Whitworth Tools

Whitworth Tools

Whitworth Tools Background & History

Whitworth tools have a rich history in Britain and, because of the vast reach of their Empire, worldwide.  This steam-era technology was in fact the world’s first national screw thread standard.  It was devised by Joseph Whitworth in 1841 to fill a pressing need for a standardized system for the railroad industry and other industries in Britain’s new coal-driven economy.  Until then, individual manufacturers each had their own threading systems and none of them were interchangeable.  Whitworth’s new standard specified a 55-degree thread angle and a thread depth of 0.640327p and a radius of 0.137329p, p being pitch.  The thread pitch increases with diameter in steps specified on the chart at the bottom of this page.  With the threading system came a whole line of fractional sizes of Whitworth tools, such as wrenches and sockets, that differed from either metric or American.

The Whitworth thread system was later adopted as the British Standard and became known as British Standard Whitworth (BSW).  When Britain became embroiled in the Crimean War in 1853, most of its equipment, including ships, were built using the new unitized BSW threads.  BSW continued to dominate British industry well into the 1960s.  Triumph, for instance, didn’t start phasing out of BSW nuts and bolts until the 1967 model year.  And that was not done to convert over to the metric system, as most of the rest of the world was doing.  No, by the end of the 1968 model year Triumph had converted all of it’s motorcycles over to the American Standard system.  Almost everything manufactured today use metric nuts and bolts.  But, people who own and/or work on classic British motorcycles or cars, for instance, may have a pressing need for Whitworth tools.  Hopefully our carefully gleaned selection will meet your needs.

NOTE:  The terms "wrench" and "spanner" are used interchangeably.  Americans call them wrenches and Britons call them spanners.  We share an uncommon language.

Whitworth Tools - Socket Sets

Whitworth Tools - Wrench Sets

Whitworth Tools - Taps, Dies & Thread Gauges, etc.


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