What REALLY happened to iconic tool brands Porter Cable, Delta, Craftsman

i want a lot of tools but my first real working machines were delta my first good handheld power tools were porter cable my first quality wrenches and other hand tools were craftsman try finding these in a store today sure the names still exist but they aren't the tools your father and your grandfather used to swear by they're among a host of iconic american tool brands that are now either gone completely or they've been bought and sold so many times they're a little more than a label on a completely different line of products i couldn't begin to cover all of them in one video but i thought it would be fun to take a closer look at three of them so today we're going to talk about porter cable delta and craftsman we'll talk a bit about their fascinating history that's behind these products we'll talk about what made them great and what killed them you may think you know the whole story but i'll bet you don't you're really going to enjoy the next few minutes porter cable was founded in 1906 when two brothers named porter partnered with a guy named cable to scrape together 2 300 bucks and open a custom tooling shop in syracuse new york they did it right in their garage and between orders they started developing their own products first it was a pencil sharpener then a tire pump now meanwhile one of them looked around and said these lathes that we're using to make stuff are pretty handy why don't we just sell those so that's what they did and that good idea led to others and by the 20s they were selling other types of machines including the syracuse sander in 1926 they hired the smartest guy they knew to be chief engineer that was arthur emmons and he was a genius he may not have been named porter or cable but it was emmons who made that company because he's the guy who invented the take about sander this was a revolutionary idea at the time he took a large shot machine like a belt sander and shrunk it down to a portable size it was huge but the real game changer came three years later 1929 that's when emmons working for porter cable released a helical driven portable circular saw this was one of the first and definitely the most successful portable electric saws in the world in fact it's the same design that most of us use today a hundred years later now at this point they said maybe these handheld power tools are the way to go so they stopped making stationary machines and they focused entirely on portable ones they made all sorts of them but their next big innovation didn't come until 1953 that's when they introduced the first portable band saw now i'm not sure when art evans retired but he left behind a booming business stainless steel tools with those cool art deco designs were appearing everywhere and porter cable was a brand that stood for quality then came the 60s and rockwell the owner of delta machinery decided to buy porter cable not for its name but for its market share so they relocated porter cable's operations to tennessee they dropped the quality because they wanted to make a line of fairly inexpensive tools to compete with what black decker was at that time and someone had the bright idea to just go ahead and kill the 60 year old highly respected porter cable name so for 15 years the brand was all but dead it only existed as a pc prefix in catalog numbers but then rockwell figured out maybe we shouldn't be in the tool business after all and they sold their entire operation to pentair which was a company that had made everything from high altitude research balloons to canoes and even paper now they wanted to make tools so they bought up the operation from rockwell but rockwell said you can't have our name well rather than calling it pentair tools which would sign kind of dumb they decided to resurrect the porter cable brand so throughout the 80s and the 90s porter cable began to rebuild its reputation they released the first reasonably priced portable biscuit joiner in the us and we all know that norb abram immediately built everything with that in 1989 they released the first modern electric random orbit sander something that most of us use in our workshops today but their parent company pentair was doing their best to screw everything up behind the scenes after some disastrous manufacturing changes porter cable was being operated at a loss in the early 2000s and pentair continued to acquire water treatment companies and all sorts of things that had nothing to do with tools in 2004 they finally sold porter cable delta and their other tool brands to black and decker that was a little bit before black and decker merged with stanley and then a lot of porter cable products were outsourced overseas to factories in mexico and china and elsewhere worse yet many of their consumer woodworking tools that we all knew so well simply disappeared porter cable's routers for example they used to be almost the industry standard router lifts whatever one you buy it would be for a porter cable router unless you had an adapter they don't even make those routers anymore porter cable was once one of the largest oldest manufacturers of portable power tools in the us and now they are just a smattering of tools found in a few home centers and hardware stores and i wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a resurgence before we do the