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I saw one of these at Lowe's the other day and was just wondering what the pointed end is used for. I have seen it called a "construction" wrench and a "spud" wrench.

Construction Wrench

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The wrench end knocks the zombie down and the pointed end is for the killshot to the head. –  DA01 Nov 28 '12 at 6:47
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up vote 11 down vote accepted

Same thing you use a Marlin Spike for. (Tapered steel rod with a mushroom head on one end to strike with a mallet or dead blow) It's an alignment tool for drilled holes in metal building frames.

During assembly, the bolt holes don't necessarily line up, so you stick the tapered tail through the mating holes in the construction item, lever them around till the adjacent holes line up, slap a bolt through, affix a nut and washer and then use the wrench end to tighten.

Note: Landlubber term is Drift Pin or Bull Pin. Alignment Punch would be the technical name any machinist or mechanic would recognize. When an ocean going tug captain decides that it's more lucrative to run his boat up a slough, pull the engine and use it to power a sawmill operation, he's already been using a tapered steel rod to splice hawser cable. And when he needs to line up pieces of equipment on shore, he repurposes the Marlin Spike for more or less what he's been doing with it all along, using it as a multipurpose prybar, alignment tool and general persuader of anything that isn't quite in the right place. And the name he knew it as followed him into the big mill where he became head millwright.

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I think you mean Drift pin. –  Tester101 Oct 10 '12 at 11:45
@FiascoLabs - Excellent answer. A tool like this is often most useful when the two parts being aligned have more than one set of holes. The tool aligns from one set of holes whilst the first bolt(s) are are slid into another set of holes. –  Michael Karas Oct 10 '12 at 11:47
I've only ever heard the term "marlin spike" used in reference to a tool used to splice rope and untie knots. I think the tool that @FiascoLabs refers to is known as a "drift pin", "bull pin" or "alignment punch", which is bascially a spud wrench without the wrench –  mac Oct 10 '12 at 20:32
Don't know whether it's a regional thing or because some of my relatives worked around a marine environment and misappropriated it, but that's what my millwright uncle called them. Drift or bull pin are terms I've heard used as well. Assembling sawmill equipment requires gently easing heavy, somewhat uncooperative things into place so they're a much used tool there. –  Fiasco Labs Oct 11 '12 at 2:12
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