Rusted Tools

Who could have wielded these things?

Hard to get an idea of scale but they look huge.

Man that’s a lot of torque.

Your lighting of this shot is fabulous.

Big machines,big tools!

Need to get two guys to lift them! WOW!!!

Great shot. How big are they?

What was again? Righty tighty, lefty loosey. Good God look it the size of those.

I bet using those on a regular basis would have been good for the ol' arm muscles.

Did Thor leave his hammer laying around too?

The round holes in the end of some of these were actually for turning them (notable the pieces with 2 offset holes) ... image a giant socket but instead of a wrench you would plug a pipe in and twist the whole section., not that it makes them any smaller or lighter. I am curious if you can say where the floor vent on the left went through too.

Them be some manly tools right there!!

Those are for one big hairy-ass Erector Set!

I think those are what made men, MEN. :)

Wow, that is a neat collection of tools. I'm surprised somebody hadn't nicked them in all this time. lol.. that rust color is kinda nice.

That is the way it was back then, make it bigger than it needed to be, more mass= more stability, plus the fact that casting large pieces was cheaper than today......

Welcome to the world of working on hydro turbines and generators. These are smaller tools. Mechanics and millwrights used them routinely during maintainence and overhauls. Those particular wrenches were furnished with the generator and turbine as "service tools". The wrenches were forged by a blacksmith using a steam or power hammer.

The flat box wrenches laying on the plastic sheet are "slugging wrenches". they are the most basic powerplant wrench out there. Slugging wrenches are box wrenches specifically made to be struck with a sledge hammer (AKA "Beater"). Once a nut or bolt is run up tight using plain muscle power on the wrench, it often has to be "slugged up". This is where the slugging happens. The slug wrench has a softer portion of the body designed to take the blow of a steel sledge. At least a 16 lb sledge is used, sometimes a 25 lb.
Three people often are required to slug: one places the wrench on the nut or bolt head and may jam it there with the sole of their boot or with a hunk of wood. The next person has a rope tied thru a hole in the hammer handle, and pulls hard on the rope. These two people have to keep the wrench hard against the bolt or nut and "take the bounce out". When they have the wrench "solid", the third person wales it with the beater.

There are two criteria for how much slugging is needed. If it is possible, an engineer (such as myself), will calculate the "stretch" of the studbolt to produce a given clamping force. Measurements are taken with micrometers or dial indicators once the bolt is snugged. Then, it is slugged and measurements taken again until the required "stretch" is had. The other method is "ring of the wrench", how the wrench rings and how the hammer feels.

Nowadays, slugging and using heavy "cheaters" (pipe extensions) on wrench handles is vanishing. Hydraulic wrenching systems make "breaking" or "making up" big bolting an easy and consistent proposition. I've worked many tubine overhauls where we slugged, and it wore out even the strongest people. We used to rotate the three people, so each took a turn holding the rope while the next person took a turn swinging the sledge. I've seen mechanics and millwrights of all shapes and sizes take their turn slugging. On one turbine overhaul, we had millwrights whose average age was over 65. I was in my 40's at the time. As engineer running the job, I was not supposed to handle the tools. I saw the older men wearing themselves out, so I used to take a turn slugging to give them a rest.

Turbine work is special- the parts are huge, but the degree of accuracy is quite tight. Even those old units would be built to tolerances down in the thousandths of an inch. A human hair is about 0.0015", paper is about 0.,004", so big as those parts are, that is how accurate the work is. A misplace blow of the sledgte can do untold harm when you are working on the turbine or generator, massive as they may be.

You've seen some of the wrenches, but you've not seen the "rigging" to take a unit apart and put it together. The cable slings and shackles even for these smaller old units are bigger than what most people might be used to. Makes the wire rope and hook on a tow truck winch look like a light fishing line.