A combination adjustable wrench/tire lever made for Volvo by Bahco. The tool is only 8 inches long, so Volvo owners must have been expected to have powerful arms to use such a small tire lever on their vehicles' tires!
Bahco traces it origins to 1862 when Göran Fredrik Göransson founded Högbo Stål and Jernwerks AB to produce hiqh quality Bessemer steel, and then saw blades in 1886. He introduced the "fish and hook" trademark. It is one of the oldest registered trademarks and is still used today on Bahco tools. Also in 1886, Johann Petter Johansson established a company, Enköpings Mekaniska Verkstad, patenting his pipe wrench in 1888. He called this "The Iron Hand" since he believed a wrench should, like the human hand, be able to fit various sizes of fasteners. In 1891, he patented what is claimed to be the first adjustable wrench. (In Britain, Richard Clyburn first patented his adjustable "screw spanner" in 1842.) In 1890 Berndt August Hjorth acquired the sales and marketing rights for products from Johansson's firm and in 1916 he bought the company from Johansson. He renamed it BA Hjorth & Co., abbreviated to AB Bahco in 1954. Sandvik bought the firm in 1991. In the mid-1990's, Snap-On entered the European market by purchasing the Spanish hand tool company Herramientas Eurotools S.A. It then bought the saw and tool business from Sandvik in 1999, combining the two European tool companies into SNA Europe in 2005. Bahco is now their premium brand.
2 comments:
Here's a saw set with the Sandvik name and the Bahco logo on it:
http://thewholegaragecatalogue.blogspot.ca/2012/01/sandvik-saw-set.html
That's a beautiful saw set! Bahco Tools was acquired by Sandvik in 1991, so your tool must date from that year or later. From the looks of it, though, I would have thought it was older than that.
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