What's new
What's new

Happy New Year, a tool story from 50 years ago

rivett608

Diamond
Joined
Oct 25, 2002
Location
Kansas City, Mo.
This simple pair of pliers is very special to me. It is THE FIRST FINE QUALITY TOOL I EVER BOUGHT. That was 50 years ago!!! Scary thing is as anyone that follows me has noticed I collect antique tools, mostly 100s of years old. But this is 50 year old tool, along with many others I bought brand new as a kid have served me well. Years later I engraved (with an ugly electric vibrator thing) “1st Quality Tool, 1970”.

It wasn’t the first tool I bought but it was the 1st High Quality, Real Professional grade tool I bought with my OWN MONEY, I was 14. Since I first experienced Shop Class in the 7th grade (I wrote about this in my Christmas Day post about the vise) I started gathering tools, mostly used or junk, for my basement corner workshop. My dad was an upper level government bureaucrat, not a tool user. As a matter of fact when he started dating my mother, her father, a union carpenter, told her “he was nice, but when is he going to get a real job, one that involved work.” He also said “never trust a man that just wears a necktie to work”. Btw, they have been married for 71 years! Talked to them this morning. Anyway back to the story, dad would take me to the hardware store to help with any home repair projects. Hardware Stores were my second favorite place to go behind a Hobby Shop. See, patterns of behavior develop early in life. At Hardware City and Wheaton Lumber there was always a display of cheap (mostly Japanese if I remember correctly) tools. It seems they were all .88 cents each, be it a pair of pliers, set of screwdrivers or little socket wrenches. Dad had try to drill into my head that there was no reason to ever pay more than .88 cents for any tool and he didn’t. His tool box was a old rusty affair filled with junk and broken tools. Btw, I threw it in the trash when I was about 16, no loss.

So as a young teenager I loved shopping, loved standing in the tool isle of the Hardware Store staring up at all the tools trying to figure out what they did and why they differed from each other. Now understand that in the late 1960s there were basically two types of kids, those clean cut, short haired ones like my brother. Or those scruffy longer haired type hippies that must be up to no good, that was me. So as I stood there looking and of course wanting to touch all these shiny fine tools I would constantly get asked to be helped or at least watched like a hawk to make sure I didn’t steel something. Damn teenagers.

One of my favorite stores was Triangle Hardware on Veirs Mill Rd. In Wheaton, Md., it was right across the street from Wheaton Plaza, where the vise came from. It was the old style hardware store, wood floors, long isles, drawers and shelves to the ceiling with the rolling ladder, a scale to weigh nails, you know the type place. I had braces on my teeth back then and this store was on the Y-6 bus route to my orthodontist in Silver Spring. So after stopping a number of times to look at these pliers and saving up my money I was getting close to having enough. Then one day I figured if I walked the miles home from my appointment the saving of the bus fare, about .35 cents, would give me just enough to buy them. I did and was so proud of them!

Nearing my 16th Birthday I got a job at Aspen Hill Hardware, one of Triangle’s competitors. As the years went by I brought home nearly every tool our store sold, a few each payday. My tool chest, not rusty as my dad’s was, is filled with fine tools and great memories.
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2020-12-20 at 2.50.31 PM.jpg
    Screen Shot 2020-12-20 at 2.50.31 PM.jpg
    8.6 KB · Views: 233
Nearing my 16th Birthday I got a job at Aspen Hill Hardware, one of Triangle’s competitors. As the years went by I brought home nearly every tool our store sold, a few each payday. My tool chest, not rusty as my dad’s was, is filled with fine tools and great memories.

I grew up on the other end of the spectrum. In the same years you were earning half your paycheck in tools my dad was doing the same over at a Sears out in Beth Page, Long Island when he was in high school. Dad says the store was right across the street from Grumman's factory and recalls one day seeing what he thought had to be the lunar landing module being loaded up on to a trailer to give you an idea of the era.

From the time I was about 4 on up my dad raised me to believe that Craftsman tools were the best ever made. I have found memories as a little kid sitting there watching him in his woodshop making me toys to play with. Dad would let me sand and glue which meant a lot to a little kid.

I grew up seeing the last of the good years of Craftsman. Talk about watching the mighty fall flat on their face. The Sears and Sears Craftsman symbols were every bit a part of great Americana to me as a young as a Norman Rockwell painting!

Myself I bought some of my tools as a kid at Sears but not many. I had a luxury that you and my father could only dream of. The first was Craigslist, the amount of great stuff that came on there especially the yardsale listings or machine shop closings was epic back in the early 2000 timeframe. I would go to a sale load up sell anything that was a duplicate here on Practicalmachinist or on Ebay and usually wind up keeping 2/3rds of the quality tools for free.

