Thanksgiving has always been the big holiday for the descendants of Howard and Myrtie Weir (aka my paternal grandparents.) After my mom’s passing earlier this year, it was a real gift to spend time enjoying a delicious meal with the extended family yesterday. Even better for the soul were the many laughs we shared while reminiscing.

Someone shared how challenging it’s been to find someone to care for furnaces like my dad. He spent over 40 years tending to most of the furnaces, boilers, and water heaters of my hometown, and especially those belonging to our family. Growing up, I got to go with him on countless service calls. I didn’t always appreciate having to tag along, but looking back, I’m so glad I had the opportunity to spend time with my dad watching him do something he loved and was really skilled at.

I wish I had paid closer attention to what he was actually doing while I perfected my ability to hold a flashlight still while handing him tools. That’s not to say I didn’t learn some valuable skills that have come in handy when I have to enter one of the boiler rooms at Sky Lake! One of the most valuable skills I picked up from all those service calls is the need to first observe (which will be the topic of another post in the near future.)

One thing I didn’t pick up on was how often the name of a specific tool becomes the generic name for all tools like it. I grew up hearing my dad asking me to hand him a crescent wrench or the channel locks from his tool pouch. 

A few years after my dad passed, my mom was complaining that the upstairs toilet kept running whenever it was flushed. On my next visit, I didn’t bring any tools because I had assumed I’d be able to find a crescent wrench and channel locks on my dad’s workbench. Thankfully, there’s a Tractor Supply right down the street from my childhood home. Imagine my surprise when I walked down the tool aisle and realized it was actually an adjustable wrench made by the Crescent Tool Company and adjustable pliers made by Channellock, Inc. that I had been handing my dad all those years!

Those tools are now in my own tool pouch that I keep in my truck. They get a lot of use whenever there’s plumbing work to be done around camp. The Crescent wrench comes in handy when a compression nut needs to be loosened or tightened, especially when one doesn’t want to lug around twenty different sizes of standard wrenches! The Channellocks are often used to grip and stabilize the tail of the pipe jutting through the wall while torque is applied to the nut on the supply line for a sink or toilet. I almost always reach for the Channellocks when attaching or detaching supply lines for a clothes washer.

For the novice, the smooth, straight edges of a Cresent wrench are designed to sit snuggle against the straight edges of nuts and bolts, while the grooved teeth of Channellocks are meant to grasp round objects.

I’ve found plenty of opportunities beyond plumbing projects to use both Crescent wrenches and Channellocks (as will you) from machine and vehicle repair to tightening a bolt on a speed limit sign. These remarkably versatile tools are often underestimated. And yes, either makes for a decent hammer in a real pinch. Or to smash the porcelain tank of a toilet (not that I’ve personally done that. More than twice.)

In all reality, the true battle of the adjustables isn’t between the tools themselves, but rather between operator and the object intended to move when it refuses to budge (which could be the topic of another post on its own!)

I’d love to hear some of the other ways you regularly use either of these tools.