Gripping Tales: Harrold Tool Company, Colombiana, Ohio

These pliers are the only tools I've ever encountered with this company's name.  I suspect that their shape has been modified by a previous owner, since slip-joint needle-nose pliers are unusual to say the least.  Probably, he needed a pair of circlip pliers and so modified this tool to work.

There's not a lot of information available about this company.  The H.J. Harrold Tool Co. was located in Colombiana, Ohio, starting off as the Harrold Tool & Forge Company.  Below, a 1920 ad brought to my attention by a visitor's comment:

MotorBoating, December, 1920

At one time they made axes, which seem well thought of.  Their other or later offerings garner less praise. One commentator on the web claims that they continued to make tools from malleable steel after every one switched to carbon steel.  They must have made more than tools, though, since they had a patent assigned to them in 1960 for a reclining chair mechanism.  I see that some tools under their name were made in Germany, probably post-war when labour costs there were cheap.  Given what I've been able to find, they seem to have been in the same category as Oxwall Tools.

A reader provided the above picture of an axe head he found and wonders what the initials mean. The ad above makes reference to H J H tools but neither of the initials could be interpreted as an h or a j. Anyone have an idea?

Below, the lid of a "Junior's Tool Chest" made by the company and offered on the web.  It looks like they cheaped out on the artist:  the kid looks moronic and possibly vampiric.  

Located halfway between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, Columbiana bills itself as "The city with the small-town heart." Cute.  Harvey Firestone was born there and is tiresomely remembered through a park and a cemetery.

Update Feb 2021, A reader sends in images of this very basic brace.  A wingnut clamp stands in for what would normally be a chuck, more expensive to manufacture.