Ahhh, yes. I looked over the 1976 catalog and those sets have my similar hasp closure. Mine being 1967 would explain the hasp difference from those listed in the 1962 catalog. Wish there was a 1967 catalog so we could just put this dog to rest!
I believe you are right on the mark - (no pun intended) - unfortunately ITCL doesn't have a 1958 Craftsman hand tool catalog available.
Here is my box populated with New Britain tools.Scored this postwar set yesterday. Some of the sockets still have the boiled linseed oil on them! Nice unmarked plomb ratchet and new Britain sockets and hinge handle with the often missing pin handle. This set was sold post war and is in the Sears catalog. Inside of the box has its black paint but the outside has almost none. I’m actually going to leave this set just the way it is! Not clean it up or do anything. The set has that oil/ grease smell to it and the patina is so cool!
Good research, BK. Probably the Heritage boxes are earlier than the Craftsman embossed in the middle of the lid sets. The red insert boxes have the Craftsman embossed in the lower corner. None of mine have the flying Vee ratchet.
The chrome plated tools inside looked to be immediately postwar and included a rare chrome crossbar. I cleaned up a spare original red Walden box and proceeded to try to make up a set. I seem to be missing a couple of matching 8 point sockets. 
That's funny!
Another socket has been added to my Philadelphia set. I found a 1/4” one at an Oakland yard sale today.I received a rare NAF Philadelphia socket generously sent to me by Mister Ed. Progress is slowly being made towards completing this set. Thanks, Ed!
-Don
Thank ya sir!
Here's a NOS 9/32 drive Deco and it's wrapper
Wow! Nice acquisition - and very helpful.
The packaging would be a first for a Deco spinner on GJ as far as I know, even if it was commercial. That it's clearly military, clearly aviation ("Class 17-B" was the supply designation for US Army Air Forces Small Hand Tools, and later, for USAF Nonpowered Hand Tools), and clearly ordered as a separate item (as far as I know we have never seen them in sets with other Deco pieces), lends credence to much of the collective speculation about the users and use cases for these spinners.
The big surprise was the contract number.
In my experience with military boxes, packages, labels etc for hand tools and other items, there is overwhelming precedence for the practice of contracting agencies embedding dates in contract/order numbers. Given that practice, it sure looks to me like the "45" in Order No. (33-038) 45-3408-AF could signify 1945.
And, lo and behold, there is some evidence to suggest that it might.
While that exact contract number does not appear here, similar contracts with the Air Corps under the exact same parenthetical contract series ("33038"), used as a prefix - do. I would suspect the reason for the absence is either the contract starting later (11-45 or 12-45) or perhaps not large enough to merit the list, which had a minimum $50,000 total value cut off.
I don't know why I never looked up Deco in the Wartime Contracts books before. Probably because I never thought they were a wartime tool or supplier. I thought they were 1950's at the earliest.
One interesting oddity is seeing the "AF" by itself. In this case it would have to signify "Air Forces", short for US Army Air Forces, because the USAF was not established until 1947. We usually see it as "AAF" (or the "AC" for Air Corps, which the USAAF encapsulated as a higher HQ in 1943).
Or the "45" is an anomaly, the "AF" actually does refer to Air Force, and this particular tool and pgk are postwar.
I'm not sure. Either way, this goes a long way toward legitimizing Deco as a wartime aviation supplier and the tools as potentially wartime, making all those SWAGs about the "44" in the model number signifying a date suddenly seem not so wild after all.
Thanks for posting.
I likely got this one from the same seller. It will head into the cosmoline box in the basement.
Almost certainly. Identical pkging. He probably has a whole box of them.
High qty is typical for surplus military, as you know. He probably grabbed a box of them somewhere. We all have our stashes of dozens of sockets, all the same size! LOL. Seems even more prevalent with 9/32 drive.
I found mine in the wild years ago. Keep it with a bunch of miscellaneous 9/32-drive stuff. Posted here.
Hey, is that a deeper black plastic box? I recently bought a small lot of powrkraft sockets and it came with a deeper black plastic box. No clear lid on mine so a little different.
Tracking, it came with the powrkraft sockets. Which leads me to wonder if the plastic box was a powrkraft item (similar to stormking's post) or just an off box. I know Thorsen used a similar black plastic box in their 1990s era military sets...and Thorsen made some PowrKraft so by association...?
Yes, as deep as most metal box sets. This is all Powerkraft so I assume the box is original.Hey, is that a deeper black plastic box? I recently bought a small lot of powrkraft sockets and it came with a deeper black plastic box. No clear lid on mine so a little different.
Here is the similar catalog page from 1958
OTG, your K2S17 Set is the same numbering system as the sets in the 1956 catalog but the box design is different. The logo is also the same as the 1956 catalog whereas the 1972 catalog has a different logo script. So, as I just picked up a K2S14 set, I surmise circa 1960s?Yup here's the wright version and a wardsmastr. I think I have a crescent and a speedmaster somewhere
