Patent Pending Crescent Wrench with Brinell hardness test marks.

[ethanfez]

Was trying to find some of my less nice tools to take to college with me and found this in one of my tool piles. From what I can tell it matches the 1915 patent. That patent was filed in January of 1915 and approved March 1915. That makes for only a couple months that they could have made patent pending ones. It also appears to have marks from Brinell harness tests. My dad worked for quality control for a few years and he says those are exactly the same as the marks form Brinell tests. My best bet is it was one of the early ones that they tested to make sure their quality on the steel was good and it was taken home by someone who worked for Crescent.

I can't seem to get pictures to work so I got this link of my pictures.
 http://imgur.com/a/4SqSp

[Papaw]

I put up your pictures-Papaw

Welcome to Tool Talk. The patent pending may refer to a change or modification to the original.

If you are referring to the dots stamped on the wrench, I think those are owner's marks, not any sort of test marks.

[leg17]

Brinnell test leaves a different indentation, (from a ball bearing)
Rockwell test leaves marks that look something like these shown, but more shallow.
Besides, the Rockwell test is in a range harder than the wrench.
Agree with Noel, looks like owners marks.

[john k]

1915 would have been real early for the Crescent style, from what I have found, and have been found to be wrong, often.   One thing, how thick are the jaws?   The early Crescent and Diamalloy/ Diamond Caulk wrenches I have,  the jaws are nearly double the thickness of current offerings.  On a 12 inch adjustable some of them would be over 3/4 an inch thick.  What are these?

[kwoswalt99]

You see owners marks like that all the time, sometimes it's holes drilled, sometimes grind marks, etc.

[amecks]

I worked with a young guy who would buy a brand new wrench or tool and immediately take it to the grinder and put 4 grind marks in it.  Oh my gosh, that would drive me nuts.  I once told him that my mark was 5 grind marks and  I would steal all his tools and add a grind mark!
Al

At least your wrench doesn't have grind marks or holes drilled. 

[gibsontool]

I don't know anything about how hardness test are performed but I tend to agree with the others that it's most likely an owners mark. Interesting to read john k's post about the jaw thickness, I've always wondered when they whent from thick jaws to thin,I wonder if they one day decided to stop producing the thick jaws or were the wrenches maybe offered as heavy and standard duty? Can anybody shed a little more light on this.

[Northwoods]

Due to improved steel alloys?
From AA:
"In 1930 Crescent began using "Crestoloy" alloy steel for a new line of adjustable wrenches. The extra strength of the alloy steel allowed the new wrenches to be thinner and lighter than the older models, but still stronger. Advertisements for the new wrenches typically claimed them to be "30% Thinner" but "200% Stronger". "

[lptools]

Hello, Everyone. I wish that I had a dollar  ( I would take less:-) for every owner's mark that I missed, or got stuck with!!!!!!!!  Add that to the sawed off, ground down, wrench heads, cracked sockets, and planes with a weld, I could easily have enough money to afford more of these. Always fun, always learning, Lou

[gibsontool]

Thanks to northwoods for the Crestoloy info, I'm familiar with AA just never got that far. It's still morning and I learned some thing, I like that.