AvE refers to Porter Cable as a "zombie brand". I think that means one of the big box stores bought out the original company, and all that's left is the brand name. AvE mentioned that the original Porter Cable had decent quality back in the day.
Porter Cable was one of the first power tool companies that made a hand held circular saw(they supposedly invented the helical drive circular saw in 1929).
Before that they had also been known for manufacturing Hand held brlt sanders for several years before the circular saw.
The became a well known manufacturer of portable power tools.
In 1960, Rockwell International bought Porter Cable, kept much or all of the power tool line, but changed the branding of the tools to Rockwell, although Rockwell kept the original model numbers. They also moved the production of the tools to Jackson Tennessee.
Later Rockwell stopped producing the tools with polished aluminum housings, and started producing the tools with a grayish tan pain finish.
In 1981, Pentair purchased Rockwell’s power tool division, which included the “Porter Cable” brand as well as Delta, which Rockwell also owned, and switched back to using the Porter Cable brand name instead of Rockwell. I brlieve the model numbers may have also stayed the same, or maybe an extra digit was added to the front.
Under Pentair, Porter Cable sort of became known as “The Professional Woodworking Tool Brand”.
Bosch( a chunk of which was originally Stanley Tool’s power tool division), Milwaukee, Black$Decker/Dewalt/Elu, etc. all had reputations for qiality, particularly for certain tool types, but a lot of professional cabinetry shops and woodworkers considered Porter Cable to be the top manufacturer of woodworking specialist tools in the USA.
About 30 years ago, some Porter Cable tools were sold at Home Depot, and the tool boxes usually had a large “Made in the USA” and “Jackson Tennessee” on the most plain whit cardboard boxes.
In 2004, Pentair’s tool division got sold to Black&Decker, who started discontinuing many of the specialist PC tool models, only keeping some ghat sold well, like the biscuit joiner and 690 series routers etc.
B&D later used the Porter Cable name to rebrand the B&D Firestorm line of tools, although B&D claimed to have Used better components in the PC branded versions.
A few of the classic PC tools models are still available, but the brand is nothing like it was.
