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Jazz

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Pretty cool. I wonder why B&D didn't stay at the top of the tool game however? Now they are considered only for light duty residential use by most people. I think they do have industrial grade stuff but it's not the first thing I think of when I think Black and Decker. That being said though I have a garage full of Black and Decker tools :)
 
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jd_1138

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Jazz said:
Pretty cool. I wonder why B&D didn't stay at the top of the tool game however? Now they are considered only for light duty residential use by most people. I think they do have industrial grade stuff but it's not the first thing I think of when I think Black and Decker. That being said though I have a garage full of Black and Decker tools :)
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I like the look of the beige or tan B&D tools from the 70's/80's. My dad still has one from the 70's that he still has and uses.
 
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Lump

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Jazz said:
Pretty cool. I wonder why B&D didn't stay at the top of the tool game however? Now they are considered only for light duty residential use by most people. I think they do have industrial grade stuff but it's not the first thing I think of when I think Black and Decker. That being said though I have a garage full of Black and Decker tools :)
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The reason is a common issue in the history of quality American-made products: Someone who is having trouble penetrating the marketplace will buy a company who has a good reputation, and then market products using that established brand name. For example, when I was a kid, South Bend was a manufacturer of high quality fishing tackle. The company was bought out in the 60 's or 70's, and now fishing tackle sold under that familiar label is very cheap quality, in my opinion. Similarly, in the 1950's Black and Decker was a well-respected name for solid quality electric power tools. Then the company was bought out.

Interestingly, the corporation who owns the Black and Decker brand name today owns several brands, at different quality levels. I THINK that Dewalt is one of their higher-end brand names. I sat on a plane once next to an executive from that corporation, and he explained it to me.
 
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neophyte

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Lump said:


The reason is a common issue in the history of quality American-made products: Someone who is having trouble penetrating the marketplace will buy a company who has a good reputation, and then market products using that established brand name. For example, when I was a kid, South Bend was a manufacturer of high quality fishing tackle. The company was bought out in the 60 's or 70's, and now fishing tackle sold under that familiar label is very cheap quality, in my opinion. Similarly, in the 1950's Black and Decker was a well-respected name for solid quality electric power tools. Then the company was bought out.

Interestingly, the corporation who owns the Black and Decker brand name today owns several brands, at different quality levels. I THINK that Dewalt is one of their higher-end brand names. I sat on a plane once next to an executive from that corporation, and he explained it to me.
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This is true for a number of companies, but I'm not sure Black & Decker is one of them. My understanding is that Black & Decker decided at some point to sell lower cost "nonprofessional" tools to homeowners and other people who weren't in industry. The tools were less expensive, weren't made to the same quality level as the tools they manufactured for their professional and industrial customers. Professionals were unaware of the difference and purchased the tools thinking they were the same as the industrial tools, and because they weren't the Black & Decker brand lost industrial sales due to the reputation they were producing lower quality tools. My understanding is that this happened similarly in Europe as well.

To fix the reputation problem, Black and Decker purchased Dewalt in the USA, a company known for making high quality radial arm saws, but which as far as I'm aware, never produced hand held power tools. In Europe Black and Decker purchased ELU a company that was known for producing high quality hand held power tools, and which had invented the plunge router. Black & Decker then started selling its professional and industrial tools under both the ELU and Dewalt brands, as well as selling them as Black & Decker "Professional." They also sold the Elu tools under all three names as well. The Dewalt and Elu names stuck, so they discontinued the industrial Black & Decker line and left it as a lower cost line and kept the two others as the professional brands. Later they killed of the Elu brand as well. Some of the tools sold under the ELU and B&D Professional brands are still sold as Dewalt tools. Unfortunately they did kill off some of the other good ELU tools.

Black & Decker is now partnered with Stanley Tools, a company known for doing the same type of thing.
 
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Jack Olsen

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I've got no idea how old this one is, but it's never let me down.

azch.jpg
 
Z

Zrexxer

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dandan111 said:
Is that a 1/2 inch jack?
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What, ya mean the drill with the label that says "5/8" Standard Drill" on it? That one? :spit:

This 9" Grinder isn't as old, but it's the oldest B&D I have currently. It will rip yer arm off and beat you with it, if you let your guard down.
 

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ganymede

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A few years back I had a bench grinder with the same logo as the beautiful drill above.
I got a lot of use out of it but eventually the brushes wore out . I tried to file down brushes that were larger but it didn't work. Such a shame. There are so many vintage power tools floating around that need only a small part or two to keep going.
 
M

marty_p

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Thanks for sharing the B & D electric drill history, Ryan! :thumbup:

And Jack, how much does that bad boy of yours weigh? 15-20 pounds?
 
B

Brad54

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I've got a 1/2-inch Black n Decker Model 1 drill.
My dad found it in an Illinois snow bank in the early '50s, and his dad used it for several years at the shop for his road construction contracting company.

When I was 17 (damn... that's 25 years ago!) he gave it to me and said if I could get the cord and brushes replaced, I could have it.
It's served me well ever since. I don't use it often, but when I need it, nothing else will work.
It'll run 1-inch auger bits through two stacked 6x6 pressure treated lumber like nothing.
If it gets hung on something though, like a hidden nail, it'll stop the world from rotating on its axis for a split second, which ends up throwing the operator to the ground.

600rpm.

-Brad
 
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Jack Olsen

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I've never given that drill much thought -- no idea how old it is.

