That's what I call them too (rightly or wrongly). The pliers I have now are useless; whenever I try to grip anything, the jaws slip open to their widest setting. I guess it's time to buy a better make.
I'm surprised by this, since the pipes they fit are standard sizes, I assumed the fittings would be standard sizes too.
If someone made a fitting bigger than necessary/other makes, it would cost them more, so I can't see any manufacturer doing that. If a fitting required a different spanner to most other fittings, surely people would not buy the unusual sized fitting because of that inconvenience?
That said, the nuts on my Horstmann 2-port valves seem to be one millimetre bigger than those on any other 22mm fitting in my house. The truly awful Monument spanner[*] that is supposed to fit 15mm and
22mm fittings at either end, will not fit the nuts on the valve.BTW, what's all this about Stilsons being used on pipes. How do you/ why would you grip a pipe? Surely you want to grip the fitting?
Thanks, Stephen.
[*] Screwfix code 82712, I find it too thin
If you're screwing a malleable iron fitting on a steel pipe you will most certainly need to grip the pipe.
HTH
Thats 1 & 1/8th inch, and ISTR thats a whitworth size.
NT
Yup, Bahco's the biz
15mm and 1/2" are quite close: 22mm and 3/4" ain't. But it's the threads on compression fittings which are BSP - only the bore and olive sizes were altered for metric tube.
They're good, but these:
Pipe wrenches are used for threaded galvanised pipes. These are still used in many areas. I've just installed an outside water supply which used galvanised pipe.
On Fri, 1 May 2009 14:47:39 -0700 (PDT), snipped-for-privacy@care2.com had this to say:
ISTR that the _original_ size for BSW spanners was 1½D + 1/8" (where D is of course the bolt diameter), and that this was reduced a bit during WW2 to economise on metal.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Stephen saying something like:
Hah! It's plumbing we're talking about here. We should count ourselves lucky that most compression nuts are a fairly standard size (note I said 'fairly', not consistently), so the centre hex portion of a joint is whatever the maker wants it to be.
Half inch is near enough to 12.5 mm. 2 1/2 mm smaller than 15 mm
22mm and 3/4" ain't.3/4 inch is near enough to 19 mm. 3 mm smaller.
Dave
1 & 1/8th works out to 28.6 mm, which looks about right for the OP. About 20 years ago I bought some spanners with obscure sizes and only now am I understanding why they were made. One of them was 29 mm, but I can't remember the others and it is dark and cold where they are stored :-)
Dave
Metric size is OD imperial is ID Difference is approx 2X wall thickness.
Metric sizes are the outside diameter of the tube whereas imperial is the bore. And the wall thickness of imperial tube is usually greater than metric. In other words few could identify 15mm against 1/2" without measuring it - but you can between 22mm and 3/4"
Ah! didn't realise you were talking pipe sizes, I thought the subject was spanner jaw size.
Dave
I bought a set in Aldi (possibly Lidl) a couple of years ago. Stiltson wrench, set of water pump ish pliers designed to do up compression wastes - really useful and a pair of water pump pliers. The latter had one jaw going through the other rather that laying on top - IYSWIM.
Anywho, never slips, best I've ever used & whole set cheap as chips.
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