Ok Williams experts; what's the deal with Williams Vulcan tools? It was their truck brand? When were they made? I bought a set of 3/8 metrics at a garage sale. Hey seem to have the same part numbers as regular Williams stuff.
I conducted some detailed research into Vulcan sometime last year. I can't recall all the details at the moment, but I posted them somewhere on the board. IIRC, Williams was purchased by Greenfield in 1958, then Greenfield was acquired by TRW around 1968. The Vulcan line was introduced around that time as an industrial grade truck tool to be sold off trucks to compete with SO & Mac. They were indeed made at the Williams factory, and other than the markings, the forgings are mostly identical to the Williams equivalents.
Sometime during the late 1970s (could never quite pin the year down because of a lack of catalogs from that period), TRW moved Williams away from an automotive/mechanics line to position it as an industrial tool line. I believe it was around this time that the Vulcan line was discontinued, as it now was redundant. TRW changed the company name from JH Williams & Co. to Williams Industrial. TRW then began to pare the name down on the Williams tools, starting first with the removal of "& Co." followed by "J.H." and finally discontinuing the "Super-" moniker. The last Williams trademark on the tools was just the name Williams in the now-familiar sans serif rounded font with an uppercase W and the rest in lowercase still used by Snap-on.
Eventually the Vulcan trademark was sold to an importer in California that intended to use it on imported tools but went belly-up. Last record of the trademark was somewhere in the 1990s when it was owned by a bank, apparently part of assets acquired on a defaulted loan. The trademark was never renewed or traded after that time.
TRW divested itself of Williams in 1984, and the company became Williams Hand Tools. It went bankrupt in 1986, and its assets were liquidated. There is no evidence that Williams tools were manufactured after that date. From my research, it's uncertain whether tools were even being made during the 1984-86 period. Two artifacts I have may indicate that at least during that two-year period, Williams was still making tools for TRW on contract. One is a DOE that is clearly a Williams Industrial era design bearing both the last Williams trademark name and TRW. Another is a combo having a rectangular raised panel (the panel being similar in shape and style to a C-man) that is clearly a Williams-made wrench but bearing only the TRW name and using different model numbers than on Williams wrenches.
When Snap-on bought the line in 1993, it only acquired the trademarks and intellectual property, everything else was already gone.
That's about what I can recall.
