If you want to walk that road, consider that it wasn't so much a matter of pride and availability of chrome, but rather a matter of manpower available along with energy and tooling.
The war production wrench was redesigned to serve it's purpose, being a wrench. It was forged in one or two hits of the forging press, moved down the line where it was ground to size and excess material removed, to the next station where it was stamped with size and name before it was inspected by a person with a quick eye, and a Go/NoGO gauge who tossed the good wrenches into a wood box for shipping, possibly wrapped quickly in a sheet of oil paper, or newspaper.
The post war wrench was struck 6 or more times in forging, cleaned up, excess material removed, ground to size, inspected, polished, copper plated, polished, Nickel plated, polished, inspected and chrome plated, inspected, wrappped, boxed and cartoned for shipping. The manpower was available and the energy was available too.
The wrench made during the war required 3 or 4 people to make, 1 forging hammer.
The post war wrench required probably 12 people, 2 forging presses, 3 buffing lathes + inspectors.
In terms of units delivered, probably 6 to 8 war wrenches were made to every 1 post war wrench.
Lean and mean manufacturing came into being for the war and it worked.
