pjones wrote: ↑Sun Apr 08, 2018 3:13 am
Tony, there is nothing wrong with a ink stamped Federal driver. Federal is a verified supplier of screwdrivers to Willys. Lenox and Fairmount were as well.
Unless you have a source I don't know about, Phil, I have no information and don’t know of any information that verifies Lenox as a Willys screwdriver supplier. You may be thinking of Tobrin. Tobrin appears as an optional source on engineering drawing A-375. Lenox does not. And Lenox is not cited in any other Willys documents I know of.
As for FEDERAL screwdrivers - that is, screwdrivers made by the Federal Tool Company, in Springfield, Mass., and ink-stamped "FEDERAL" on the handle - if Fred and I ever do a version 2.0 of our tools guide, I'd be strongly recommending to him that we back way off of that one, or at least caveat the heck out of it a lot more than we did the first time around. The evidence (if you can even call it that) is
very weak, in my opinion.
I'll go through it, and you and other collectors can make up your own minds.
The word "FEDERAL" appears on engineering drawing A-375, in an area on the drawing where optional sources were added, but it appears as a parenthetical addition next to "FURNEY-SHIRWIN CO." The entire citation reads like this, verbatim: "
FURNEY-SHIRWIN CO. (FEDERAL)".
Fred has a G503.com sales ad for an "Old Federal No. 5 Perfect Handle Style" screwdriver, ostensibly made by Furney-Shirwin Co. The ad is unconfirmed. It may very well be simply conflating the two names based on the A-375 drawing reference.
Unfortunately, the problems in logic pile up from there.
I can find no records of a Furney-Shirwin Company. Per several sources, including Lumber World Vol. 49 (1925) and Michigan Manufacturers and Financial Record (1925), the Furney-Sh
erwin Company (note, with an "e") was incorporated in Detroit, in 1925, on $15,000 capital. (That would be worth $213,800 today.) Oddly, their address was listed as the General-Motors Building. They were described as brokers, dealing in furniture and fixtures. According to the 1940 Michigan Dept of Revenue, Stocks of Domestic and Foreign Corporations: Information Relative to Partial and Contributed Values Issued Under the Michigan Intangibles Tax Act (Act 301, P.A. 1939), they were still located in Detroit and still paying taxes in 1940. I also found several obituaries and other references to people who had worked for Furney-Sherwin as "representatives." Even if we assumed that they diversified their brokerage to include hand tools, and even if the "Old Federal" screwdriver in Fred's found ad was acquired by Furney-Sherwin from a screwdriver OEM, and in turn supplied by the Furney-Sherwin Company to Willys, we don't know for sure if the "FEDERAL" in the "
FURNEY-SHIRWIN CO. (FEDERAL)" citation is in reference to the Federal Tool Company, in Springfield, Mass. That company was started on February 21, 1942, just a few months before "FURNEY-SHIRWIN CO. (FEDERAL)" was added to drawing A-375 as an optional supplier. And "FEDERAL" may very well be a reference to Furney-Sherwin brokering for the Federal Standard Stock Catalog.
In short, the link between the "FEDERAL" stamped handle screwdrivers and the MB toolkit, vis-à-vis a parenthetical addition to a mysterious brokerage, is less than definitive.
Then again, we are talking about the same tool for which Fairmount is listed as a supplier, so it's typified by craziness from the outset.