How tools were paid for

[Phil Pascoe]

I was just reading another thread, and rather than corrupt it I thought I'd start another. Someone said they'd bought tools one at a time when they were training, and I thought back to my first ones. I was 13, and I remember the second hand shop I visited to buy the cigarette coupons to send for my Record 5 1/2 - the guy used to buy 100 for 2/- and sell them for 2/6. Nearly all my early tools came that way - they worked out nearly half price. You could do the same with Green Shield stamps, although the choice was better on the coupons iirc. Pity we can't still do it. His wife used to sell us our dirty mags - she'd probably get arrested now.

 

[jamesicus]

I apprenticed as a truck cab and body builder at the firm of Oswald Tillotson, Burnley, Lancashire, from (circa) 1947 to 1950.

The first kit I assembled when I started my apprenticeship was dictated more by limited availability of woodworking hand tools in Ironmongers shops than personal preference and consisted mostly of old used tools such as wooden bench planes, hammers, hand saws, various types of chisels, try squares, marking gauges, boxwood rulers, etc. of a variety of makes, mostly of pre-WWII manufacture, purchased from some of the older craftsmen. The first old craftsman I worked for particularly liked American tools: Stanley Bailey bench planes & bevel edged butt chisels, North Bros. spiral ratchet screwdrivers, Disston saws, Millers Falls hand drills and bit braces, etc. Due to his influence my own tool kits always included such tools. I also bought and used several British made tools which were held in high regard by most senior craftsmen.

New woodworking tools -- especially American made -- were in short supply in British hardware shops immediately following the end of WWII. It was not until 1948, when importation from America resumed and British manufacturing had recovered from wartime damage and production demands, that new tools were available for sale in any quantity in my home town. Even then, availability was uncertain.

I used numerous Stanley hand tools during my apprenticeship. They were readily available (after 1948) and were renowned for their durability and excellence in my time as an apprentice. I mostly used Stanley planes, butt chisels, nail hammers, boxwood rules, marking gauges, try squares and bevels.

The first post-war Stanley Tools catalog I remember was the 1948 No. 34 edition that contained their usual array of woodworking tools. But there was a caveat in the form of an insert that contained a much reduced list of tools that would actually be manufactured and available in 1949 (and the remainder of 1948).

I do not remember whether or not the Sheffield Stanley works issued supplements to the parent company No. 34 catalogs, but I think their operation and production was pretty much in concordance with them.

When new woodworking tools did become readily available in 1949 (often in limited quantities) it was mostly the older craftsmen who bought them to replace existing tools. In consequence apprentices in the woodworking trades like me bought many of their tools second hand from them - always cash on sale of course.

James

 

[Paul Chapman]

You could do the same with Green Shield stamps

I bought my first electric drill with Green Shield Stamps - top of the range Black & Decker, 2 speed, with 1/2" chuck

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[dickm]

From memory, my B&D 1/4" single speed drill was £4/19/6 (£4.99-ish) with a "full kit of accessories" (drill bits made of butter and a sanding disk!) from Gamages or somewhere similar in the mid 1960s. Never got anything useful with Green Shield stamps, but we are still using the stepladder and set of three mixing bowls that SWMBO's mother got for us with her cigarette coupons. We used to refer to them as the "wages of sin"

 

[rileytoolworks]

Jamesicus, I was impressed with your thorough reply, so thought I'd have a look at your website.
WOW!! There is son much information on there. Thank you for sharing it.

All the best.

Adam.

 

[jamesicus]

Thank you very much for your kind words Adam.

James

 

[adidat]

when i was at woodwork college doing my city and guilds. i would work for my father at the weekend and holidays to top up my pocket money. used to strip old electronics and break up transformers, a weekend could earn me 70 quid. so in 2 weeks i had enough for my sorby's <<<<

the downsides to working for my father was he controlled my money and decided what i could spend it on. this caused an upset when i wanted to buy an air rifle!

he has been gone 18 months now, and wow do i miss him!

whilst typing this i remembered this picture, it was my workstation i hastily constructed when it started raining heavily one morning. when my father arrived and saw it, he wasn't very happy and insisted i took apart my shanty!

