Is there a demand for Whitworth tools?

Hi, I don't know exactly when industry officially went metric, but while there was still Whitworth around, I was servicing some machinery and using metric nuts and bolts by the late 70's and early 80's.

Regards Nick.

I purchased a large box of old spanners at a car boot sale. They came from a vintage car garage clearance. Most were good, maybe a dozen were junk. That gave me about 180+ spanners. I paid about £20 for the lot. My experience is that old spanners, even the good makes, can be purchased cheaply.

I certainly use Whitworth, and BSF, spanners as I am slowly rebuilding an Austin Seven which uses these. I have a small selection of spanners in these forms, but never seem to have the right one.

James.

I guarantee that as soon as you get rid of your Whitworth spanners something will come along where you will need at least one of them! I have been given quite a few. I use them all the time on my old Myford ML7. On parts of my Landrovers that seem to use all types of bolts fixings and threads. Also they fit anything else British and old that I come across. It is A good idea to identify each family by colour coding with paint or even heat shrink or insulation tape to speed up identification in a tool box or drawer!

thanks all for your input.
I have put them all back in the box as I needed the lift space back. I might chuck them all as a job lot on ebay and see what happens

I've had more than one occasion where I needed to use some sort of wrench size that I did not possess.

in these cases I would trot off to the flea market and buy the nearest size I could find, either smaller or larger than required.

The usual routine is then to pop a carbide cutter in the mill and open up a smaller wrench...

...or with a larger wrench first lay a line TIG welding along one of the jaws to close it up a bit before milling to size.

All sorts of ways suggest themselves to make those special wrenches you just won't find.

Be creative.

In '71, I was sent on a course on Metrication, but Industry did not changeover for some time afterwards.

In the early 70s, Leyland introduced the 500 engine which was their first Metric engine. This was going to be fitted into chassis such as the Leopard which was nominally Unified, but incorporated Whit form parts such as the 0600 and 0680 engines and their mountings. So possibilities of finding all three standards on one vehicle!.

Perkins started to go Metric, dual dimensioning drawings, in the 80s, and the first all Metric engine (Possibly apart from the yield tightened cylinder head fixings which may well have still been 1/2 UNF ) were the 1000 Series followed by the 500 Series.

To confuse the issue, when supplies were running short, Massey Ferguson bought in 4.236 engines, built under licence from Perkins, in Jugoslavia, which had Metric fixings, despite the original design being to Unified fastener standards!

So Britain's changeover to Metric was by no means a sudden death affair, depending very much on the introduction of new products.

Howard..

Rebuild an Aga, or a Blakes marine toilet, you will be glad of whitworth spanners. You will also require a stiff drink and some pills as it will drive you insane.

Whitworth spanners may well be needed for pipe fittings, certainly older ones, which will be BSP threads (Even if the Europeans call them "Gaz"

Howard

I bought 3 Whitworth spanners on ebay last night as I bought a Myford lathe and my Metric and AF spanners are useless, so there's definitely a market.

I restore and show Lister Petrol Stationary engines and the threads on these engines are all Whitworth so I use these spanners but I'm always looking for the tools with the Lister name on them, over the years I have collected a few but always looking for anything marked Lister.

Martin P

Hi all,

Whitworth is still used in many industrial steam applications. It is though getting harder to find suppliers of Whitworth studs.

Regards. IDP

Is there demand for Whitworth Tools? asks JP Santos, perhaps hoping he's sitting on a fortune!

The answer is Whitworth will be wanted for as long as people need it. Unfortunately they aren't worth much. The problem for sellers is Whitworth started to go out of mainstream production after WW2 and apart from a few minor exceptions no-one uses it today on new equipment. Demand for Whitworth today is low because it's only needed by people maintaining old gear of British origin. As a system Whitworth is well past its 'Best Before Date', a shadow of its former self.

Today there must be an enormous number of old Whitworth spanners laying around the UK. Whitworth dominated British engineering for over a century and the decline after WW2 was relatively slow. Dozens of firms made and sold Whitworth spanners in large quantities, and most households had a few. They're common.

I'm afraid Whitworth has no particular value unless a collector is after them. We've moved from a world in which every UK workshop was busy mending Whitworth based equipment, to one where Whitworth is a fading minority interest: in another hundred years, perhaps only museums will want them.

I'd hang on to them though: it's not unlikely that someone will need one, and an unusual size of sexy make might start a competition. But I don't see spanners experiencing the same sort of push as when folk compete enthusiastically to buy a Myford.

Dave

What surprises me is that you can still buy them new when there must be more than enough already in existence for those that need them.. But i guess that they must still sell. For some sizes AF or metric can be used as a close alternative.

Plenty of people don't like messing about with second-hand purchases. Bit of a gamble - anything between 'as-new' and 'worn-out' might turn up. Not good if you're in hurry.

Private buyers are better placed to take advantage of second-hand bargains because their time is free and they can always try again. The chase might even be part of the fun! Everything a business does costs money and the overhead and delay caused by buying dud gear is rarely worth the risk.

Might be an age thing, but I've got loads of spanners. Car maintenance in the seventies called for everything; sometimes on the same car. If I remember right my Chrysler Sunbeam freely mixed metric, AF and UN with possibly a few Whitworth too. The good old days were a muddle!

Dave

One often finds 5/16 whit on battery terminals even new ones ! I keep one in the tool box for that purpose. Noel.

That’s because its a bs thing Noel!