The Different Types of Wrenches

Phil Giboney is a resident of Fife, Florida, and a business graduate of Highline College. He has worked a number of jobs such as technician and papermaker. An experienced business owner, Phil Giboney once owned a Snap-On Tools franchise.

Snap-On sells a vast array of professional tools including different kinds of wrenches. All wrenches have the same basic function: to tighten or loosen screws, bolts, pipes, or nuts. Let’s take a look at the most common kinds of wrenches.

The most basic kind of wrench is the adjustable wrench, and this should be the first wrench to obtain when starting a tool collection. One jaw of this wrench is fixed and the other jaw is moveable or adjustable. The key thing to remember when using this wrench is to put pressure on the fixed jaw instead of the adjustable jaw. This essentially means turning the wrench toward the moveable jaw. The adjustable jaw is weaker and turning the wrench towards that jaw can break the tool.

Open wrenches are fixed size wrenches that typically come in sets. Since these wrenches are made from a single piece of steel, there are no concerns about how to apply pressure. Compared to adjustable wrenches, fixed wrenches are more convenient, since the tool user does not have to bother with adjustments while working and there is less risk of damaging the nut or bolt.

A boxed wrench looks different from other wrenches because it does not have jaws. The box wrench has an enclosed ring, and like the open wrench it comes in sets with fixed sizes. The design of the box wrench is intended to minimize damage to the fastener being tightened or loosened. These wrenches are a good choice for particularly demanding jobs.

Diving the Wreck of the Diamond Knot

Phil Giboney concentrated on sales and accounting as a business student in the early 1990s at Highline College in Des Moines, Washington. In 2014, he became the owner of Trojan One Properties, a property management company serving the greater Seattle area. An avid enthusiast of all things maritime, Phil Giboney enjoys boating, salmon fishing, and scuba diving.

One of the most popular forms of scuba diving is wreck diving; that is, diving to and among the ruins of ships that have sunk. One of the best-known wrecks in the Seattle area is the Diamond Knot, which was lost in the fogbound Strait of Juan de Fuca in the early morning hours of August 12, 1947.

The Diamond Knot, a 320-foot freighter, was bound from Alaska for Seattle with a huge cargo of canned salmon representing about 10 percent of Alaska’s annual output. Another freighter, the Fenn Victory, sliced into Diamond Knot’s starboard side, plowing more than 14 feet into her and locking the two ships together. Fenn Victory was able to limp back to port after being extricated, but Diamond Knot was taking on water too rapidly and finally sank in about 135 feet of water.

Nearly every inch of the Diamond Knot wreck, which has become a huge artificial reef, is now covered in some form of marine life, including sea anemones, barnacles, scallops, sponges, and numerous fish. However, diving the Diamond Knot can be hazardous due to the constantly changing currents in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the ever-changing visibility, and it should be attempted only by advanced divers. Some divers have been pushed far to the west while ascending from the wreck, sometimes floating for hours in the Pacific before being located and rescued.

The Diamond Knot Wreck in the Strait

The former owner of a Snap-On Tools Franchise, Phil Giboney has owned Trojan One Properties since 2014. Certified with the Professional Association of Dive Instructors, Phil Giboney has explored dive sites such as the Diamond Knot Wreck in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Known as the Jewel of the Emerald Sea, the 326-foot Diamond Knot collided with the Fenn Victory, a 10,000-ton freight ship, in the shipping lanes between Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula on August 13, 1947. The ship had been carrying more than seven million cans of salmon from Bristol Bay, Alaska, to feed hungry Americans post-World War II.

To prevent the loss of such valuable cargo, innovative salvage efforts began, including divers cutting through the sides of the ship and lowering huge siphons to vacuum the cans to the surface. Today, the wreck attracts numerous technical and recreational divers, thanks to its plethora of marine life including barnacles, anemones, scallops, and sponges. The site is also popular with underwater photographers seeking shots of creatures such as wolf eels and ling cod.