Garage Sale Score - Wright N-370 3/4"-Drive Ratchet

Most garage sale days come up empty, or at the very best, some small trinket is found. But last weekend my dear wife and I each scored majorly. At one particular "guy-stuff" sale the seller had a bunch of old wooden military boxes full of tractor parts and hydraulic fittings. I didn't need any of those but then one other box caught my eye. It contained an assortment of tap handles and a couple pipe threading handles. I didn't really need any of these items but they looked cool. The seller had remarked in passing that he'd make me a deal on any of the wooden boxes, $5 to $7 each, so when I ran across the box of tap handles, I just kind of figured they weren't in the same league as the tractor parts and I figured he would hit it out of the park with a $ figure for the box I was craving. I was very pleasantly surprised when he said, "How about 10 bucks?" SOLD.

The box of stuff doesn't look like much, does it. But even so, it sure looks to be worth at least $10.

Most of the stuff in this box is kinda unimpressive. Who needs an iron pipe threading handle and die or two? I don't think I do. The humongous tap handles are impressive but I don't see the need for that size of tooling. But in amongst all those things and other knick-knacks did you notice that thing buried in the bottom that is wrapped in a piece of denim? Yeah, I didn't either until I got the box home.

I just assumed it was another pipe threading handle like all the rest. But nooooooo.

It's a honkin' big 3/4-drive big-daddy ratchet wrench, weighing in at an even 5 pounds and 20-1/2" long. Ok, so it might need a little work. And it might just be missing a part or two. Or three. Not to worry. I have a lathe. I should be able to make whatever it might need.

First thing was to straighten out the messed up spring. Wow.

Ok, once that was done, time to figure out how all the parts worked. That took a while. I thought a round-end plunger was missing that the spring pressed on to push the ratchet pawls out to make the ratchet work. So I made 5 different pieces on the lathe, one at a time, and none worked. Here is the first iteration:

So I studied the parts some more and cleaned them better, then realized I was going down the wrong path, and the knurled knob actually installed in the wrench 180 degrees from how I was trying to fit it in. The knob had a worn-flush roll pin that I hadn't noticed earlier, which helped solidify the plan forward, and I was able to drill a small hole from the opposite side and drive the pin out since I couldn't drill out the hardened pin or grab it and pull it out. I made a pin on the lathe 3/32" diameter x 1/4" long to replace the roll pin.

And instead of a plunger that I was trying to make, all I needed was a 3/16" ball bearing, which I happened to have a gazillion in a parts bin in the garage (doesn't everyone?).

Oh, and the two screws holding everything together were missing. Lathe time again, this time to turn out a couple of these, about 1-1/4" long and a 12-24 thread size:

I could have probably gone to the store to get some fancy stainless steel or chromium plated screws but the heads on the screws needed to be quite thick to match the holes in the wrench head, and I wanted the screws to look the part, so new ones were out.

Now that the wrench is all back together and functioning properly, here are a few beauty shots:

Notice the "-54" in the photo above? That is the year it was manufactured. I found that out by happening upon this website online:

http://alloy-artifacts.org/wright-tool-forge.html

The site also mentions that the Wright Tool & Forge company was founded in 1927, and is still in business making tools.

And a little late-breaking news. As I was poking around the website above while writing this blog, I found a list of patents, one of which is for my wrench's ratchet mechanism (that would have made things easier this morning). It's interesting that my wrench handle says "Pat. Pending", as my wrench was made in 1954 and the patent (#2,715,955, applied for in 1950) was issued in 1955.
https://www.google.com/patents/US2715955