 

[GazPal]

Perhaps when I mentioned buying one tool a week was a slight exaggeration (In the other thread), but funds were limited and I'd set a spending ceiling for myself, so it may be one tool one week, three another and so on. The firm wouldn't pay tool money until your apprenticeship was completed, but they did at least provide a basic kit of tools on which an apprentice could expand and you could buy tools through the firm at a saving and paid back on a weekly basis.

My very first tools were funded - up until I left school at 15 - by working weekends and evenings with my dad's best friend on various joinery projects or in the family cabinetmaking shop and smithy. The money I earned went on tools as well as saving for other things and my first power tool was an old metal bodied Wolf hammer drill which was still going strong up until a few years ago when it entered enforced retirement with me - although it was in a better state of health. lol

 

[ColeyS1]

Think I bought a basic tool kit, jetcut saw, plane, , hammer, rhubarb and custard chisels, and coping saw. I would always try and get one tool a week and this would usually depend on what I had to borrow during the week. I still kind of do the same now- if I borrow something more than a couple times I'll just get my own. I could get by without any new tools now......... but all the new ones looks so much shinier :lol: or thats my excuse.
The biggest headache I ever had was trying to find a 3/8 incannel gouge. The other joiner also needed to use it so it was the only time I ever felt uneasy borrowing something.
Power tools my boss use to buy then knock off my wages. Not sure quite what went on there but we were never told we had to get our own power tools. Just meant if you thought you might need an electric planer youd have to ask the other chippies to bring it back from site and usually it would have been wrecked anyway- it was just easier to buy my own.

 

[Sawyer]

Going back a bit further, Walter Rose (if I recall correctly) apprenticed in the late C19th. relates choosing his first tool kit, then borrowing £35 from his grandfather to buy it, to be re-paid in weekly instalments. A very substantial sum for the period, which puts into perspective the prices we now pay for Clifton and other top class tools.

Elsewhere, I've read that the tools of a deceased craftsman were often auctioned in the workplace. Since the proceeds generally went to help the widow, there was a general expectation that bidders would pay a proper market price, rather than seek a bargain.

 

[GazPal]

Going back a bit further, Walter Rose (if I recall correctly) apprenticed in the late C19th. relates choosing his first tool kit, then borrowing £35 from his grandfather to buy it, to be re-paid in weekly instalments. A very substantial sum for the period, which puts into perspective the prices we now pay for Clifton and other top class tools.

Elsewhere, I've read that the tools of a deceased craftsman were often auctioned in the workplace. Since the proceeds generally went to help the widow, there was a general expectation that bidders would pay a proper market price, rather than seek a bargain.

This would only happen if a craftsman had nobody to leave his tools to. A son would inherit his father's tools and dispose of/use them in whichever manner suited the family situation.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Sawyer -Re your second comment, I've heard my b-i-l say that's what happened in the dockyards.

 

[Sawyer]

Gary - probably the son doing the auction then?
A couple of old-timers I knew early in my career, both cabinet makers who'd served apprenticeships with their own father, already had their own equipment. They told me the had had no use for their late father's tools and so disposed of them.

 

[bugbear]

New woodworking tools -- especially American made -- were in short supply in British hardware shops immediately following the end of WWII. It was not until 1948, when importation from America resumed and British manufacturing had recovered from wartime damage and production demands, that new tools were available for sale in any quantity in my home town. Even then, availability was uncertain.

I used numerous Stanley hand tools during my apprenticeship. They were readily available (after 1948) and were renowned for their durability and excellence in my time as an apprentice. I mostly used Stanley planes, butt chisels, nail hammers, boxwood rules, marking gauges, try squares and bevels.

Interesting - I wonder what happened to Record in that period.

BugBear

 

[AndyT]

when i was at woodwork college doing my city and guilds. i would work for my father at the weekend and holidays to top up my pocket money. used to strip old electronics and break up transformers, a weekend could earn me 70 quid. so in 2 weeks i had enough for my sorby's <<<<

the downsides to working for my father was he controlled my money and decided what i could spend it on. this caused an upset when i wanted to buy an air rifle!

he has been gone 18 months now, and wow do i miss him!

whilst typing this i remembered this picture, it was my workstation i hastily constructed when it started raining heavily one morning. when my father arrived and saw it, he wasn't very happy and insisted i took apart my shanty!

Chris, I retrospectively feel for you, doing that work in those conditions!
But I do like your 'workmanship of necessity' especially the inventive approach to making the chair a bit softer and warmer!
Kids of today, eh, what do they know?!

