Tools are the lifeblood of hot rodding. Without them we’d be beating on stuff with rocks and sharpened sticks, still. Admittedly some of us may still do that. But look, not all tools are cutout to age well and become nearly universally adopted by gearheads. Take this video, for example. Mr. Hand Tool or Hand Tool Rescue isn’t just a restoration guy, he also, from time to time will go into the records of the patent office and find really strange tools that people have patented over the years and make them from scratch. In this case it is a 111-year old concept known as the Swivel-Jaw Alligator wrench and it’s purpose was to be used on tapered fasteners. See a bunch of tapered fasteners these days? Neither do we. Apparently, no one saw many back in 1911 either.
Think of this as a smaller and potentially more convenient version of a monkey wrench. Why? Because it works kind of the same way and while it seems tough to envision that from a still photo, when you see the finished product you will understand. Like a money wrench the “teeth” basically only bite into the fastener one way. Conceptually this is a cool idea. Unfortunately it seems that the application was so narrow even back then that this has been all but lost to history…but no more.
This is great stuff and we dig not only the skill but the attention to detail here in this creation!
