A peanut butter wrench is the name used in North America for a single-ended box wrench or ring spanner used in cycling to tighten older 14mm and 15mm crank bolts, or the wheel nuts (track nuts) on hubs with solid axles commonly found on track bicycles, particularly the 15 mm wrench made by Campagnolo. Crank bolt spanner or crank spanner is another name for this tool. This is the only one-piece wrench that can be used to tighten or loosen the bolt or nut which holds the crank to a square-taper bottom bracket spindle (although a thin-walled 15mm socket and handle will also serve), whereas any wrench/spanner of the correct size will tighten or loosen wheel nuts.
While Campagnolo produces the wrench most commonly associated with the name Peanut Butter Wrench, several other companies made, or continue to make, a similar product. These companies include:
- Specialities T.A. (France) 2 known variations
- Stronglight (France)
- Park Tool (United States) Came in 14/15/16mm. Part number CCW14/15/16
- Zeus (Spain)
- Sugino (Japan)
- Suntour (Japan)
- Tacx (Netherlands)
- ATD- Artisan Tool and Die (United States)
- Elite (Italy)
- VAR (France)
- Williams (United Kingdom)
- Saavedra (Argentina)
- Cobra (Italy) 2 known variations
- Savoretti
Additionally, there were several variations of the traditional Campagnolo version*.
Its name is derived from the fact that the wrench handle is reportedly a good size and shape to scoop peanut butter (a fairly cheap energy food for track cyclists) out of the jar.
Famous quotes containing the words peanut butter, peanut, butter and/or wrench:
“It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.... There are some things in every country that you must be born to endure; and another hundred years of general satisfaction with Americans and America could not reconcile this expatriate to cranberry sauce, peanut butter, and drum majorettes.”
—Alistair Cooke (b. 1908)
“It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.... There are some things in every country that you must be born to endure; and another hundred years of general satisfaction with Americans and America could not reconcile this expatriate to cranberry sauce, peanut butter, and drum majorettes.”
—Alistair Cooke (b. 1908)
“In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents straight,
If bread and butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o’ th’ day
The clock doth strike, by algebra.”
—Samuel Butler (1612–1680)
“I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)