Thread: Anyone In the UK - King Dick Whitworth Spanners

Hi Lionel,

The LRSOC in the UK do ship Whitworth tools to Australia from their club shop. I recently purchased their socket set along with the various other hard to get parts like the re manufactured rubber seal for the truck cab. Postage was also reasonable.

You can find the club shop on the home page of their website: http://www.lrsoc.com

Cheers Nigel

Try searching the web for a UK to Austarlia parcel forwarding service. There are plenty out there, here is an example https://www.forward2me.com/

Hello All,

After much time comparing prices I decided on a UK non-eBay based company to get the spanners from. The comparison included the Australian supplier of King Dick Tools who are based in Queensland. Plus some USA based suppliers too. Yes it was dearer to get the spanners from the Australian supplier of the UK made tools .

It turns out that it would cost me more for postage than the value of the 4 piece set of 4 Deep Offset King Dick Whitworth Spanners. I asked the supplier if the quoted amount for "carriage" would be the same for the 7 piece spanner set as the 4 piece, and luckily it was. So I ordered the 7 piece set.

At least now I have paid more for the spanners that I can use over the ensuing years any time I want to and they are worth more than the one off cost of getting the spanners sent to me .

For some reason the thought of paying more money for postage - "carriage" than the value of the goods being sent to me from overseas really irks me.

So in a couple of weeks I should be able to have some new toys to play with

Kind Regards
Lionel

I have been lucky, in that I have found 2 "King-Dick" Whitworth deep ring spanners at local markets/swap meets, as when I go I am looking for certain spanners and by brand, King Dick, Stahlwylie, Dufor, old Sidchrome,etc.

Originally Posted by UncleHo

I have been lucky, in that I have found 2 "King-Dick" Whitworth deep ring spanners at local markets/swap meets, as when I go I am looking for certain spanners and by brand, King Dick, Stahlwylie, Dufor, old Sidchrome,etc.

Happy Birthday for the other day Uncle Ho I hope you had a great day!

I remember using some of my dad's old Whitworth spanners he had for his 1948 Matchless 500 cc motor bike. The motorbike was long gone by then but the tools stayed and some of them were King Dick spanners. They had a really good feel like you were holding a good bit of quality tooling in your hand. Yes like the old Sidchrome spanners felt. You know before the time when they are "manufactured to specification in Taiwan".

The quality of second hand tools in your area must be better than here. Some of them are old Sidchrome stuff but they have had a very - very hard life and probably would no long fit engineering gauges for correct fit.

Kind Regards
Lionel

Dear old Mr Whitworth the first to standardize threads from what I recall from my engineering schooling!

Been in store for years now so the memory of what they looked like us at best a little fuzzy however I had some really good old spanners which were given to me by an Uncle who had used them for 30 years for working on his own vehicles. He said they were the best he ever had. This from someone who was doing home rebuilds on BMC autos in the early seventies as a stress relief from the pressures of being Australian manager of a US company. Seems they had come to him new from a family member who had worked at Archerfield airport during WW2 unpacked aircraft that arrived from the USA and were unpacked and assembled by local labour before being flown north. Each aircraft came with its own tool kit to assemble it. When you were processing as many aircraft as they were the number of tools on site soon became a problem which the workers solved by taking them home.even after all these years there was little or no expansion in the size of the spanners jaws. They are nothing special to look at which is I think unusual for kit from the USA. Quality of and type of the metal is though very high which is no doubt reflected in the life of the tools. Perhaps they thought that being so far away Australia would not have any tools?

Lionel,

As Uncle Ho mentioned, try the local trash & treasure markets, swap meets can be more expensive because people know that they are sought after.

I have a few Stahlwille Whitworth spanners that I've been using for about 40 years. Never had a complete set because I couldn't afford it back then. I remember when I got paid I would go down to the hardware shop and buy one Whitworth Stahlwille socket or one spanner.

I have a lot of King Dick, Bedford Vanadium, Willliams Superslim and many others from when I was in the UK. Here I've collected lots of other brands from trash & treasure markets, garage sales etc.
It would be interesting to find out if 'King Dick' are still manufacturing or if it's just a branding exercise......

Edit: just checked and it looks like they are still in business http://www.kingdicktools.co.uk/index.htm


Colin