 

[AndyT]

A couple of bits of evidence on how hard it was buying tools just after WW2:

This is an ad from a 1951 Woodworker magazine - that Norris smoother cost £3 17s 6d so buying it on the 'never never' must have been tempting:

At least they were available to buy if you could keep up the instalments - it must have been really frustrating to be a tool distributor like Buck and Hickman when the tools just could not be got; this is from the back of their 1953 catalogue and introduces a 44 page section illustrating tools that they used to sell, wanted to sell, but were not allowed to import - from makers such as Brown and Sharpe, Pratt and Whitney and Millers Falls:

 

[jamesicus]

New woodworking tools -- especially American made -- were in short supply in British hardware shops immediately following the end of WWII. It was not until 1948, when importation from America resumed and British manufacturing had recovered from wartime damage and production demands, that new tools were available for sale in any quantity in my home town. Even then, availability was uncertain.

I used numerous Stanley hand tools during my apprenticeship. They were readily available (after 1948) and were renowned for their durability and excellence in my time as an apprentice. I mostly used Stanley planes, butt chisels, nail hammers, boxwood rules, marking gauges, try squares and bevels.

Interesting - I wonder what happened to Record in that period.

BugBear

I don't know about Record, BugBear. Some of the senior craftsmen and apprentices had Record planes and as I recall they were well liked. The senior craftsman I was first assigned too had a great liking for Stanley Bailey planes (and Disston saws, "Yankee" spiral ratchet screwdrivers & Millers Falls hand drills) and sold me one of his old ones - because of his influence I used Stanley planes throughout my apprenticeship. I don't remember whether that first Stanley I owned was made in the USA or a product of the Sheffield Stanley works. I know several of his other Stanleys' were US made as was a second-hand pre-WWII Stanley No. 4 I later owned.

James

 

[jamesicus]

A couple of bits of evidence on how hard it was buying tools just after WW2:

This is an ad from a 1951 Woodworker magazine - that Norris smoother cost £3 17s 6d so buying it on the 'never never' must have been tempting .......... it must have been really frustrating to be a tool distributor like Buck and Hickman when the tools just could not be got; this is from the back of their 1953 catalogue and introduces a 44 page section illustrating tools that they used to sell, wanted to sell, but were not allowed to import - from makers such as Brown and Sharpe, Pratt and Whitney and Millers Falls .........

Buying US made tools was indeed a problem at that time. The largest tool supply ironmonger's shop in Burnley - Seth Sutcliffe - had always been a major stockist of all the leading brands of hand tools (including Stanley, Disston, North Bros. and Millers Falls) but they had a very small selection available right after the war. I badly wanted, and needed, a heavy duty "Yankee" (or any other make for that matter) spiral ratchet rapid return screwdriver (a bread and butter tool in my trade) but couldn't find one anywhere (including "Seths"). I finally was able to buy a used pre-war "Yankee" from an old craftsman. I think most Apprentices bought many of their tools that way - not a bad thing really for to my mind I think pre-WWII tools were better made - of higher quality.

Here is the first page of an insert in the 1948 Stanley Tools catalog that highlights the tool shortage problem following WWII:

The remaining six pages of this insert contained a much reduced list of tools that would actually be manufactured and available in 1949 (and the remainder of 1948).

James

 

[adidat]

Chris, I retrospectively feel for you, doing that work in those conditions!
But I do like your 'workmanship of necessity' especially the inventive approach to making the chair a bit softer and warmer!
Kids of today, eh, what do they know?!

thanks Andy, it wasn't all bad certainly taught me lots of things. used to have a nice cooked lunch from the cafe most days!

adidat

 

[GazPal]

Gary - probably the son doing the auction then?
A couple of old-timers I knew early in my career, both cabinet makers who'd served apprenticeships with their own father, already had their own equipment. They told me the had had no use for their late father's tools and so disposed of them.

Very possibly, although tools tended to be passed down the line in my family and we have tools among us from my great great grandfather's kit, as the norm was for tradesmen to try and accumulate at least a double kit in case of breakages and losses. The reason being there's nothing worse than have a tool break/become damaged/lost and not have a replacement. Surplus tool money from any sale would normally buy a round in for the lads, while the bulk went to the widow or family.