Craftsman Circle Y Tools

[3baygarage]

A little gathering of Craftsman with the Y in a circle marking. Pardon my rust. Let’s see what else is out there.

 

[3baygarage]

More pics

 

[d42jeep]

Are these okay? Not Craftsman but sold by Sears and definitely Circle Y.
-Don

 

[3baygarage]

Sure. I have the one Dunlap adjustable as well, from the other thread.

 

[BlakeTheCarGuy]

Cool I have never seen the Circle Y ones I have a Circle U socket a BE socket and a Circle I set of locking pliers.


Sent from my iPhone using The Garage Journal mobile app

 

[3baygarage]

Keep an eye out, you’ll find them. Here is a Dunlap I posted a while back. I know Don has seen this in the other thread.

 

[rustyedge1]

I picked up a couple at auction this week. Not much info on the circle Y seems. The 12" in photo has also F6 which I don't know anything about.

 

[Leviton]

I found these last week. Dunlap pliers with circle Y. They are 6.5 inches long and have a coating that looks similar to cadmium.

Do we know who the Y in a circle manufacturer is?

 

[3baygarage]

Cool cool.

Pretty sure this came up over in a thread about pipe wrenches iirc. I think the maker is McKaig Hatch.

Some of their pliers have deep cut lines in the grip.

eBay example for comparison (not mine). This has the exact same same handle grip design as your pliers above.

 

[four.cycle]

Y WF = Western Forge, ca. 2009 - 2011

??

 

[3baygarage]

Y WF = Western Forge, ca. 2009 - 2011

??

Huh? Oh, that’s a way later mark.
Y in a circle is an old mark.

 

[four.cycle]

^ that was exactly my thought as I posted that. that's why I went back and edited it and added the guy and attached my copy of Gary Lauver's list there.

so.... IOW: we really don't have a clue who made "Circle-Y", correct?

(at least until some more definitive evidence makes itself apparent.)

 

[3baygarage]

Apparently I PM'd Lauver back in 2018 about this. I don't remember if he and I had a discussion then.

Here is the 2018 thread where I mentioned 2 Dunlap pipe wrenches having McKaig Hatch jaws previously posted by a member.

There was also a cast pipe wrench example with a Y in a circle by McKaig Hatch. Probably where the Ridge Tool thing by Lauver came into play.

It's like one big "Circle (Y)erk" trying to
figure this out.

Craftsman manufacturer help required

I’ve recently acquired this vintage Craftsman adjustable wrench and really am impressed with quality and build quality. The only information I can gather on the history of this tool is from the amazing Alloy-Artifacts website. They estimate the wrench is of 1950s vintage but are unable to...

www.garagejournal.com

 

[Leviton]

Thanks go out to 3bay and four.cycle for their recent ideas and photos.

If we have McKaig-Hatch marked pliers and Dunlap marked pliers and both have the same handle designs, doesn't that imply that either McKaig-Hatch made these for Dunlap or someone else made them for both McKaig-Hatch and Dunlap?

 

[Leviton]

... and, with 3baygarage (with plumber84 and others in the other thread) identifying a McKaig-Hatch pipe wrench with a circle-Y, doesn't this all seem like pretty good evidence that Sears tools that were marked with a circle-Y were made by McKaig-Hatch?

There was also a cast pipe wrench example with a Y in a circle by McKaig Hatch

 

[d42jeep]

It seems very convincing to me. 3bay has some compelling evidence.
-Don

 

[four.cycle]

posting these here for reference 03/20/24 BK

Hello,
It would be great to identify the maker of the Circle-Y tools, but I haven't seen any definite evidence. McKaig-Hatch does seem like a good candidate though.
I'm more interested in the attribution of the Square-N mfg. code to McPherson-Huff Tool Company -- any info on that? They were in Sabina Ohio along with MAC, but there isn't much info on the company.
AA

I added a stub for the McPherson-Huff company and have started gathering info .. it's odd that this had slipped through the cracks so far. My guess is that they only did private branding/contract manufacturing, so that no tools marked with the company name have shown up.

The company appears to have died after a product liability lawsuit in 1967 and was acquired by MAC Tools. If I can find the court transcript it may have a bunch of info.

AA

I looked more closely at the photos you sent and the handle pattern on the pliers is interesting, but it's not the pattern generally associated with McKaig-Hatch. If you check my page, McKaig pliers usually used a pattern with three parallel lines, then two chevrons, then three parallel lines. This pattern can be seen in a 50s era catalog at ITCL as well.

So to help establish McKaig-Hatch as the Circle Y makers, it would be very helpful if Dunlap pliers with the lines and chevron pattern could be found.

Another thing to check is whether the pin securing the knurl on McKaig-Hatch adjustable wrenches is threaded on the inside or outside (slotted) end. My Craftsman page with the Circle Y wrenches notes that the pin is threaded on the slotted end.

Let me know what you find ..

AA

 

[d42jeep]

I took pictures of my groove joint Dunlap circle Y pliers yesterday. I’m hoping that the unique bolt may shed some light on the original supplier.


