in reading further, an excellent book on the subject is Steel’s War Record, published by the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), New York, 1940. Online link (may require special registration) here. I have attached a few key pages in the thumbnails below.

For a shorter reference, try an essay entitled “The Battle of the Metals,” by Percy W. Bidwell, in the July 1940 Issue of Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations. Link (may also require special registration) here.

 

[d42jeep]

do you have any information on Arcturus wrenches?

Lugz provided the info, I'll provide a picture. It's a 1/2" x 19/32" ISN 25.
-Don

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Steel brokering definitely had some pitfalls, including bad batches. It continued after the war. Still, I've never seen it cited as the reason for Snap-On (or any other mfgr) dropping guarantees. Off the top of my head, I know that SK, Sears & Roebuck (Craftsman), Bonney, and Williams did not drop guarantees. They all published notices about finish (i.e., no chrome plating), material (no pre-war recipes), and unavailability (of tools restricted by WPB L-216). But I haven't seen anything about blanket voiding of guarantees for commercial sales. If you have a historical reference for that, please share it. I'd love to see it.

 

[alton1911]

I was digging through a box of wrenches that I picked up the other day and the google machine tells me nothing about this wrench.

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Doesn't Krieger mean warrior in German?

So Im guessing pre-war. Seems like an odd name for US manufacturing, at least post war.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

I do not. It was a surmisal, not a verifiable piece of information.

Thanks. While steel brokering was a serious issue, not all ships, tanks, and planes fell apart, needless to say, and the survivability (and continued useability) of wartime tools speaks for itself. Nevertheless, these questions about guarantees do persist. If something new comes out of this round of revisiting it, I'll report back, probably in the Snappy thread.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Doesn't Krieger mean warrior in German? So Im guessing pre-war. Seems like an odd name for US manufacturing, at least post war.

It's a fairly common American name. People of German heritage have been coming here since the 1700s, and were, as a nationality, the third largest immigrant group between 1880 and 1920. If the Doors guitarist's father had started a steel fab company, it, too, would've been called Krieger!

As for the date and everything else, read the thread.

 

[alton1911]

It's a fairly common American name. People of German heritage have been coming here since the 1700s, and were, as a nationality, the third largest immigrant group between 1880 and 1920. If the Doors guitarist's father had started a steel fab company, it, too, would've been called Krieger!

As for the date and everything else, read the thread.

Working my way through the thread. Yes, I’noticed after traveling around to various other countries including some sub Saharan African nations that there seems to be a certain European influence to most all of North America. No offense intended. Just a comment, It seems silly now, but no harm intended.
Personally, I’m a big fan of Mausers and Volkswagen so not every German influence was unappreciated. In my defense, I know of whole family’s that dropped parts of their name because of the German sound.

 

[Ole Slewfoot]

If you think of how the SO warranty works, a rep comes to your shop and exchanges the tool for which you paid a super premium price.
No apply this to a wartime scenario. The socket you bought at bulk or better rate breaks 5371 miles across the Pacific from the closest SO dealer in Hawaii... so Joe the SnapOn Man orders one from the mainland, jumps in his boat, tools over to the foxhole where you've been hiding for a week as bombs fall on every side, yells 'Good luck!' and heads home.... I think it makes sense for the military to pay a little less, and handle that themselves. Shipping and tracking your busted socket back from a combat area wold be borderline stupid wastage of resources at the least.

As for Arcturus, in 1962 they moved their forging operation from Santa Monica to Oxnard, and went on to build space shuttle fuel tanks and stuff, recently bought out by PCC, and in Aug 2017 closed the last 50T hammer in the west.

see it working

 

[Private Lugnutz]

I have an obstruction wrench, 1/2" extension, and engineer's wrench by them, and have only seen the WW2 Jeep kits on ebay.

The only wartime Arcturus tools that I am aware of are engineers wrenches. As far as I know, nobody in our hobby has ever seen another Arcturus wartime tool. So I would be very interested in seeing photos of your obstruction wrench and your 1/2-inch drive extension.

As for "WW2 Jeep kits", mainly this is very liberal (bordering on false) eBay advertising. I'll explain why. It's true that the on-board jeep toolkit had a 5-wrench engineers' wrench set in it. So did the on-board toolkits in all the other trucks (i.e., GMC, Chevy, International, Mack, etc), except Dodge, which had a different wrench set, with a 2-wrench overlap. The same five (5) wrenches plus a sixth (731-A, 1 x 15/16) made up the 6-wrench set in every GMTK. Arcturus was not a factory supplier to Willys or Ford (or GMC, Chevy, etc). They supplied engineers wrenches to the Ordnance Dept, and did so very late in the war. The Ordnance Dept most likely issued them to depots as spares for on-board tool-sets and GMTKs. (Loss and breakage/failure rates were very high.) Arcturus is known to have made 5 of the 6 wrenches in the 6-wrench set - and again, nobody has ever seen an Arcturus 41-W-991 "723" 3/8 x 7/16 engineers wrench, the smallest in the standard 5- or 6-wrench set.

