Last weekend whilst scouring my local car boot sale for old tools to turn into new scraptures, I came across this lovely BSA spanner.
Now, I only use poor quality or damaged tools for my sculptures and scraptures, I don't like to use perfectly good and useable items in much the same way I'd never use good classic vehicle parts for my artwork, but I had to bring this home as it picqued my curiosity.
The reason for my curiosity is the unusual design, if you look closely at the jaws they are not uniform across their width, one side is half hex, half rounded and the other is even more unusual being two distinctly different sizes next to each other.
Is it a combination spanner for a bicycle?, it is, after all very small as spanners go, but it is also rather more sturdy than other bicycle spanners I have used
Is it intended for motorcycle use?, perhaps the square end is for the adjustment of spokes, although it seems quite large for that or maybe it's intended for use when setting up valve clearances?, not having owned or worked on any BSA motorcycles i'm not familiar of the valve adjustment and locknut setup used.
I'm really hoping someone will be able to enlighten me as it's become one of those minor puzzles that keeps eating at your mind, I really want to find the answer!
One of my friends has added to the possibilities by pointing out that it looks similar to a brake drum adjusting tool (thanks for that, Mark), and as BSA did build cars as well, perhaps that is the answer?
my father had some of these spanners in his toolbox he told me they were bicycle spanners
ReplyDeleteThanks for your help, I've talked to a few people now, seems to be that these were universally used across a large range of BSA and Sunbeam products ranging from bicycles and stationary engines to cars and motorcycles
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