I was digging through my old junk tool bucket this evening to find some items to weld up some kids toys. I spied this old wrench, pulled it out and started imagining what I could make out of it. Dragster? Lumberjack? I was mixing and matching old tools, getting ready to fire up the welder, when I noticed the writing on the wrench – Indian in the old Indian motorcycle cursive style.
Humm, that is cool. So I paused what I was doing and decided to clean some of the rust off and see if I could get this working again. Grabbed a Dremel tool, wire brush, silicon oil, and went to work. The more I cleaned, the more interesting it became. I have never seen a wrench like this in all my years of working around motorcycles and cars. It seems kind of a cheap cast metal item and not of a particular high quality, but just interesting. I got it all working like new, all the rust cleaned off, and decided to do a Google search. Low and behold, I found one in worse shape listed on eBay for $60! Found another one for $80. WHAT??
A little more digging and I discovered this was in the original Indian motorcycle toolkit that came with the bikes from the 1930’s to the 1950’s and labeled in the owner’s manual as a “monkey wrench”. How cool is that?
So now I gotta decide what to do with this wrench. I think first up is to do some product photography with it. I don’t do a lot of product photography but this might be a fun self-assignment. Maybe shoot it catalog style first, then do some lifestyle shoots with the wrench.
After I get done I hate to just toss the wrench in my toolbox where nobody will every see it again but me. Maybe I will donate it to the Route 66 Motorcycle Museum here in Oklahoma, or give it to the local Oklahoma City Indian Motorcycle dealer so that others can enjoy this piece of motorcycling history.
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