Trade Catalog The L. & I. J. White Company Edge Tools. 137-159 Perry St., 53-93 Columbus St., Buffalo, N.Y., U.S.A. 1905. Edge tool makers get short shrift in the world of tools. Planes and saws are the most talked about tools. The poor edge tool companies somehow fall to the side in the fracus. Not so the L. & I. J. White Company. This 1905 full line catalog displays the array of goods this famous company offered to the trades. Ship builders, cooper and timber framers in particular preferred this brand, one of the few edge tool companies to survive as a family owned affair. In production from 1837 through 1928, The L. & I. J. White Company produced a full line of chisels, planes, drawknives and many of the tools specific to a skilled trade.
In this catalog you'll find Firmer Chisels, Coopers planes and tools, Carriage makers routers, Axes, Hatchets, Adzes, Plane Irons, Paving Irons, Fireman's Axes, Butchers Cleavers, Ice Tools, and everything else edge tools.
The PDF is approx. 4.7 mb in size. Optimized for Acrobat Reader 7.0 or higher.
The question was raised: "What is a firmer chisel?". Tom Holloway suggested that the answer lay in the derivation of the word.
Main Entry: fir·mer chisel; Pronunciation: \ˈfər-mər-\; Function: noun Etymology: French fermoir chisel, alteration of Middle French formoir, from former to form, from Old French forme form; Date: 1823: a woodworking chisel with a thin flat blade
In the end, the term "Firmer" began life as a description of the function of a chisel... a tool that forms.
Trade Catalog Catalogue and Invoice Prices of Carpenters' Bench, and Moulding Planes, Manufactured by S. Hills, and F. Richards, Norwich, Mass. Jan. 23, 1833. Before there were bound trade catalogs, the typical catalog was a single sheet price list of goods offered. Before the single sheet price list, the trade card often served... but I don't have one of those early ones to show you. Yet.
This is the earliest price list/catalog in my personal collection. It's of particular interest in that it's a plane makers price list from a lesser known maker of Massachusetts. To add to the interest, it was sent not in an envelope, but by itself. Before postage stamps were the norm, the sender folded up a piece of paper to a given size, wrote the 'To' and 'From' on the outside and paid for the service. In some cases, the recipient had to pay for the service.
This price list/catalog was issued by Hills & Richards, one of the many partnerships of the Hills bros', Samuel and Hervey of Amherst, Springfield and Norwich, Massachusetts. The Hills worked during the early part of the 19th C. Frederick Richards has been listed as a planemaker, toolmaker and hardware dealer. In the 1850 Census, he was listed as employed by H. Chapin as a toolmaker. From the primary resource for wooden planes of the United States, A Guide to the Makers of American Wooden Planes, we have a brief review of these makers:
Samuel Hills: Amherst & Springfield, MA: 1830
Samuel and Hervey Hills, succeeding Hills & Wolcott: Amherst, MA: 1829-1830
Hills & Richards: Norwich, MA: 1833 (date now known from this catalog)
Hills & Winship (William Winship worked for H. Chapin, 1826-1832): Springfield, MA: 1832
Hills & Wolcott (possibly Gideon Wolcott, a planemaker who worked for Leonard Kennedy): So. Amherst, MA: 1829
Frederick Richards: Springfield, MA: 1833-1850
Trade Catalog Shurly Dietrich: Price List Of The Maple Leaf Saw Works; Manufacturers of Refined, Silver & Cast Steel Saws Of All Kinds; Patent Ground; Plastering Trowels, Straw Knives, &c. Galt, Ont. c1902. Courtesy of John Pirie. Canadian tool manfucaturers catalogs are exceedingly rare. Why? I asked this question over at a Canadian Woodworking Forum. The consensu was that the climate does not lend itself to the survival of paper. One person guessed the old catalogs found their way into the stove. Whatever the reason, they're hard to find.
