The Origin Story

My love of woodworking, carpentry, engineering originated from my grandfather Byrd. He grew up in a small suburb of Buffalo, NY, grew up in 30s and 40s, then went to serve in the US Army during the Korean War attached to the 116th Engineering Battalion. After the war he came home and married my grandmother Alice in the early 1950s. Like any young couple at the time they bought a house and had a family. With buying a house comes maintenance and the necessary tools. This is where my vintage tool collection starts.

As my grandfather grew older and he retired and spent time in his “Garage Shop”. He had a shop in the back room of one house, in a later house he had a refrigerated truck body that he turned into a shop. He worked on small projects and made items to sell at craft fairs, gentlemen’s canes, camp tables, camp chairs, candle lanterns, model trains and many other items. As he grew older and could not work on his projects anymore he packed all of his tools into a shed. He told me “When you’re ready you come and pick them up.” This was a sad day to see a man who wanted to, but could no longer pursue his hobbies.

In 2006 I went to pick up the tools. I had been in his shop many times and he used to teach me how to use them, but I never realized exactly what and how many tools he really had. This is where it gets good. By this time I had started a tool collection of my own and it was small and basic. Going through his tools I realized I had never seen the mark “Made in the U.S.A.” on tools before. All of his tools carry this mark. As I sorted them out I realized these are all high quality American made tools. The majority are steel and very few are the cast aluminum we see now in tools. Most of these are from the Post WWII boom. These are made of quality American steel.