-Don

 

[d42jeep]

A quick eBay check shows that the McKaig Hatch bolt looks to be an exact match. Pictures from two different listings.

-Don

 

[four.cycle]

edited for brevity

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: "Y in a Circle" / "N square" / "M in a circle" /
Date: 2024-03-20 4:31 pm
From: AA <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

Thanks for checking this out. It's certainly plausible that McPherson-Huff was the maker of N-Square, as the 1967 lawsuit places them as a major maker of chisels and punches for Sears, starting in 1944. If I could track down the lawsuit transcript, there may be a place where a witness is being grilled:

Q. And how do you know that the punch in Exhibit A was produced by McPherson-Huff?
A. It's stamped with a little 'N' in a square, and that is the code the company marks on all of their tools.

AA

On 3/20/24 20:56, [email protected] wrote:

oh... I"m not making any claims about MdPherson-Huff making any of that. sorry.
I was just forwarding to you the photos that were most recently posted in this particular discussion thread.
all three of those got mixed together already - it's the nature of the "blog" type platform with everybody posting stuff all at once.

On the Y-Circle front, it turns out that I have a Dunlap adjustable with a Y-Circle mark, in the style with a conventional ringed hole at the end of the handle. Unfortunately I can't find the McKaig adj wrenches and they may have been sold off.

One more bit of evidence in favor of McKaig, the Craftsman tire bar/spoon in the photos you sent is very similar to a tire bar in the 1950s McKaig catalog.

 

[d42jeep]

I went ahead and ordered this one so I will be able to do a side by side comparison with the Dunlap when it arrives.
-Don

 

[stormking]

These have to be my favorite (at least looking) adjustable wrenches. Took about ten years to find the set, but all from the wild.

 

[d42jeep]

I went ahead and ordered this one so I will be able to do a side by side comparison with the Dunlap when it arrives.
-Don

The McKaig hatch pliers arrived today and leave no doubt that they were the supplier of my Dunlap Circle Y pliers.

-Don

 

[3baygarage]

Yep, no mistaking it Don. Hope you didn't buy it on account of the thread, but I know better. They look good together.

Nice set Storming. The old style 16", don't see a ton of those.

 

[d42jeep]

Yep, no mistaking it Don. Hope you didn't buy it on account of the thread, but I know better. They look good together.

They weren’t very expensive.
-Don

 

[four.cycle]

edited for brevity:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: "Y in a Circle" / "N square" / "M in a circle" /
Date: 2024-03-24 2:47 pm
From: AA
To:

Thanks for your help, after reviewing the GJ threads and scouring catalogs and Ebay, I'm convinced that McKaig-Hatch was the Y-Circle maker. The "smoking gun" for me was the heavy-duty pipe wrench with a finger-grip handle, shown in the M-H catalog, Craftsman catalogs for '54 and '55, and currently available in an EBay listing.

AA

I am assuming the "current ebay listing" is the unit shown below:

 

[Leviton]

The McKaig hatch pliers arrived today and leave no doubt that they were the supplier of my Dunlap Circle Y pliers.

-Don

Thanks for "Taking one for the team" !

 

[RTM]

leave no doubt that they were the supplier of my Dunlap Circle Y pliers

Nice to be able to update my notes, Ridge did not seem right. Thanks all for the digging.

 

[d42jeep]

Thanks for "Taking one for the team" !

It gave me an excuse to visit my “extensive“ McKaig Hatch collection.
-Don

 

[genog]

I knew I saw a Circle Y on one of my C-Man adjustables....
Found it in the truck's Pick-N-Pull/junkyard tool box

 

[four.cycle]

I cannot find the correct thread in which someone was asking about what appeared to be a "W in a circle" forging mark. I thought it was in this thread.

edited for brevity


-------- Original Message --------

Subject:​	Re: " Circle W " ?@?
Date:​	2024-04-02 3:46 pm
From:​	AA
To:​

Hello,

I'm clueless too on these W-Circle tools, I don't recall seeing any before, and now they're coming out of the woodwork. It's been probably 10 years since I was actively gathering Craftsman or Dunlap tools, and if I had seen any marked W-Circle I would have picked them up long ago.

With the handle pattern matching some McKaig-Hatch examples there seems to be some connection -- maybe a second factory?

Only guess I can make is that the tools were sold in a tight time range in the early to mid 1950s, and now as the original owners pass on the tools are appearing for sale.

For now I'll add the code as an unknown but note the connection to McKaig-Hatch, and try to gather more info.

AA

 

[d42jeep]

Check your PMs I think it’s likely another code for McKaig Hatch.
-Don

 

[four.cycle]

^ I have nothing in PM about these.. what did I miss?

 

[MisterEd]

Craftsman 5567 8 Inch Heavy Duty Pipe Wrench Circle-Y

 

[Steven 33]

What's this one

 

[four.cycle]

per Lauver's list:

T-circle = NYE Tool Co./Lakeview Forge, ca. 1947 - 1953 (based on pipe wrenches only)

Lakeview / Lakeview Forge Co., LLC, 1725 Pittsburgh Ave., Erie, PA 16505 / https://lakeviewforge.com/ / est. 1902 / see also Erie Tool Works /