Ivy Tool Company

[woody 73]

To My GJ brothers & Sisters in Texas I came, I saw, I conquered... What I found just amazed me so the story as follows:

For several weeks my wife was working in Waco, Texas and I made the trip out there to take her back home, as you can well imagine I went tool hunting and I found a small flea market full of several vendors. After a short time I found one man selling a load of tools but they should have all been thrown away or at the very least put into a big melting pot; either they were all broken or rusted so bad they had welded themselves together. But the man had on the very last table some of the most expensive hammers that you could buy and he was selling them off dirt cheap.

I thought to myself woody things are not adding up, these hammers all scream top notch and this guy has a dozen of them whats up with that? So on to the next vendor.

Around the block comes vendor #2 and he has not only the same hammers,
but box after box of nos wrenches from some of the top tool companies, of course out comes my money buying several of them at very good prices.

Leaving vendor #2 after a long walk I found vendor #3, and he not only had the very same hammers, & wrenches, but he had several buckets of screwdrivers (only sitting in water) and that had me thinking out loud too myself, these three vendors must have all gone to the same Government sale because these tools just screamed over the top in quality and in very large amounts.

My only thought was they were close to a large military base, maybe the one in Killeen, Texas?

Now the story of the Ivy tool Company, information is very scarce on the net, but I found them to come from Allentown,Pa and the best guess of a starting date would be around Sept. of 1940, (mind you this is just a guess at this point in time from a company link below).

At some point they got a Government Contract to produce these screwdrivers and I am not sure when that might have taken place. In reading an old GJ post (see the link below) they thought these might be rare but like I said that vendor had a lot of them and I would have bought more but because they were sitting in water rust had taken hold of them pretty bad, I managed to buy three sitting outside the water area.

The Ivy Tool company also made tool boxes under their trademark name of Strong box and that lasted at least till 1985, be sure and see the links below and a picture of one on E-bay.

https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=239646&highlight=ivy+tool

https://www.bizapedia.com/pa/ivy-tool-company.html

https://www.trademarkia.com/strong-box-73482695.html

https://books.google.com/books?id=R...ved=0ahUKEwi33L647-reAhVGyYMKHcbZAqoQ6AEIRzAH

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Set-of-IVY...rivers-in-pouch-7-32-1-2-1788O4-/142843955525

https://www.ebay.com/itm/IVY-TOOL-C...h=item48b5e509a7:g:wHYAAOSwd49bx6II:rk:3:pf:0

 

[twertsy]

I dunno Woody. I can't find them anywhere before 1975

IVY Tool Corp. Business Registration

Ivy Tool Company Business Registration

 

[woody 73]

Twertsy Hi, yes information was very hard to come by, as for a starting date I guessed from the one link (see above) 1979- the 39 years= 1940) ?

 

[woody 73]

Twertsy I found this on the web:

https://www.bizapedia.com/people/pennsylvania/riegelsville/jon-goodman.html

Could it be possible that he had listed his age of 39 years and nine months in 1979 ?

 

[woody 73]

Another thought that occurred to me is maybe, just maybe they were made by another company like Vaco, Irwin, Xcelite etc. and stamped with their company name on it, hence the lack of information going back over the many years ?

 

[twertsy]

Twertsy I found this on the web:

https://www.bizapedia.com/people/pennsylvania/riegelsville/jon-goodman.html

Could it be possible that he had listed his age of 39 years and nine months in 1979 ?

Woody,
1979 + 39 (years in business) = 2018

 

[woody 73]

I never said I was good in math but these suckers look older then 2018...

 

[shanny19]

It’s said that the cam-out tendencies of Phillips screwdriver tips are a design feature, to limit overtorque.

The REAL torque limiter for decades was those terrible fluted handles that we as consumers allowed manufacturers to get away with, if we’re honest with ourselves.

My picking grounds has both a huge AFB nearby and what used to be an equally large USFS prescence, and federal excess tools are abundant. Painfully non user friendly IVY screwdrivers are ubiquitous.

 

[four.cycle]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/192713945897

 

[Private Lugnutz]

The 13-digit NSN on that set dates it to No Earlier Than (NET) 1978.

 

[woody 73]

I am confused ,now I am thinking maybe the starting date was in 1975 and that would not make Ivy tools vintage until 2025 ?

My apologies for thinking they were vintage tools, in all my many years I have not run into them (at least in the central Ohio area). Must have been a small company that had a contract for the Government. Not sure why there is a lack of any information about the company?

 

[four.cycle]

Woody, I never heard of them until you started the thread the other day. But then, I never heard of all kinds of brands until I joined here three years ago.
Might be a deal where it's a government/military contract supplier and they just manage to fly under the radar, like Granco.
Could be just another repackager, too - like so many others who outsource all their product and just fill military/government contracts, like RTEC. (As I suspect JS Technology is as well.)

 

[woody 73]

Four Cycle I bet you are right on the money as they say good job.

An old post of mine and I bet you again another ghost type company with a Government Contract.

https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=376732

 

[LesserSon]

Here’s a treat. I passed this up, but thought it was cool.

 

[bryanrj]

Just my 2 cents late to the party. I just bought a black plastic 1/4" drive socket set (box only) that had Thorsen molded into the top of the lid. Inside the top was a paper listing the contents, in typical government NSN style, of the 14 piece 1/4" drive socket set. The full set NSN is not legible, but many of the item numbers is. What is pertinent to this thread is that under the paper, molded into the plastic is Ivy Tool Company Allentown, PA and the NSN of the box.

 

[four.cycle]

NSN 5120-00-081-2305 contents list

 

[four.cycle]

Ivy / Ivy Tool Co., 886 Gilmore St., Allentown, PA 18103 /

 

[d42jeep]

I wonder if my plastic box set says Ivy under the contents list? I’m not ripping off the paper to find out


-Don

 

[neverdone]

As a teenager I lived 4 blocks from their plant and dug in their dumpster frequently…

 

[four.cycle]

^ You never know, Don. That socket set has all kinds of different brand names on it. I think I have four or five different versions (brands) of that same set. BK

 

[d42jeep]

Yeah, there are quite a few of them out there. Seems like more Thorsen than any others though.
-Don

 

[four.cycle]

I think most of mine are KAL, ProAmerica, and JS Technologies, but I do have a few of the Thorsens as well.

 

[RTM]

Here is an IvyTool Co stubby, top one. There was a handle / bits collection there, but I ignored it.

 

[Beerhippie]

As a teenager I lived 4 blocks from their plant and dug in their dumpster frequently…

I used to dumpster-dive at the Proto plant in Milwaukie, OR. It was a couple of miles from home--easy bike ride in the dark.

 

[INSP380]

Mine came for a ride with some Hitco’s…Interesting screwdriver!

 

[Private Lugnutz]

I found these two nut drivers at the flea this morning. Much later production than I normally bring home, but I rarely see Ivy Tool Co tools, let alone with a Chrysler Award series marking. When I found the first, I started digging for more. When I found the second, I kept digging. And when I say digging, I mean digging (see last pic). No dice on the rest of the set or whatever contained it.