Bending awrench, on purpose

I need to make a dogleg wrench to adjust the fan on my rototilller because I can not buy one. I figure heat it up red hot and bend the middle part as needed. Question is how to cool/ temper the bends. Since this will see little use I think I will buy a harbour freight set to get the 1 1/2" wrench I need.
Bill D.

just heat it red, bend it, let it cool slowly and use it, all will be fine..........

Yeah, how much torque are you going to put on that wrench? Heat red so you can bend the angle you need. Let it cool in the air. It will most likely have more strength than it's bent condition will let you can direct any excessive force that the original strength makes any difference.

Don't buy HF stuff. That store should not be supported. They are providing bad tools, taking money from bugets to buy better tools and putting your friends and neighbors out of work. As the money goes to China, the value of your dollar decreases and eventually you will not even have any dollars because your friends and neighbors can no longer participate in the economy and all the money is in China. Buy responsibly! How you spend your money is the last great power individuals hold in this country.

When I need to make something one-off like that I usually find the wrench at a local pawn shop or the like - you can often find decent single wrenches there for very little cash outlay.

Every VersaMil I ship has a MARTIN WRENCH (made in America) that I heat and bend both ends to about a thirty degree angle. I buy the black wrenches, which when you're done heating and bending, you can hardly tell they've been heated up.

Since you want to bend a 1 1/2 inch wrench- I highly recommend you buy the Hydraulic end wrenches. These are much thinnner proportions than the standard box or open end wrench. Even new, they are not that expensive. Available from MSC or any industrial supplier. The trick in bending is just get them hot enough to bend- not overheating them.

You could always cut it with an abrasive saw and/or dremel-type cut-off wheel and then weld it into exactly the configuration you want. You'll burn the temper out of it either way but torching it into softness will probably make it weaker than cutting/welding if that's an option...

Bill D said:

I need to make a dogleg wrench to adjust the fan on my rototilller because I can not buy one. I figure heat it up red hot and bend the middle part as needed. Question is how to cool/ temper the bends. Since this will see little use I think I will buy a harbour freight set to get the 1 1/2" wrench I need.
Bill D.

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Sounds like a Gravely, Bill. If it is, whatever you do will be fine - you'll never put the kind of torque on it that a 1-1/2" wrench can handle. Unless you use it on something other than the fan.

I made one up from a piece of 1/4" plate. Had to mill the head down to a bit over 1/8", and put just one bend (hot) into it rather than a dogleg. Works well. If I did it again, though, I might make two wrenches instead, each with a slightly different angle to the jaws (mine are straight on). You can just barely swing the wrench enough to get it on the next set of flats.

I believe that there is a cheap specialty automotive wrench that is very close to what you need. It may need some filing or bending. I have no idea what it is called or numbered, however.

If you live anywhere near a Flea Market, get yourself over there early on Sat or Sun, or whatever day it's open.

I just bought a set of one-inch and up open-ends, the old-fashioned heavy kind, for a buck each! This is the "going price" for an open-end or box-end in these parts. It's a harlequin set of Billings & Spencer, Armstrong and Fairmount. All drop-forged and all Chrome Vanadium alloy.

The wrenches will likely not be on the Flea Mkt vendor's table, as the value is too low to justify using prime selling space/ You'll find the wrenches in a box on the ground in front of or under the front of the table.

If you see a box with a couple of items youi like, ask "How much for the whole box?" This works - I just got a very large Kennedy hip-roof box with a number of interesting tools in it for $15. Had to clean out a whole mess of junk, and it needs paint, but it is a sound Kennedy. Plus there were three Starrett punches and some silver solder in the junk!

If any Practical Machinist wants to do some "recreational shopping", I can almost guarantee you'll have more fun at a Flea Market than at the Harbor Freight or the Mall. Tag / Garage sales are good too, but Flea Markets seem to be less time-consuming because it is all in one place.

John Ruth

I have several wrenches that I have bent,ground or cut and welded over the years. Like mentioned above...most likely you won't be able to get enough leverage on it to damage it after it's bent. I have always just heated them,bend it to where I need it and then let it air cool as suggested above. Toss it in the drawer and modify it again for another use down the road.

John's right this is for a Gravely rototiller, welL technically, it's a rotary cultivator.
Bill d.

Bill D said:

John's right this is for a Gravely rototiller, wel technically, it's a rotary cultivator.
Bill d.

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Gravely called it a rotary plow.

Then they took the rotary plow head and bolted a drive onto it and made a cultivator.

Then there is the cultivator for the 800/8000 riding tractors.

mechwerks,

Not that I seriously give a damn, but it seems like you want people to quit buying Chinese stuff FROM HF, but keep spending all their money on the same tools at Sears and HD and Lowes and Wal-Mart.
Anyone else can sell Chinese junk EXCEPT HF.

F'rinstance, you can buy a HF drill for 30 bucks. HF makes X profit.

You can buy at Lowe's or HD for 40 bucks. The Chinese maker/importer gets the same profit that HF makes, and Lowe's HD make the other 10 bucks. Just where in the hell are YOU ahead of the game?

I am anti import for stuff that matters. This doesn't matter much to me. I am a hobbyist since I retired.

They ain't, anymore putting your friends and neighbors out of work. All your friends and neighbor's jobs have long been outsourced. There are MEBBE 10% of the tools built in the US many years ago, still being made here, and the ones NOT made here are being made THERE at the behest OF the US mfgs who want them made cheaper.

40 years ago I argued that Malcolm Bricklin was the instigator of the Honda Civic.

Japan MIGHT have attacked our auto market, in time.

But, it remains, I don't think there was ANY foreign mfg who has attacked the US market. It has always been an importer HERE who has gotten a franchise FROM that foreign mfg to be exclusive distributor to the US.

The only "attack" I can recall was the Mititsubishi decision to sell Mitsus when Chrysler was rebadging them as the Dodge Colt. Iaccocca went ballistic because they would be able to sell their own car without the automatic markup of 1500 bucks that Chrysler put on them.

Jesus Christ, I am an old fart. Most of yunz probably don't even know who Iaccocca was, and a lot of you probably don't remember that Chrysler was a little more than JUST Chryler.

There was Dodge, Plymouth, to get you to buy UP to Chrysler. They bought Jeep and AMC and screwed them into the ground.

Chinese COULD do the same to you. Thing I would like you to answer is whether it is better that B&D screw you for 50 bucks more for that same drill than the Chinee do at their own store.

Friend of mine has a son who does prototype for BD, when it works as they want, his wife, the buyer, goes to China to have them made.

I don't know if there is a power tool that is sold in the US that is not Chinese made. Bosch MIGHT argue that they are but I would doubt that they are fully either German or US made.

Some people make no sense at all.

Cheers,

George

Remove the chrome from the hot zone or find a bare steel wrench. Hot working chrome plated steel leads to chrome absorption and cracking. Most wrenches can be assumed to be medium carbon steel. Heat and quench in water, buff to bright steel and draw back to dark straw or purple.