Although each wrench is built with different woods and in different shapes, a few elements remain the same throughout. Refer to the anatomy chart below to help familiarize yourself with the basic parts of a tuning wrench:
1. Eight-Pointed Star Tip - Where the rubber hits the road. This is the interface where the wrench fits onto the pins; see more info on the 8-pointed star tip further down on this page.
2. Gooseneck - The actual neck protrudes out from the handle roughly three inches before it bends downward at an approximate angle of 75 degrees. This angle is offset from a square 90 degrees just far enough so that it will give adequate clearance underneath the instrument for your hands, yet it is still bent far enough to get good leverage.
3. Ferrule - This is the small doughnut-shaped piece of metal that helps ensure that the wood on the handle won't split or fracture during use. The ferrule "hugs" the material on the top of the handle and acts to reinforce it.
4. Handle - This can be made of any number of materials, and in various shapes and sizes. To a great extent, the materials and techniques involved in making the handle will determine the price of each individual tuning wrench.
Most of the wrenches that I make are gooseneck wrenches, as seen in the anatomy chart listed above. Gooseneck wrenches give the best leverage, and allow for the finest tuning adjustments to be made.
However, more and more I am finding an appeal in T-handle tuning wrenches. (Shown in the image above in the upper right.) T-handled wrenches are usually preferred by builders because it allows one to drive a tuning pin into its hole while at the same time applying downward force. As a result, T-handle wrenches have a more balanced feel during use, though this comes at the cost of leverage.
However, the T-handle tuning wrenches available on this site are made several inches longer than regular commercially available wrenches, and offer better leverage and accuracy in tuning than comparable wrenches. These longer T-handle wrenches are a good compromise between balance and torque.
Because the torque on a T-handle wrench occurs perpendicular to the handle, all T-handle wrenches are fit with a small 1/8" diameter tension pin. (Seen in the photo above.) These pins sit flush with the handle and are embedded roughly 75% the way into the wrench handle. They are only visible from one side of the wrench and serve to reinforce the link between the handle and the wrench itself.
The
standard 3/16" tuning pins that these wrenches fit
have a tapered square top. And accordingly, the wrenches available on this
website use a corresponding recess to drive the pins. Actually, although the pin
is square, the recess in the wrench tip itself is an 8-pointed star, which is
simply two square recesses, with one offset 45 degrees from the other.
The advantage to having a star tip like this is that it is easier to find the correct angle to seat the wrench onto the pin. You don't have to turn the wrench in all sorts of angles before it finally indexes onto the top of the tuning pin as you would if the recess were strictly square shaped. By using two overlapping square recesses, the ease and likelihood of getting the wrench onto the pin is doubled.
You can see from the picture above where the two squares are located, which illustrates the convenience of the star recess found on the tips of all tuning wrenches available through Archimedes' Workshop.
