Champion DeArment and "C-Circle" Pliers

June 2, 2024. Readers with an interest in Craftsman pliers will want to check out our article on Maker Champion DeArment, the manufacturer of pliers with the "C-Circle" code.

This had been an unknown code for many years and we're glad to finally identify the maker. Production by Champion DeArment appears to be closely connected with the use of "Craftsman Vanadium" on pliers, and with the change to the "Nested Diamonds" gripping pattern, and we hope to fill in more information in the near future.

Database Working Again!

May 17, 2024. Database access for index searches and other pages should be working again! Please let us know if you see any further problems of this type.

Database Server is Down ..

May 14, 2024. Currently the database server for the site is down, which means that the index search and Tool Industry Timeline pages are unavailable. The regular site index is still available though.

The problem appears to be related to recent software updates at our hosting company, and we're working to fix the problem.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Improvements for Craftsman Pages

May 3, 2024. Recently we've been making some changes to our Craftsman articles and wanted to explain the new layout. The biggest change has been to move all of the material related to manufacturing codes into a new page, as previously the discussions, case studies, and code tables were scattered in a number of locations.

The new page for Craftsman Manufacturing Codes provides an extensible framework for our "case study" sections, where we present and weigh evidence to identify the maker of a particular code. We think having all of these sections grouped together will make it easier to understand how to select and explain the evidence.

And speaking of case studies, in the past couple of months we've added a study for McKaig-Hatch, Distributor "BF", and Kraeuter, though the last one still has a few loose ends. We also have a good lead on another long-standing unknown code and hope to resolve it in the near future.

With the manufacturer's code sections now moved to their new home, the three earlier Craftsman articles are now much better organized, and we've even started expanding the history section for the early Craftsman era.

Alloy Artifacts is 18!

September 17, 2023. September of 2023 marks the 18th anniversary of Alloy Artifacts! We're glad to be still going strong after so many years, and hope to keep expanding and improving the site for many more.

In the past year we've worked on a number of projects here, including a major overhaul of our Logos page, significant updates to the page for Japanese Tool Makers, and numerous changes to improve the layout and presentation of the pages.

In addition, we've been going through our extensive library of tool company catalogs and scanning them to contribute to the International Tool Catalog Library (ITCL). Most of our company articles have a table of Catalog Resources with links to the scanned catalogs available at the ITCL, making it very convenient to browse the catalogs as you review a company's tools.

As always, we have an extensive backlog of tools waiting to be cleaned and photographed for the site, and hopefully we'll get a chance to add a number of these tools to the site.

Improvements for Tool Logos

January 28, 2023. We're currently working on some improvements that should make it easier to search for and identify tool logos. The first phase of the project is simple but time-consuming: we're going through all of the 200+ companies on the site to make sure that every company that used a tool logo has a "Tool Identification" section with images of the logos.

In addition, we're revising the names assigned to the tool logos to make them easier to find in an index search. By observation, most tool logos consist of one or more alphabetic letters enclosed in an outline such as a triangle, circle, or some other recognizable object. (Shields are very popular.)

Our assigned names are of the form XYZ-Outline, where XYZ are the observed letters in the logo, and Outline is one of the geometric or other outline shapes. (Many of our logos already have names of this form, such as the Billings B-Triangle or Vlchek V-Shield logos.) Looking up an unfamiliar logo could then be as simple as entering the letters and outline in the index search box.

Each logo image will be indexed twice under the entry "Logo Image", once for its image in the "Logos" section of the Trademarks page, and again for its image in the "Tool Identification" section of the corresponding company.

It will take a while to complete this project, but once finished we think it will be easier than ever to locate an unfamiliar tool logo. You can watch our progress by checking the index under "Logo Image".

Missing Indestro Catalog?

November 18, 2022. Catalogs are an important research tool here at Alloy Artifacts, and we would like to ask our readers for assistance in locating a possible missing Indestro catalog. The known catalogs for Indestro have a jump in the numbering from 22A to 55, and the publication date for catalog 55 is ambiguous, with the length of service statement indicating 1966, but a price list with the catalog showing 1971.

