K-W Surplus and my first set of wrenches

When I was fifteen years old I saw an ad in the paper, 50% off a set of combination wrenches at K-W Surplus in Kitchener.

I wasn't yet of driving age, so I thumbed my way up Highway 7 to the K-W Surplus store, and then thumbed my way back home with my prized wrench kit under my arm. If I remember correctly, that  kit had everything from a half inch to an inch-and-a-quarter in it. "Combination" meant you had a box wrench at one end and an open wrench at the other.

First thing I did when I got home was blast the entire kit with a stripe of orange spray paint, because I wanted to make sure my tools didn't get mixed in with my dad's tools or with the tools of the various buddies who would be borrowing them.

That worked out well.

Fifty years later, I still see the orange stripe on some of the wrenches in the tool kit my father keeps in his truck. And in the tool boxes of a few of the buddies who have survived from then to now. In spite of all that thievery, I've still got a few of those orange-stripe wrenches in my own kit!

K-W Surplus is still around too. In fact, they birthed a spin-off called "Deals." Good deals on all your home shop essentials. I still shop at their Owen Sound store from time to time.

I used to take immaculate care of the shit in my kit, cleaning and oiling those wrenches a couple of times a year. But eventually life took over. Wiping down your wrenches with an oilcloth wasn't that important once you had kids to feed.

Or legal bills to pay.

As my final retirement draws nigh, I find myself once again caring about those wrenches. That inch-and-a-quarter has a real good heft to it, and in the course of the last fifty years was probably more often used as a weapon than as a tool. Not that I cracked any skulls with it, but there was the odd time when just having it dangle menacingly from your hand could change the course of a conversation.


When you go to your reward, whatever it may be, you want to have a tidy tool kit at your side.