Congratulations to Stanley

[Keith Wilson]

A small story about a company that at least once did things right:

In the process of indulging my luddite tendencies, I recently bought a Stanley #71-1/2 router plane on e-bay. This is sort of an odd tool, used for routing out grooves and the like (it's the type on the right, although mine isn't as shiny.) Stanley has been making them since 1885 with minor changes, although AFAIK they haven't made them in the US since the '70s. Mine was made between 1911 and 1924

http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/7112.jpg

The one I bought came with only one very badly damaged cutter. Stanley's web site (http://stores.stanleytools.com/) still lists parts for that plane, so I called them up (no online ordering yet) and ordered one of each blade. Three days later they arrived, brand new cutters for a tool manufactured over eighty years ago. They didn't even want a credit card number; a bill came with the parts! People often complain that Stanley’s hand tools aren’t nearly what they once were, but in this case they came through in truly admirable fashion.

[John of Phoenix]

Good for them. Nice collector's item, too.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Stanley 71?

Lovely thing, but the true Neanderthal uses a hag's tooth!

(I spent yesterday, a day off, in the boatyard attaching a lump of wood with a wooden jack and smoothing plane, thereby attracting a good deal of sarcasm from the yard workforce, along the lines of "Nice to see a traditional owner working on his traditional boat with traditional tools! :D )

[Keith Wilson]

The true Neanderthal uses chipped flint hand-axes. He's also extinct. ;)

I actually thought about making a hag's tooth. One can make a pretty decent cutter from an allen wrench, but the Stanley looks a lot nicer, and I like the screw adjuster for the blade.

[ 05-10-2005, 12:01 PM: Message edited by: Keith Wilson ]

[Mrleft8]

Stanley has a matching funds kinda deal with their employees. Evey dollar an employee donates to a charity, Stanley matches. Unfortunately for my Tobago project, Stanley employees donated so much to tsunami relief, that there isn't enough left this year to donate the tools that they were going to supply me with.... Ah well... At least they gave to a worthy cause.

[Jack Heinlen]

It's heartening, in this climate of the image of corporations as always greedy, unresponsive, bad, to hear stories like this.

Corporations are no better or worse than the people running them, though the culture of profit as the absolute does tend to color matters.

An ex-uncle-in-law started and ran a wooden toy company. He did well with it, made a very comfortable living. He was also a devout Quaker, and made it into a company that had a reputation as a very good place to work.

He didn't feel the need to make money at the expense of his essential humanity. He had two comfortable yet unostentatious homes, and his employees had health insurance, good average wages, paid vacations, etc.

Griff was a model of what business could be. A sweet, thoughtful man, and also a shrewd businessman. They aren't mutually exclusive.