If catalog 55 is actually from 1971, then that would suggest that there may be a yet undiscovered Indestro catalog from the mid 1960s. We have a theory that such a catalog (if it exists) would likely be from 1966 and would be numbered as catalog 50, in recognition of their 50th year of service, counting from 1916 as Duro/Indestro did for most of their history. The catalog would also have a length of service statement of "over 50 years", possibly on the back cover.

Some of our readers probably have piles of old tool catalogs in their basements or garages, and we would like to ask you to look through your catalogs to see whether you have a previously unknown Indestro catalog. (The known Indestro catalogs can be viewed at the International Tool Catalog Library.) Also of interest would be any Indestro price lists dated from 1965 to 1970, as these may provide evidence of the unknown catalog.

If you do find such a catalog, please let us know via email, and thanks in advance!

Cold-Broached Sockets

February 9, 2022. Machined and cold-broached sockets were the dominant technology during the 1920s and 1930s, but two companies were using this method of socket construction well before 1920. Both R.F. Sedgley and Will B. Lane produced 1/2-hex drive socket sets for automotive service, with the sets including a ratchet handle, extension, screwdriver bits, and six or seven sockets turned from bar steel and cold-broached. We've known about the Sedgley "Hexall" and Lane "Unique" socket sets since the beginning of Alloy Artifacts, but were never quite sure which company came first.

We've spent the past few weeks updating the histories of the companies, and with the addition of some period advertisements and public notices, we now have a much clearer idea of their origin and development. We're reasonably certain that Will B. Lane's "Unique" set came first, and along the way we even discovered a surprising connection between the two companies.

Both company articles are now linked in the "Briefly Noted" section of the Navigation Bar. And to help track this important technology, we've added a "Cold-Broached Sockets" entry to the index.

Publication Date for J.M. Waterston Catalog No. 25

January 17, 2022. One of the distributor catalogs in our collection here is the catalog No. 25 from J.M. Waterston of Detroit, which is available as a reprint from the MWTCA. The catalog is undated and there's no discussion of the publication date in the reprint edition, but the catalog lists Blackhawk Q.D. tools that were first offered in 1925.

We did some checking online and found some confusion about the date, with one source placing it in 1930. But with some further research, we found an advertisement for J.M. Waterston on page 545 of the November, 1926 edition of the Machinists' Monthly Journal, with a note that catalog No. 25 was available. A similar ad in the November, 1925 edition of the same publication offered catalog No. 24, so on the basis of this evidence we can conclude that catalog No. 25 was published in 1926.

If a further refinement to the publication date were necessary, we could note that the J.M. Waterston ads in the same publication for July and August of 1926 did not mention a catalog, likely in anticipation of the new edition being ready late in 1926.

Tracking Distributor Catalogs

January 15, 2022. Distributor catalogs can be an important source of product information, especially when a company-specific catalog is not available. Most of our company articles have a section for industrial distributors, where we summarize the company's product listings in the catalogs of their known distributors. The catalog number and year are then indexed under the distributor's name, along with the companies represented.

Recently we've wanted a way to check on what distributor catalogs are available, so we've added an index entry "Distributor Catalogs" to summarize the references. The sub-entries are all See Also links to the specific distributor in the index, making it easy to review what catalog editions are available and what companies are represented.

More Website Maintenance ...

December 4, 2021. After a productive summer and fall of house maintenance and outdoor projects, we're ready to get back to work on Alloy Artifacts and do .. more website maintenance. We've started looking for broken links and references that have turned to gibberish, but have also been adding some period advertisements and catalog scans.

As always, we have a substantial backlog of tools waiting to be cleaned and photographed, and hope to be adding new material soon. In particular, we have two more 1920s era socket sets from Packer Auto Specialty and hope to add these in the near future.

Mystery Solved .. 14 Years Later!

