Day 19, Baxter adjustable wrench
On Day 19, I'm dusting off something that I got that I think was pretty unusual, and may be the oldest tool that I have in my collection. It may not look like much. It's patina is pretty pronounced with lots of black iron oxide. I have disassembled it, removed rust, and reassembled, so the mechanism works pretty well, but as you can see there is a fair amount of pitting and staining.
It is a Baxter adjustable wrench, which was first patented back in 1868, patent 84,605.
The patent dates back to around the time just after the Civil War. They were apparently manufactured by several different manufacturers, including the Baxter Wrench Company, which was founded in 1869 by William Baxter. Baxter has an even earlier adjustable wrench patent, dating to 1856. After this patent expired, it seems like there may have been many other manufacturers making similar wrenches. It is likely that this wrench is over 120 years old, and maybe as old as 150 or so. My understanding is that they typically used for steam engines.
You can find another Youtuber restoring one of these wrenches that he got at a garage sale.
You can find a cleaner example here which still bears a maker's stamp. As far as I can tell, mine doesn't bear any kind of maker's mark. Some apparently also had some kind of graduated indicator etched (as shown in the patent) but mine does not appear to have any markings at all.
A very cool example. Happy Sunday!