I have a couple of tools that are very similar to this. One is very close but has a curved, serrated end on it to really grip shit and has a screw type adjuster on the end of the handle, the other is a large pair of Vise Grips with a chain on the ends of the jaws.
They both work well for odd shaped crap and pipe fittings of course.
They are tools of last resort and are very, very seldom used but when all else fails……..
Bustednuckles 
Yup. Got a few tools like that lurking in the bowels of my rolling cabinets.
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When all else fails….
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I have something like that to open the fire hydrant ever so often.
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What is your take on what happened in Portland today
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Didn’t waste my time on it. I did see a picture of some creative uses for plastic 55 gallon drums though.
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Ye Olde Strappe Wrenche, for Ye Balky Nuts and Sundry.
It Is Ye Ready Companion, when Ye have No Tyme to Fiddle-Fucke About Searching for Ye Accursed Boxe-End Wrenche.
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Or ye olde crescent wrenche.
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Bleh! Tinker Toys.
Five & Six Inch “screw pipe” [Galvanized Steel] required a bit of torque on the fittings. As a FNG, I got the honor of delivering the “Pipe Tong” to where it was needed.
The Pipe Tong has a double egg shaped end with teeth much like those on a pipe wrench. The work piece was chained down to a heavy bench equipped with 2X outriggers. The tong was positioned so that the “tail” was approximately 30 degrees above horizontal. My associates [of substance and seniority] would stab a length of 2 inch pipe over the tapered tail of the tong and climb or hang from that pipe to provide some torque to the fitting.
I don’t know, and didn’t want to know, how much the pipe tong weighed. Tail to the tool end, it was 5-6 feet long. After carrying that ship anchor around for several months, I had to have my suit (weddings and funerals) retailored since I was no longer a “normal” shape.
I still get a chuckle when someone gets out a “chain wrench” that is something like 14 inches long from tooth to handle end. That size “chain wrench” belongs in a Leatherman pouch…..
The chain wrench pictured above is something of a “father crude”. Then again, I do recall some axle nuts that broke the available sockets and had to be extracted with a Rigid pipe wrench and a long pipe “cheater”. “Father Crude” works nights and week ends.
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Bruised my fucking ribs last night at work using a damn cheater bar on a spanner wrench. The fucking pin for the jaw snapped off while I was pulling for everything I was worth and the end of the cheater pipe swung around and caught me right in between two ribs.,
Sore as fuck today.
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Is this the animal?
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Sorta, although there is no sense of scale. The “tails” are kind of skinny: The beast I remember looked like it had been forged in a WWII Soviet tank factory.
What is with the whore-House paint job?
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They’re painted orange so you don’t misplace ’em.
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Archimedes was one smart old Greek, and his modern disciples continue to find new ways to apply a lever to a problem.
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