Cen-tech

A few notes:

This post goes out to GJ member Four Cycle, without his work I would be even more lost then I am; so special thanks for all your hard work.

If not vintage then it is a very early made tool from the 1970's.

I am not sure about the Harbor freight connection at this time ? maybe when it expired HF took Over?

The backstory as they say. At a garage sale I picked up the following screwdriver and I thought it was a HF one and just as I was ready to toss it back, several things caught my old eyes. (1) it was marked with a U/L mark for underwriters Laboratories, (2) it was stamped with U.S.A., and (3) it was also stamped as precision Ground; something you will not find on HF tools.

Then this morning I saw Four Cycles post about the Daido Corp. out of Japan as the maker of Cen-Tech and it was first used on 1969-01-13 (They did make tools in the States). HF got there start in 1977. I am not sure about the connection at this time between both entities ?

A few pictures and a few links fior you to look at.

http://alloy-artifacts.org/trademarks-and-logos.html

https://trademarks.justia.com/724/10/cen-tech-72410189.html

https://uspto.report/TM/72410189

https://trademarks.justia.com/785/49/cen-78549143.html

^ When I saw the amount of resources Alloy-Artifacts.org invested in archiving information about Asian and European tool makers, it seemed appropriate to include them in the list as well.
Its purpose, after all, is to be a point of reference for people trying to figure out "Who made this widget?"

So... "Cen-Tech" was a U.S. maker prior to them being acquired by Daido, but we don't know what the timeline was on the acquisition.
Alloy-Artifacts.org notes the same lack of information on the Truecraft acquisition.

just a wild guess, but since the trademark on "Cen-Tech" expired, it looks like somebody else thought it would be a good idea to use the name (or at least a variant of it):



Centech (INDIA) 6-piece SAE combination wrench set ( photo ebay )