Here's a cell phone picture of the logo and serial number plate.

ouas.jpg


It weighs a little over 17 pounds.

It doesn't have quite the kick of my Milwaukee Hole Hawg, but it's a wrist-breaker if you don't handle it right.
 
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Skin

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last 2 digits in the serial number are most likely the year of manufacture.
 
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Outlawmws

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Skin said:
last 2 digits in the serial number are most likely the year of manufacture.
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I would think the first two would be. They even have a slightly different font.

When was 110V pumped up to 117V as the standard? Wasn't 110V the std. til about 1940, then the bumped it by 1/2 a volt a year over time so by 1950 it would have been 115, and by 1954 117? (Where it stayed for several decades until the most recent change to 120 +- 10%)
 
L

LegacyIndustrial

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B&d needs to hire a marketing firm that can harness that story and make hay.
It's a true American story that needs to be told to the masses.

I dig these little videos Ryan finds!!! Bring us more.
 
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Jack Olsen

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Zeke, that looks like one from the 30s.

I haven't found a way to get the manufacturing date. I've seen different examples that point to it not being anywhere in the serial number.
 
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Zeke

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Jack Olsen said:
Zeke, that looks like one from the 30s.

I haven't found a way to get the manufacturing date. I've seen different examples that point to it not being anywhere in the serial number.
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It's a Millers Falls if anyone knows about them. No data plate on the 2nd one. 4th one is a Thor and the last one is a Perles rotary hammer made in Switzerland.
 
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Skin

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Outlawmws said:
I would think the first two would be. They even have a slightly different font.

When was 110V pumped up to 117V as the standard? Wasn't 110V the std. til about 1940, then the bumped it by 1/2 a volt a year over time so by 1950 it would have been 115, and by 1954 117? (Where it stayed for several decades until the most recent change to 120 +- 10%)
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First two look like the same font to me just minus the enamel. :dunno:.

Just looks like a 50s tool to me. If it were from the 30s i'd expect it to be slightly more crude and for the most part those ID plates didn't have enamel coloring/wording way back in the 20s and 30s, usually they'd be stamped brass.

110v rating is fairly generic, are even still in use today in limited capacity, and were in common use through-out most of the 20th century so I wouldn't go by that.
 
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WWIIjeep

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Zeke said:
It's a Millers Falls if anyone knows about them.
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Are you asking for Millers Falls portable power tool history?

Millers Falls started selling portable power tools in the 1930s. The company is better-known for their more than a century of hand tool manufacturing, from the 1860s through the 1970s. The Millers Falls name still exists today on a line of Chinese-made tools distributed by the Hangzhou Great Star Industrial Co. Hangzhou (Hangchow) is one of the larger technological centers in China. The current Millers Falls-branded products bear absolutely no resemblance to the relatively high quality Millers Falls tools of old.

The first power tools produced by Millers Falls were sold under the Millers Falls Dyno-Mite brand. After WWII and in the 1950s, the Dyno-Mite brand was used on a line of consumer or do-it-yourselfer grade power tools.

Ingersoll-Rand purchased Millers Falls in 1962 and continued to produce Millers Falls portable power tools until 1982. In the latter part of that 20-year time-span, the portable power tools were branded as Ingersoll-Rand instead of Millers Falls. In 1982, Ingersoll-Rand sold the Millers Falls brand and its products to someone else, who was supposedly going to continue manufacturing Millers Falls products, but AFAIK, production of the power tools ceased at that time and product support for Millers Falls portable power tools hasn't been available since the early 1980s.

As a user of Millers Falls portable power tools during the Ingersoll-Rand era, I'd characterize them as a combination of higher-end consumer-grade and light-industrial power tools. It should be noted that industrial or heavy-duty rated power tools of the era from the 1940s through the 1970s were generally far more durable than similarly-rated products today, especially where the rating is more of a marketing ploy than an actual measure of capacity.

Millers Falls portable power tools were certainly competitive with the other US makers of the day, but without the extensive distribution channels of most of the other makers, so lesser-known, even to users at the time, and especially now, three decades after the brand ceased to exist for all practical purposes.

The above being memory and personal opinion, with date confirmations from the excellent on-line Millers Falls hand tool history site:

http://oldtoolheaven.com/index.html
 
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Jere

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Zrexxer said:
What, ya mean the drill with the label that says "5/8" Standard Drill" on it? That one? :spit:

This 9" Grinder isn't as old, but it's the oldest B&D I have currently. It will rip yer arm off and beat you with it, if you let your guard down.
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting that, I just picked up the same model from and estate sale today. It's more worn and can't read the label plates, picked up a smaller one with it that says "polisher" too but with a different trigger which is also B&D.
 
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Lippyp

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I have an Elu 4" angle grinder thats been a real workhorse, only replaced it because 4" disks have gotten hard to find. I now have a DeWalt. My dad had a 1960's vintage B&D drill that was way better made than the stuff you can buy now although that said my first ever power tool in the late 80's was probably the most basic single speed drill B&D sold and I beat the **** out of it for a good ten years+ before I finally killed the gearbox on it mostly by using stuff like wire wheels that put sideways pressure on the bearings.
 
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Zurawskt

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Nothing like a REAL corded drill when you need to get the job done! However I always find my self grabbing my makita cordless, then getting pist when the battery craps out! :rolleyes2
 
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