May 2, 2021. Back in 2007 we found several "Chrome Molybdenum" offset box wrenches with distinctive forged-in "size panels" on the shank, but couldn't identify the manufacturer. With the hope that additional clues would appear (or that someone would recognize the maker), we placed the wrenches in our "Mystery Tools" section.

Then recently while doing a routine review of the 1938 None Better catalog, we noticed that the illustration for offset box wrenches seemed to have some faint markings. Getting out the magnifying glass, we found what appeared to be ... "Chrome Molybdenum" and two size panels! This piqued our curiosity, and remembering that None Better sometimes used Barcalo as a contract manufacturer, we next got out the 1934 Barcalo catalog. The last page of the catalog has an illustration of chrome molybdenum box wrenches, and close inspection found the same distinctive markings! With Barcalo confirmed as the maker of the mystery wrenches, we have moved them to their proper home in the Barcalo article.

To save our readers the trouble of straining their eyes (or finding a magnifying glass), we made a high-resolution scan of the illustration and extracted a close-up view of the markings. We're glad to have finally solved the mystery, and this exercise also confirms the importance of good catalog illustrations in rediscovering the history of the tool industry.

Tracking Alloy Usage

April 23, 2021. Readers of this site know that the development of alloy steel is one of the über-themes appearing throughout the site. In order to help track the progression of alloy steel, we've started tagging early reports of alloy steel usage in tools with an entry in the index, under the heading "Alloy Steel".

We haven't finished yet, but the entries so far are showing that alloy steel usage began seeping into the tool industry well in advance of the momentous introduction of the Bonney CV line in 1922. This confirms our impression that interest in alloy steel was already very high in the 1910s, and it was only a matter of time before the tool industry adopted the new alloys.

Website Maintenance

April 5, 2021. After a long hiatus we've started dusting off the web pages here at Alloy Artifacts. Unfortunately we found a lot of bit-rot, especially with the Google Books clips of period ads or articles — many of these had turned to gibberish, as it seems that the underlying volumes had been reorganized. In most cases the links still went to the same volume, so we were able to find the original item and make a new clip. These clips add a lot of value to the site, but have turned out to be more fragile than expected, and we hope there won't be too many more changes.

Since we were doing general maintenance anyway, we also spent some time to upgrade the web pages to the latest HTML standards, and then ran the pages through the W3C validator. Hopefully this will help ensure that the site works well on whatever devices our visitors are using.

In this flurry of mundane changes we've also been sneaking in a few additions, mostly in the form of scans of period catalogs, but with a few new trademarks and other minor improvements. Be sure to check your favorite pages for changes!

Happy 100th Birthday!

May 31, 2019. As we noted a while back, today is the 100th anniversary of modern socket tools, based on the release of Blackhawk's interchangeable socket sets in 1919. We hope our readers will take time to review Blackhawk's socket tools, as well as the earlier sockets sets by Bay State Tool, Miller Combination Tool, Mossberg, and Walden.

Responsive Design Changes Complete!

May 11, 2019. We've completed our planned changes and hope that visitors with mobile devices are finding the site easier to use. Please let us know if you run into any problems!

Responsive Design Changes Underway ...

April 18, 2019. We recently started working on some long-planned changes to make the website more accessible to mobile devices, with the goal of having the site look good and work well on any kind of device. The changes will include features such as scalable images, smarter navigation menus, folding tables, a mobile-friendly index search facility, and various layout changes.

As a demonstration of the planned changes, we've updated several pages to the newer design and invite anyone interested to try viewing them on your mobile device, or simply play around with resizing your browser window to watch the response. Currently the updated pages are the home page here and the articles on Duro/Indestro, Mossberg, Hinsdale, and Western Auto Supply. We'll be adding more as time permits.

New Index Search Now Available

April 14, 2019. We've added a new feature that lets you search the entire index using keywords such as company names, tool types, or model numbers. Just enter your search terms in the form at the top of the home page and hit 'Search', and a new page will come up with a ranked list of matching links. The search is case-insensitive and will find partial matches, so you don't need to enter the full keyword, and to look for multiple words together you can join them with an underscore (e.g. duro_metal_products).

