Dave D
Walter Chrysler started out as an apprentice machinist in a railroad shop in his hometown in Kansas. As a freshman at Brooklyn Technical HS in 1964, one of the pieces we had to read for English class was "Ambitions of an Apprentice" by Walter P. Chrysler. Chrysler describes how, during his apprenticeship, a kindly older man working in the same shop made him his toolchest as a gift. Chrysler also describes making many of the tools in that chest himself. In the days of Chrysler's apprenticeship, ready-made tools were a luxury that most apprentices and journeymen could not afford. The result was they made as much of their own tools as the could and only bought what they could not make themselves and truly needed.
Blacksmith forged wrenches were once quite common. Prior to 1914, or thereabouts, I believe there was no real standard in place in the USA as far as sizing of bolt heads and nuts. Working on steam locomotives as Chrysler was doing, he may well have run into a lot of bolt heads and nuts that required a wrench with a "non standard" opening. It is also not uncommon to find factory made wrenches which some mechanic or machinist has heated and bent to get into a particular job.
It was a matter of considerable pride and was also expected that apprentices and journeymen would make many of their own tools. In a typical machinist apprenticeship, back in Chrysler's day, knowing how to forge and heat treat tools was all part of it. Nothing came easy in those days. Scraps of good steel were used to make tools.
I was in a shop up in Port COlborne, Ontario where we were having some hydro turbine parts machined. One of the foremen there had a really nice set of machinist tools- dividers and calipers of the "wing" type, in different sizes, all neatly made to the same pattern with the proportions carried through. Each tool had a beautiful mottled casehardening, worn and patina'd from use, but still quite something to see. A man's name was engraved on each tool. The foreman told me those tools were made by his own grandfather during his apprenticeship many years earlier.
My own tools have quite a few tools I have made myself for different jobs. Some are service tools for Airhead motorcycles. Some were made because I found a piece of good steel or an old file and was at the forge. Things like drift punches, cold chisels, gasket scrapers, pry bars and an occasional special box wrench are all the kinds of tools I make from scraps of good steel- old air hammer bits, truck spring leaves, or highway snow plow cutting edges or worn out files. I like having tools I made in my tool boxes, especially when they are made from what would otherwise have been sent to the scrap heap. Busted power hacksaw blades are saved and made into various knives and scrapers. Another habit is fitting good hardwood handles to old hammer heads. I prefer a hardwood handle on a hammer, and I like to shape the handles to fit my hand. I mangled my right ring finger over 50 years ago, and the scar tissue runs diagonally across from the first joint into the ball, and the nail bed never did come back except as a kind of claw. I shape my hammer handles to accomodate this finger when a handle seems to not feel right. I draw scrape the handles with scrapers made from old hacksaw blades, and brand my initials into the handles with a piece of 1/8" welding rod heated with the torch. I linseed oil the handles, but with the black grunge from working on things like diesel locomotive engines, the handles do not stay clean for long.
A lot of tool manufacturers came and went in the USA. Some were quite prolific, some were short lived. Years ago, when I was a young engineer on a powerplant project out in Ohio, I rented a house from an older couple. The fellow was kind of punchy, like an old boxer, and kind of deaf. He was a sometime farmer, and sometime steam hammer smith at a shop called "Herbrand Tool". My landlord told me he'd run steam drop hammers at Herbrand for many years, and had seen all sorts of things come through the shop. This included parts for Galion- a maker of road graders and road rollers, along with all sorts of parts and service tools for other firms- as well as tools. Some of the tools were stamped with Herbrand's own name, some were forged for other firms to be sold under their label. The wrenches with the feather emblem could be one of those cases of tools forged by one firm and stamped with someone else's logo.