Choosing a Pipe Wrench for Dummies

Pipe wrench jaws

Any home-repair task involving plumbing, at least beyond basic faucet repair or swapping out shower heads, will require the use of a pipe wrench. That's why a version of this tool shows up in just about every DIYer's home toolkit once he or she gets past the hammer-plus-pliers-plus-cordless drill stage. It's probably why InfoBarrel.com's Robert VanNorden shared his thoughts about one brand of these tools in his post "The Best Pipe Wrenches Money Can Buy Online";¹ essentially a thinly-disguised set of links to Amazon.com padded out with some lousy text to meet the site's minimum word count. Our first question, of course, was, "Are there better wrenches you can't buy online?"

Anyway, we're not here to argue with VanNorden's assertion that the Ridgid brand of pipe wrenches is simply the best, or even that a pro could benefit from the significant weight advantage of the brand's aluminum wrenches as opposed to cast iron. We're pretty sure they beat the cheap house-brand wrenches you can get at Lowe's or HomeDepot (not to mention that Chinese-made Tekton brand Amazon keeps trying to push on us whenever we buy tools). No, we're here to wonder why someone who claims to be both "a writer" and a "retired heating contractor" does so bad a job of describing this tool. Says Robert,

"Pipe wrenches vary in size and shape and the right tool for the right job is very important when it comes to pipe wrenches. The wrong size wrench will not grasp the pipe your [sic] working with and the tool will spin. Once you've found the proper size wrench, your job will go ahead smoothly."

Huh? Bad grammar notwithstanding, we're pretty sure that the reason a pipe wrench "spins" on "the pipe your [sic] working" is not that it's the wrong size, it's that you placed it in the wrong orientation. You see, VanNorden describes a pipe wrench by saying "Anyway Rigid pipe wrenches grasp their subject in only one direction. The teeth within the jaw of pipe wrenches are angled and opposite each other to bite into the smooth surfaces piping is usually made with. If you need to turn the pipe the other way then you must turn the wrench around. They only work one way. Turning the wrench backwards, your tool will simply slip continuously."

Well, Robert, we guess that in all your years of experience, you never noticed the singular feature of the pipe wrench: the friggin' JAWS sit at an angle to each other! Look at the darned picture up there! The upper, moving jaw is (more or less) perpendicular to the handle, while the fixed lower jaw is angled 15° or so. That's at least half of how pipe wrenches work: that whole "you gotta flip the wrench to change directions" bit.

You'd think someone who claims to be both a professional pipe fitter and a professional writer would know that, not to mention say it. But no, not in there — more than grounds for our Dumbass of the Day award (though we have to admit that the comment from a guy, who "never heard of the brand," is pretty darned award-worthy, too).

¹ InfoBarrel has deleted all user-generated content and become a "green" website, but this post can still be reead by using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   http://www.infobarrel.com/The_Best_Pipe_Wrenches_Money_Can_Buy_Online

copyright © 2016-2022 scmrak

SE - HAND TOOLS