Noteworthy Events for 2019

Although we usually don't mention the coming of a new calendar year, 2019 brings several events that should be of interest to our readers. The first is that Cornwell Quality Tools has reached their 100th year milestone, and we'd like to offer them a big shout-out: Congratulations on your first century! Cornwell is the first of the modern tool-truck companies to reach the century mark, and we wish them continued success in the future.

Cornwell has had many achievements during its long history, but we'd like to mention a couple from their early history: Cornwell was the first company to use alloy steels for substantially all of their production, beginning at their inception in 1919, and Cornwell was also the first company to make hot-forged sockets in the standard 1/2-drive configuration, starting around 1926.

A second noteworthy event for 2019 is that the U.S. copyright laws will finally release another year of publications into the public domain. Beginning in 2019, works copyrighted in 1923 or earlier are now in the public domain. Why is this important to Alloy Artifacts? Readers familiar with the slice of history documented by this site know that many of the interesting developments in the tool industry occurred during the 1920s and 1930s. But until this year, anything published in 1923 or later was potentially still under copyright, under the absurdly long copyright period granted by U.S. laws. This meant that publications from 1923 on could not be presented as full text by Google Books, which has greatly hampered our ability to track developments in the tool industry. We hope that Google will act promptly to release materials published in 1923, and that each coming year will bring new resources for historical research.

One final event will probably not be noted anywhere else except here at Alloy Artifacts, but we think it should be significant for our readers. May 31, 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of modern socket technology, based on the release of Blackhawk's heavy-duty interchangeable socket sets on that date in 1919. An example of one of these early sets can be seen as the Blackhawk No. 8 Socket Set, and our article on Blackhawk will provide lots of further information.

Tool Sales Underway. The previously announced sale of our tool inventory is now underway. Please refer to the Tool Sale Announcement for details.

Major Policy Change. Please see the new Announcements section for a major policy change regarding our Tool Inventory Policy.

Ten Years and 5000+ Tools Later ...

Alloy Artifacts is 10! September 2015 marks the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Alloy Artifacts website. From a modest beginning with three articles and ten or twenty photographs, the site has grown to offer more than 5,000 photographs of tools, with historical information for dozens of tool companies. Long-time readers may remember the "dark ages" before this site came online, when an internet search for a tool or tool company likely found nothing at all, or at best a mix of speculation and misinformation. Alloy Artifacts provides solid information in the form of photographs, references to printed material, public documents such as patents and trademarks, and (when possible) links to other online resources.

Correcting the record. We've just moved the "Pick-Up" wrench to a new entry for New Britain Manufacturing, based on new evidence that this company was not affiliated with New Britain Machine.

A New Look for the Home Page

We've given our home page a long-overdue update, with an expanded slide show of sample photos. The slide show needs Javascript to operate though, so we've also added a warning in case you have Javascript disabled.

Breaking News!

We've just found a long-sought example to associate a well-known maker with the Sears "AF" manufacturer's code ... see the Merit 6-Piece Wrench Set for details!

Best Wishes for the New Year!

As we roll into 2016, Alloy Artifacts would like wish all of our readers a happy and prosperous New Year. We're glad to have made some important improvements here during the last few months of 2015, and we hope to build on these changes in the coming year. Planned improvements include a more mobile-friendly layout, better indexing, and of course lots more tools.

Please Update Your Links!

The old Comcast pages are now gone, and we would like to ask our readers to update any bookmarks or links that refer to the old Comcast address. If you maintain web pages that refer to this site, please make sure that your links point to our new address.

Accessing the Web Pages

Our new hosting site is working very well and all pages are now accessible at http://alloy-artifacts.org, with an alternate address at http://alloy-artifacts.com.

We've taken advantage of the move to dust off our pages a bit -- fixing broken links and other bit-rot -- as well as adding a few minor updates. The new site will allow us to do some things that are not feasible with static pages, such as online surveys and generated pages. We hope to add some new features and content as time permits.