other two brands i need 60 seconds to tell you about this video sponsor but it's going to be worth it if you're looking for something interesting to listen to go to audible.com stumpynubs or just text stumpy nubs to 500 500. that's going to get you a free 30-day trial and access to audible's massive audiobook library i love audible i've been a paying member for the better part of a decade long before they supported this channel since my membership gets me one free selection a month i've got a pretty large library of great audio books as you can see i love history lately i've still been working on undaunted courage this is the story of the lewis and clark expedition told by the amazing historian stephen ambrose i'm fascinated by this part of american history when explorers and traders and trappers wandered pristine wildernesses that were populated by the great tribes of the plains this is my fourth or fifth time through this particular title i really recommend it of course audible has selections on every subject imaginable including their plus catalog which offers unlimited access to thousands of titles they even have comedy and podcasts seriously even if you're not much of a reader give an audio book a try you are really going to enjoy it while you walk the dog driving mowing the lawn trying to ignore someone whatever you into remember new members can try audible free for 30 days visit audible.com stumpynubs or text stumpy nubs to 500 500. was another american success story that began in a garage this time it was 1919 when herbert touts started making small scroll saws under the name delta specialty company in milwaukee now what may have begun i think as a way to find some peace and quiet away from the family turned into quite a viable business and a few years later he was buying band saws from other companies to sell under his delta label his big break came in 1938 that's when delta turned the woodworking world upside down or at least 45 degrees to the right with the release of its first full-size 10-inch tilting arbor table saw it was called the unisa and for decades it remained one of the best saws on the market there's a whole cult following for old unisa this is what made delta a top name in woodworking now touts didn't stick around to see the success in 1939 he cashed out and sold the business to a group of three partners who a couple years later flipped it to timken detroit axle company now guess who was the president of timken detroit axle company willard rockwell and before long delta was part of rockwell manufacturing company now rockwell didn't kill delta like they did porter cable they continued to manufacture the tools in milwaukee well into the post-war years but willard made sure that the rockwell name appeared next to the delta brand on many of those machines one of their biggest innovations of that period was the first power miter saw it was originally known as the drop saw strangely though for a staunch capitalist like rockwell he didn't patent the new saw so other companies were soon making similar tools this was good for consumers but not great for delta's business model some say that the quality of many delta tools declined under rockwell especially as they got into the 70s i owned a mid 70s delta rockwell table saw and i thought it was decent but by 1981 rockler was ready to get out of the power tool business and as we covered in the last section they turned to pen to air to lead the brands into the 80s now under pentair's leadership delta once again thrived for the most part some of the best consumer level woodworking machines of the 90s were made by delta i owned a six-inch jointer and a 12-inch portable planer that really got me started in the craft and i still have the jointer over here in the corner and the planer is in the storage room they're still running today after a lot of board feet everything looked great until 2004 when pentair sold everything to black and decker right before they merged with stanley to become that massive conglomerate of brands now what happened next is a little murky despite the promising relaunch of their flagship unisa in 2008 under a cool updated design it never seemed to gain much of the market and the whole delta brand seemed to kind of get lost among the other holdings of stanley black and decker in 2011 just seven years after acquiring it they sold delta to a taiwanese company named chang type industrial they had already been manufacturing some delta products for stanley but they promised by buying all of them up that they would keep what remained of the u.s manufacturing here in the usa and the last i heard they were still making some products in south carolina but honestly i can't remember the last time i saw delta products store shelf in my area now this one hurts a little bit because delta was such a big part of my early years in woodworking in fact as a teenager i grew up we had a family hardware store and we sold delta products in there i really wish they would come back but i'm not expecting it craftsman may be one of the most iconic of american tool brands because it sprung up from another iconic brand the sears robot company the famous sears catalog had been in outhouses all over the country for just 35 years when they decided in 1927 that they wanted to up their hardware game so they spent 500 bucks to buy the name of the marion craftsman