No offense intended.

None taken.

If you think of how the SO warranty works, a rep comes to your shop and exchanges the tool for which you paid a super premium price. Now apply this to a wartime scenario....

First of all, if this is in response to my comments questioning the idea that guarantees were voided, I wasn't referring to tools made by Snap-On during WWII and sold to the military on contract. I was referring to Snap-On's commercial sales during WWII.

As for military tools, of course it didn't work like the face-to-face sales rep to single mechanic exchange policy, whether the mechanic was at a homeland station or deployed to a theater of operations. I don't think anyone would be naiive enough to suggest so. The US Army Ordnance Dept, which was responsible for all tracked and wheeled vehicle maintenance, bought tools in large volume, including spares. Lots of spares. Loss and breakage/failure rates were figured into the orders, and into the volume price rates.

 

[Farmer J.]

As for Arcturus, in 1962 they moved their forging operation from Santa Monica to Oxnard, and went on to build space shuttle fuel tanks and stuff, recently bought out by PCC, and in Aug 2017 closed the last 50T hammer in the west.

see it working

Wow.! Thanks for posting. A few years ago i drove past there, now I know what was going on...

 

[Ole Slewfoot]

First of all, if this is in response to my comments questioning the idea that guarantees were voided, I wasn't referring to tools made by Snap-On during WWII and sold to the military on contract. I was referring to Snap-On's commercial sales during WWII.

Not a specific response to you, and definitely wasnt addressing commercial sales.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

As first reported in the 2018 Garage Sale thread, I found another one of these KRIEGER DOE engineers' wrenches. These were made by Bonney for a late 1943 Krieger Steel Sections contract with the US Army Ordnance Dept. This one is an ISN 1032A (15/16" x 3/4") and, like many other examples, it has a "J.U." (October 1943) date code.

 

[outofbounds]

Yes. Located in Santa Monica Calif., having three contracts worth $512K between 8/44 and 5/46 with the US Army Ordnance Dept for "Engineers Wrenches". And, not surprisingly, every example of an Arcturus tool I have ever owned or seen has been an engineers wrench with its Federal Stock Number forged-in on the shank. EDIT: Infamously, no example of an Arcturus 723 (3/8 x 7/16), the smallest in the 5-wrench set in the on-board tool-set and 6-wrench set in the GMTK, has ever been seen.

Looking for a place to drop this wrench, found in my latest "box and contents" dalliance, and this seems as good a place as any.... 25/32" x 5/8". Interesting thing to me about this example is that the 25/32 side is a decidedly different shaped head than the much rounder 5/8". I have inspected it closely and would aver to the fact that it has never been altered.

 

[d42jeep]

A couple of mine.
-Don

 

[outofbounds]

A couple of mine.
-Don

Interesting, Don, seems yours feature the similar distinction of having different head shapes at each end, except your the larger sizes are "rounder".... Wish I'd found this wrench a week ago, I'd have sent it packing in your direction.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Arcturus wrenches are renowned for two things: FSN's, and their odd shapes and anomalies. Look at the way the ends of the top wrench in this group was milled.

Not unexpectedly. They were a small (* to say the least, see footnote below) company started in late 1944 to explicitly take advantage of the war machine and the coming Cold War and Military-Industrial Complex, and DOE wrenches was their only known foray into hand tools. Point being they didn't have a lot of tool and die experience.

They had their forging sights on bigger fish. Better said bigger birds (Aerospace), a field they plied with small special parts through at least the early 1980's.

The name comes from the Arcturus Zone, which was the name given to the rich Quaternary oil deposits of the alluvial plans in LA County (Le Brea, Santa Monica, etc). Arcturus Oil Company, HQ in San Francisco, had hundreds of wells there from 1915 through the 1930's, and I think Arcturus Mfg may have been associated. I have to double check my notes.

* A 1950 article in the LA Times about their expansion, after a massive Northrop contract, says they started in a "tin shed" in 1944.

 

[outofbounds]

Arcturus wrenches are renowned for two things: FSN's, and their odd shapes and anomalies. Look at the way the ends of the top wrench in this group was milled.

The name comes from the Arcturus Zone, which was the name given to the rich Quaternary oil deposits of the alluvial plans in LA County (Le Brea, Santa Monica, etc). Arcturus Oil Company, HQ in San Francisco, had hundreds of wells there from 1915 through the 1930's, and I think Arcturus Mfg may have been associated. I have to double check my notes.

* A 1950 article in the LA Times about their expansion, after a massive Northrop contract, says they started in a "tin shed" in 1944.

What a fantastic and colorful background that you've worked up for such a modest little company! Thanks for that.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

You're welcome. Arcturus has occupied an oversized fascination within the WWII/Jeep community for years..