Then there was a great used tool store in Worcester MA located 5mins from my high school girlfriend's house. The guy specialized in cleaning out old lady's basements or buying a tradesman's tools when they required or drank too much. It was quality tools at less than Chinese prices and each week was a different selection. I have long since gotten rid of that girlfriend but still have the tools from all those trips to the tool shed! :)



Sent from my SM-J737V using Tapatalk
 
As Adam Miller so correctly states, Craftsman Tools and Sears (which I still automatically call "Sears, Roebuck") was a solid part of the United States I came into and grew up with. As a little kid, if my parents went to Sears,Roebuck to shop, it was in a store built in the 30's and supposedly opened ceremonially by Eleanor Roosevelt. If Mom needed to take my brother and sister to the kids' clothing department, she and Dad knew they could safely leave me in the tool department to pass the time.

Dad had bought a Craftsman 8" table saw in 1948, and used it to alter the house I grew up in. I inherited that saw, and only recently sidelined it when a buddy gave ma 10" Delta Unisaw. I put Dad's old saw on a fabricated steel lowrider type dolly and put it in a storage area of the basement. Hand tools from my father were a mix of original Stanley for carpenter's tools, Craftsman for mechanics' hand tools, and Ridgid, Reed, and some Nye for plumbing and pipefitting tools.

My parents shopped for clothing for us kids as well as after-Christmas sales on ice skates for us kids. When I got set to leave home in 1972 on my first engineering job, my father admonished me to 'dress and carry yourself like an engineer, not a damned college kid'. Dad's idea of dressing like an engineer on a field construction jobsite was to wear what some people call "matched worksets", specifically, matched khakis (which Dad, a WWII Army veteran, and Mom, of that same generation, called "Suntans"). Dad and Mom gave me five (5) sets of matched khakis, bought at Sears, Roebuck. If I needed more khaki workshirts or pants, I could go into any Sears, Roebuck and get them. If I needed a single socket or single wrench rather than a whole set, I could also get it at Sears, Roebuck. If I busted a socket or other Craftsman tool, they replaced them, no questions asked.

Under the "Allstate" label, Sears sold automotive products including remanufactured engines. It was during the Great Depression that General Wood, who was one of the top brass at Sears Roebuck, came up with the idea of selling automobile insurance thru Sears, Roebuck. This grew into the Allstate brand, which at one point included light motorcycles made by Puch (Austrian). Sears, Roebuck sold a good line of long guns, and these were under their "J.C. Higgins" label, but mostly made by Marlin. They had a line of musical instruments (brasses and woodwinds) sold under their "Silvertone" label.

Another adjunct to the normal "Sears wishbook" was their Farm catalog. You could order live chicks or ducklings, saddles, live donkeys, and light farming equipment. Two-wheel garden tractors ('walk behind') were sold under the "David Bradley" label, and some featured a sheet metal hood with a front grille like a 1930's Ford V-8 car.

As Adam correctly states, the "Mighty hath fallen". Sears, Roebuck and Craftsman tools were as American as it got, and passing a steel Craftsman toolbox filled with Craftsman tools to a son or nephew was a tradition. Now, the gray steel Craftsman toolboxes are going for what seems big money on eBay. I can't wrap my head around plastic toolboxes. When my son asked for a toolbox and tools, I found an ancient 'hip roof' Craftsman toolbox at our local industrial surplus store. It was so old it had the blue wrinkle finish enamel (Craftsman from the 40's and early 50's). I made a new handle for the box, repainted it (since the wrinkle finish paint was mostly gone), and filled the box was 'made in USA' Craftsman tools along with some other US made tools. I got hold of a Kennedy hand box for a nephew, and filled it in much the same manner. My nephew had been buying and using Chinese hand tools. When he picked up a Craftsman 1/2" breaker bar and 1/2" ratchet from the box I gave him he immediately said: "Uncle Joe: This feels so much more solid and like a real tool.." I told him this was what I grew up using and what we took for granted.

