Company Logo On Feeler Gauge

[Provincial]

I have an old feeler gauge with an interesting logo stamped on it. It only has three blades that, in order, are .050, .010, and .060 thick. The logo is a large capital A with a smaller capital P on the left and a smaller capital W on the right. All this over a small o. surrounded by a larger capital C, indicating Co., and this lettering is stylized.

It came in an old Gerstner machinist box that has odds and ends from a machinist in it.

Does anyone recognize this logo?

 

[bugnut]

I'm taking a guess at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company, just a guess

 

[Mick56]

There was a Performance Automotive Warehouse that sold high performance auto parts, was mostly just known as PAW. Went out of business around 2010.

 

[Private Lugnutz]

Hi Jock,

I am reviving your old thread because I recently picked up two gauges, one very similar to yours. Actually, the case is identical, with a different configuration of feeler blades. It's a little confusing with the "A" being in the middle of the "P" and the "W", which makes our western eyes want to read "PAW" and "PAW Co", but I do believe it's Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company, and the second gauge, of identical construction, and identical size markings on the blades, but a different, simpler and more familiar "P.W.A." marking, helps confirm that, I think.

Having collected dozens of feeler gauges in the last several years, all in the automotive field, it's very unusual to see blades this thick!

 

[Provincial]

Lugz, glad you remembered this thread. I was wondering if P&W Aircraft was a possibility, but the way the logo was laid out didn't verify it.

I think these were part of an assembly process, but not for valve clearance. The .010 leaf is too thin for these engines. The R-1830 uses .020 on both intake and exhaust.

These may have been used to set up fixtures or cutting tools. Pratt & Whitney was a machine tool maker before they got into aircraft engines.

 

[MShaw]

" Pratt & Whitney was a machine tool maker before they got into aircraft engines."
This is not true. They were two separate companies. The aircraft company started when Pratt & Whitney was on Homestead Avenue in Hartford. The aircraft company had backing from some Pratt & Whitney executives and used space in the plant at first. They adopted the Pratt & Whitney name as it was a well known, well respected, name.
The Pratt and Whitney Company continued making machine tools, cutting tools and gages long after the aircraft company was established.

 

[MShaw]

This is from the P&WA history web site:
A graduate of Princeton University, Rentschler came from an industrious Midwest family with social connections, and through his banker brother soon learned that the Pratt & Whitney Machine Tool Company of Hartford, with its long history as a manufacturer of precision tools, had both capital to invest and extra factory space. As it happened, the president of Pratt & Whitney’s parent company, Niles-Bement-Ponds, was a friend of the Rentschler family, and with little fuss a deal was struck in July 1925 creating the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company as a separate business with Rentschler at the helm. The following month, Rentschler and his design team, led by chief engineer George Mead, moved into the Capitol Avenue factory that a few years earlier had been home to the Pope-Hartford Electric Automobile Company and began to work on the Navy’s engine.

 

[bob15]

Pratt & Whitney Measurement still exists in Bloomfield, CT.

Here is a bit of their history: https://www.prattandwhitney.com/History/