"The Saw Works of Shurly - Dietrich were founded by Jerome C. Dietrich and Cosmos J. Shurly in 1873, in an old tannery building on Malcolm street. The building was owned by the Goldie & McCulloch Foundry. Malcolm street is where Southworks Boardwalk is now located. The buildings were situated on the property that is now Southwork's North parking lot.
Jerome Dietrich was born in New York State in 1838 and, both he and Cosmos Shurly, worked for Joseph Flint, a Rochester, New York, saw manufacturer. They founded Shurly and Dietrich Co. with an initial investment of $12,000, they commenced operations in Galt with nine skilled saw makers, who were brought in from Rochester and Sheffield, England. Canada in those days still had forests to be cleared and there was a ready market for top quality saws that would stand up to harsh conditions. Shurly Dietrich emphasized quality and the company's saws were readily accepted by loggers throughout Canada, the United States and the British Empire. They were one of the first companies in Canada to use the Maple Leaf as a symbol of things Canadian.
The company developed expertise in the hardening and tempering of steel. It produced about 40,000 tons of light armoured plate during the Second World War, returning to the production of saws and machine knives after the war. By 1968 Shurly Dietrich was producing 1,400,000 feet of metal-cutting band saw blades and 1,000,000 jigsaw blades annually. An American company, H.K. Porter, purchased Shurly Dietrich in 1969 and continued operations in Galt (now Cambridge) until 1973, when, after a hundred years in business, the plant was closed."
If only more outlet malls would provide such excellent histories, my work would be so much easier.
Trade Catalog Catalogue And Invoice Price List Of Bench Planes, And Moulding Tools, Also A List Of Boy's And Gentlemen's Tool Chests, Manufactured And For Sale At The Arrowmammett Works, Middletown, Conn., Middletown: Charles H. Pelton, Printer. 1858. Courtesy of Richard Dickerson, whose Tool Makers of Middletown, Connecticut website is a must visit for anyone interested in the history of tools. If you are wondering why you should check out his site, here is a quote from his entry on the Arrowmammett Works:
"Tools Made: Woodworking planes. Working Dates: 1836-59.
Owned by Austin Baldwin, born 11 June 1807 in Albany N.Y. died 28 May 1866. Named after the Arrowmammett river (now the Coginchaug) also known as the Arrowanna river. The company was sold to Globe Mfg. Co. in 1857. There were a number of tool makers in this area including Middletown Tool CO., Starr Mfg. Co. and Tidgewell & Co., Grower & Young, and Libby & Jordan. See Baldwin Tool Co. and Globe Mfg. Co.
The factory was located on Jackson Street. There was a pond by the factory, also, a bridge over the river. The pond, bridge and factory are gone. Austin Baldwin’s house was on the NE corner of Jackson and Washington Streets. The house has since been demolished.
The planes can be marked with seven different marks."
Trade Catalog Southern Steel Stamp and Die Works: Saddler's Fine Stamps, Tools and Machinery. 364 Commerce Steet, Dallas, Texas. c1880. Courtesy of Steven Shephard of the Full Chisel Blog, comes this small but outstanding catalog of saddler's decorative leather tooling stamps. The incredibly bright colors, fonts and flourishes of the covers are indicative of the 1880's. Printers where fond of embellishing everything with color, bronze powder and enough omph to catch your attention.
Trade Catalog Millers Falls Catalog H, c1912. One of the small format catalogs which, as attested to by Millers Falls expert, Randy Roeder, is actually a mini-version of Catalog 32. Brett Rochette, many many months ago, asked if I would scan this catalog. He had found it in a toolbox, fairly well sodden with machine oil. On arrival, it was clear that oil had won. Mold had begun to set in on the rear cover and pages, almost all of the pages were nearly transparent with oil and the two stapes rusted through. I froze the catalog to halt the mold growth, after which I inter-layered the pages with absorbent paper to sop up oil and removed the staples. Still fragile, but now scannable, here is the PDF of this catalog, done in grayscale to minimize the oil staining.
, we have a brief review of these makers:
