A couple of wrenches found at a yard sale

[Bill Houghton]

A cute little Barcalo offset box wrench, 3/8" by 7/16", marked "Barcalo-Buffalo U.S.A." on one side, and "7/16 FORGED 3/8" on the other.  There's a reversed "E" on the Barcalo side; Alloy Artifacts indicates that this may mean wartime production.

And a Williams open end wrench, 11/16" by 5/8", marked 626X on the face side (with the "Williams" logo on the 11/16" end, and [I think] "Forged...U.S.A." bracketing a "W" in a diamond under the name).  It's a thin wrench, almost tappet-wrench thin, but I've never seen a tappet wrench this short.  Not sure of its intended use.

Either of these rarities?

[rusty]

620 series are checknut wrenches. Thin so they fit on the bottom nut with a regular wrench over it on the second nut. (The same reason tappet wrenches are thin, tappets are just a special case of checknut wrenches)

>Either of these rarities?

Barcalo produced boatloads and boatloads and boatloads of wrenches...

The checknut wrench is from a standard series, so not special application, however, only certain folks would ever need one and buy a set, and they are easily broken. I think I run across one for every several hundered regular wrenches..

[bgarrett]

Barcalo produced boatloads and boatloads and boatloads of wrenches...

Are there any production figures?   I have BBs that I have been using for 50 years and I buy everyone I find.
It seems impossible to make up sets because of the huge variety