Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Vanished Tool Makers: Hinsdale Manufacturing Company, Hinsdale, Illinois




Below, from Alloy Artifacts:

The Hinsdale Manufacturing Company was founded in 1919 by Fred W. Miller, and operated initially in Hinsdale, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. 

An interesting snippet of Hinsdale history comes from the web site of Berland's Tools, a company with connections to the founders of Sherman-Klove (S-K) tools. According to the historical information posted there, Sherman-Klove was the manufacturer of the socket sets sold by Hinsdale, and in the early 1930s Hinsdale ceased operations. This left Sherman-Klove with a large inventory of unsold goods, and handling the leftover inventory provided the impetus to form S-K Hand Tools in 1932. S-K of course went on to find considerable success on its own.

In spite of whatever difficulties occurred during the depression years, Hinsdale was able to resume operations sometime later. By 1933 the company was advertising box-end wrenches and socket sets made of chrome vanadium steel, including wrenches in the HD-series identified as being sold under the Sears Craftsman brand.

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