tool company and they used part of that name craftsman for a new line of hand tools it was part of a three-tier quality system they had trojan brand at the bottom they had the fulton brand at mid-range and if you wanted the best you wanted craftsman and what sort of folks wanted the best in the late 20s and early 30s well folks who drove automobiles obviously so craftsman tools were chrome plated to match the fancy accoutrements on the popular vehicles of the day and they were made from a higher quality vanadium steel alloy sails immediately shot up over 500 percent it wasn't all about collar culture in the mid-30s the craftsman brand started to appear on lawn mowers and other products but it was mechanics tools particularly during world war ii that made the craftsman name as returning gis wanted to buy the same tools that they used during their deployment after the war years sears continued to roll out more and more craftsman products while an 18 year old clerk back in the shop named peter roberts came up with an idea that would make them a fortune it was the quick release ratchet now sears knew a million dollar idea when they saw it so they promptly gave him ten thousand dollars for it they turned that into hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and they cheated poor pete out of promised royalties until decades later when they had to fork over eight million dollars to settle a lawsuit that wouldn't be the last time sears got caught ripping someone off meanwhile the craftsman name was so popular that bob villa who in the 80s was known as the hasselhoff of pbs said sia suckas to the folks at this old house and he started shilling craftsman products full time anyone who owned a television set in the 90s quickly learned that bob loved him some craftsman tools of course craftsman was not a manufacturer they were just a brand a host of other american companies made the tools that received the craftsman label that meant that many craftsman products particularly their lawn care line and some of their shop machines were virtually identical to competing products except for the labeling however craftsman tools often came with fantastic warranties no questions asked no receipt required if it broke you took it to the nearest sears and they replaced it with a smile sometimes on the spot that warranty was pure genius it turned craftsman into a truly iconic brand but all that eventually started to unravel throughout the 80s sears had been diversifying into all sorts of non-retail spaces banking credit cards they partnered with ibm they even got into shopping mall construction they took their eye off the ball and walmart came up stole the ball and dunked on them after losing their spot as the nation's top retailer craftsman and sears sales declined sears got sued for all sorts of shenanigans their automotive repair business was criminally charged for cheating their customers they moved out of the fancy digs at the sears tower and what was left of sears merged with kmart in 2004. that's right kmart with its baloney subs and its blue light specials if you get the bologna subs reference then you're as old as me craftsman tools on kmart shelves didn't help the brand's image neither did the whittling away of the famous no-hassle warranty which they started applying to fewer and fewer products many craftsmen products were dropped all together customers couldn't get service they couldn't get replacements they were refused refunds kmart store smelled bad it was just a huge mess craftsman's following was further eroded as it discovered that despite the made in the usa labels and everything many craftsmen products were now in fact being made outside of the united states so that led to more lawsuits and over 10 billion dollars in losses later craftsman was sold to stanley black decker in 2017 because apparently that's who buys every brand these days sbd has pledged to return craftsman to its former glory including moving some manufacturing back to the united states and while they do make some craftsman products here in the u.s many are still made overseas five years later this includes most of their mechanics tools which was once the backbone of the brand's image nowadays craftsman tools can be found at various retailers particularly at lowe's but it's a shadow of the great brand it once was i hope this one comes back it seems like they're trying i guess we'll see what happens so we're sensing a theme here entrepreneurs with great ideas start businesses in their garages that grow to become iconic brands with great products then someone else tries to buy that success but they didn't build it themselves so they don't realize that customers are loyal to the great products not just the name and if they cut the quality of those products and just try to live off the brand's past reputation they eventually end up with just a name that nobody believes in anymore if you've enjoyed this video leave a comment below to tell me which brands you'd like to learn about next time see you then

Channel: Stumpy Nubs

Views: 612,888

Keywords: woodworking, stumpy nubs, tips, workbench, table saw, scroll saw, drill press, quick tip, band saw, bandsaw, lumber, hack, hand plane, sharpening, tormek, worksharp, diamond stone, water stone, wood turning, bowls, lathe

Id: zAPAqZLOlTw

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 30 2022