I have a "Machinery's Handbook" which my parents gave me as a birthday gift when I was entering my junior year at Brooklyn Technical HS in 1966. The "Machinery's Handbook" was a requirement as we worked from it in shop classes as well as in machine design classes. I still use that same Machinery's Handbook, and regret my parents never wrote anything in the inside cover or 'fly leaf'. When I was 13 and it was a done deal that I was headed into Brooklyn Technical HS, my father's working partner (construction inspectors for NYC), a man named Dave O'Sullivan, went to the K & E dealer and bought two 'log log duplex decitrig' slide rules. A pocket model and a longer one. He gave them to me as a gift, and I carried and used them thru not only Brooklyn Tech HS, but thru engineering school and into my engineering career until electronic calculators took over. The slide rules are in my desk in my office here at home, as is a set of Kern drafting instruments my father bought in Switzerland when he went on leave there during WWII. So much has changed in my own lifetime, not just the passing of Sears, Roebuck, but a whole way of life with it. Skills I had to learn such as being able to do mathematics without benefit of a programmable calculator, being able to know fractions and decimal equivalents and shop math and engineering formulas and constants 'off the top of my head', being able to use manual machine tools without benefit of DRO and without manuals or other formalized instructions, in short, being in a world where a person was expected to do some thinking to figure stuff out on their own, and take responsibility for it. Sears, Roebuck and their tool department were a part of the fabric of my generation. My father's generation, called the "Greatest Generation" came home from WWII, and many returning veterans went to Sears, Roebuck and bought tools including table saws to either build or fix up their first houses. As I've written in other posts here, as a kid on warm evenings, the sound of circular saws cutting wood and hammering was heard up and down our block. It was the veterans, who were the fathers of my peers, as well as my own father, all using their Craftsman table saws to cut lumber for home projects.

We kids grew up knowing something of using tools and being expected to help with projects or do them as a normal responsibility in our families. Sadly, we have lost a lot of this, and the passing of Sears, Roebuck is, at least, partially a casualty.
 
Sears, Robuck, and Company was the Amazon of 1890-1960. They sold almost everything, including house kits, and would arrange for delivery, even way out on the prairie. Along the way they failed to change with the times.
 
Sears, Robuck, and Company was the Amazon of 1890-1960. They sold almost everything, including house kits, and would arrange for delivery, even way out on the prairie. Along the way they failed to change with the times.


Friends of ours live in a Sears house. It's not far from some post WW2 houses that are made with metal panels that have the "stove type" enamel coating.
 
I never had much interest in mechanical things as a kid, but my dad just did that stuff because it needed to be done. I remember one day I was leaving the house on my bicycle and he had the lawn mower engine blown apart, sitting on newspapers on the garage floor. I remember thinking "wow, that will never run again." When I got back home, he was mowing the yard.

I guess I must have inherited it from him after all, because now I love doing that stuff.



Sent from my Nokia 7.1 using Tapatalk
 
great story, I grew up more or less the same way. Tools were a large of my growing up Today kids have no idea about how to fix things or how things are made. All of the shop classes are gone. I have the impression that kids today think that everything magically "appears" out of a computer.
 
Sears, Robuck, and Company was the Amazon of 1890-1960. They sold almost everything, including house kits, and would arrange for delivery, even way out on the prairie. Along the way they failed to change with the times.
Yea talk about biggest business failures in American history. Harvard should teach a whole course in their school off business on how Sears fell asleep at the wheel. They could have been Amazon, heck they once were the Amazon and had they seen the online retail coming they would have had a massive head start.

I recall watching a show on I think it was CNBC where they talked about how Sears was trying to position itself to be slightly better quality than Walmart years back. Then found out that really didn't work so then they tried to compete to be as cheap as Walmart, which I think killed them with all the people who trusted the company to provide them with quality.

I recall asking for a birthday gift of metric sockets from a relative maybe around 2010 as I needed a set of metrics finally. At the time I told the relative to get me Craftsman. Back then I still believed in the brand. When I opened the gift out popped low quality made in China junk at a Craftsman price. If I wanted cheap Chinese I would have asked for Harbor Freight! I think this was pretty typical of how they lost people at the end.

All that time they they were tossing money into the retail store side of the business they never realized that it was the catalog (granted an online) side that would be the wave of the future. When did the Sears catalog finally go away? I recall it as a kid but did it make it into the internet years? How they missed the online market until it is too late has to be one of the biggest business blunders in the modern era!

Sent from my SM-J737V using Tapatalk
 
Sears, Robuck, and Company was the Amazon of 1890-1960. They sold almost everything, including house kits, and would arrange for delivery, even way out on the prairie. Along the way they failed to change with the times.

like the who song goes [you have to move with the fashions or be out cast ]we need to tune out to all the blatant consumerism and get back to are roots of being self reliant
 
great story, I grew up more or less the same way. Tools were a large of my growing up Today kids have no idea about how to fix things or how things are made. All of the shop classes are gone. I have the impression that kids today think that everything magically "appears" out of a computer.

in about 1973 a high school shop instructor ask me if i had any vices i replayed no but my dad has one on the work bench out in his shop and there in lays the problem we for the most part had parents [a mom and a dad ]that worked sad thing today most of the kids are just the byproduct of a good time the drugs the booze its one thing to have a drink its another to fall thank god there was a boys club two blocks down the road i lived there and except for that 3 p.m. tv brake to watch superman i lived in that shop most of these kids today will never know or understand the pure joy we get from working with our hands i had a shop instructor at city collage shellby pittman god bless his sole i stated there in 1989 [went there for 32 years]after the first night i got home my dad ask me who the prof was i told him his reply that old bastard is still there he was there in 64 when i went there i got off track a bit so mr. pittman was telling us a story when he started working at north island in 42 and he ask a machinist what he was making his reply i don't know i have not uncovered it yet he also told us an old timer there ask him what he was a machinist he replied hold up your hands you ain't no machinist you still have all your fingers dam if that did not make us think sorry for all the rambling oh ya happy new year out there
 
Speaking of cheap Japanese tools our grocery store of all places had a bin of Globe Master tools. I was way too young to know the difference between quality tools and cheap tools. I was allowed to look at them but never bought any.
I too had the Craftsman tool bug in the mid to late 70s. Then I started working full time as a mechanic and had the SnapOn disease for 10 years or so.
For the last 25 or 30 years I have been buying my high quality tools at flea markets and pawn shops.
 
Great stories keep them coming!!
Rivett, can’t quite make out the brand on your pliers, the blue handles would lead me to believe they are Channelocks.
 
Sears, Robuck, and Company was the Amazon of 1890-1960. They sold almost everything, including house kits, and would arrange for delivery, even way out on the prairie. Along the way they failed to change with the times.

My dad, born in 1911, grew up in a house from Sears Roebuck. His mother's sister had a house with the same floor plan. My dad's house no longer stands. The farm is now an industrial plant. Dad's aunt's house, about 10 miles from here, still stands but it has been sided over. I doubt that the present owners know it's history.

Bob
WB8NQW
 
I can remember my dad bringing home our first hydraulic bottle jack... I was a freshman in high school ... thinking back it’s hard to believe we had not had one up until that point... I remember sitting in my metal shop telling my shop teacher about it... Oh Bottle jacks are great he says and assured me I would be able to jack up the corner of my parents house if need be... that’s something you shouldn’t tell a kid with a new bottle jack!! A new tool was and still is exciting... especially new old tools!
 
That Sears (Hicksville) was our local one. It is now closed (about 2 years now) and slated to become a Huge four level housing complex. I understand that was the largest Sears, acreage wise, in the country at the time. We went there frequently for everything from clothing to appliances to household goods and tools. They also had an automotive center for tires and batteries. It is a big loss to the area in my opinion. When they started to falter, I bought everything I thought I might need when it came on sale. There were some very good deals on tools. The Grumman facility now is used for movie studios, county offices and similar non industrial purposes for the most part. When we garage sale in the area we will often find tool items that must have come from Grumman, AKA "Long Islands largest hardware store".

Edit- I forgot to mention "US GENERAL" which was across from Sears. They sold name brand hand tools and small machines like lathes and wood working machines. and welders too. They also had a catalog. You looked at the item in a display case. Then you filled out a slip with the product details and a guy went in the back and got it. Then you paid at a register. My set of SK 3/8'drive metric sockets (1977) and my Klein 9" linesman's pliers came from there. I still have and use both.
 
My dad, born in 1911, grew up in a house from Sears Roebuck. His mother's sister had a house with the same floor plan. My dad's house no longer stands. The farm is now an industrial plant. Dad's aunt's house, about 10 miles from here, still stands but it has been sided over. I doubt that the present owners know it's history.

Bob
WB8NQW

Yup, the house next door to us when I was a kid was a Sears kit house, Cape Cod style. The owner was an FDNY fireman and he won it at some kind of show my father said.It came on trailers and he and a bunch of guys erected it somehow. That house still stands today though it has a full second floor now. It also came with a garage that he just set on the soil, no foundation. That still stands too but is rotted severely. That guy started my tool addiction. He had every tool imaginable including oxy/acet torches, an electric screwdriver, and a metal lathe back in the sixties. When you ran into trouble with some kind of project Mr Finn bailed you out with just the tool for the job, great guy, long gone now.
 
For all of my younger life my father did all car repairs from a tripod type bumper screw jack or cement blocks and plank ramps. No jack stands ever. Then we got a boat and trailer and he bought a Sears scissor jack to jack up the trailer to service the wheel bearings( with Sears waterproof trailer wheel bearing grease). Now ,like most of us, I have a few floor jacks, bottle jacks, scissor jacks, jack stands, ramps, even a porta- power. These are things professional mechanics had way back when. The every day guy could rarely afford them.
 








 
Back
Top