Adjustable Crescent Wrench Bent by Hand,
Braced on Thigh (Pittsburgh Brand)

For more than a year, I have been trying off and on to bend a wrench. I must have tried about 10 different wrenches! I was beginning to wonder if I would ever be able to pull off this feat. I was getting pretty frustrated!!!

My constant efforts to bend a Wrench and then looking at it and seeing it was straighter than before I tried bending it reminded me that when we put together our Braced Bending DVD, I made sure that my partner, Mike Rinderle, covered the sections showing how to bend the wrenches, because I couldn’t even wobble them, let alone bend them into a U shape like he could.

This past week, I decided I was going to give it another shot. It had been several months since I tried, but I was feeling good and decided to give it a whirl.

I was pumped when i gave it the initial effort and felt it give a bit. I continued to give it all I had and little by little I was progressing in the bend.

Unfortunately, I only had 6 minutes left on my camera, and at one point, probably abut 8 minutes into the bend, I noticed the little red light was off.

So, I went through and deleted a couple minutes of other stuff off the camera and finished the bend.

Since the “officialness” of the video was gone once the camera went off, I went ahead and did some editing of the video to make it a bit shorter.

Also, the first thing you’re going to see is me showing the bent wrench. Something pretty cool happened that I wasn’t aware of, although it is possible that it happens every time you bend a wrench like this.

You’ll see what I mean when you start the video.

Lessons Learned from Wrench bending

I learned a few things from bending this wrench that I want to pass on to all of you in case wrench bending is something you are going to try.

1) Get Your Wraps Tight

I should have already known this from my years of nail bending, but I failed to remember it. All I did was wrap the suede around the ends of the wrench and go. As a result, they were shifting on me during the bend. Had I tightened them like a “Motorcycle Throttle” like Mike Rinderle says, and if I’d put some rubber bands on there, I think it would have been easier.

2) Keep the Steel Hot

When you bend something, the steel heats up and it gets a bit easier to bend. But if you mess around and take too much time between shots on the wrench or if you take too much time catching your breath, the steel cools down and it makes your job tougher. The problem with the poor wrap-job contributed to my slowness in working through the wrench.

3) This Stuff is Hard

Sometimes, I think that I should just be able to blow through every feat just because I have been doing this stuff so long. Seeing other people blow through wrenches, makes me think I should just be able to easily dominate them even more. However, those other guys who make short work of braced feats can do that because they have worked their asses off to be that good. Neither you, nor I, should expect to dominate feats like this if we aren’t honing our skills. I want to get better at it, which means I need to do it more.

And if I am going to do it more, I need to get me some more Wrenches!!!

If you want to try your hand at Wrench bending or other braced strongman feats, check out our DVD on Braced Bending.

All the best in your training.

Jedd