Antique and Vintage Millers Falls Tools

The roots of Millers Falls Company tools go back to 1861, when Levi Gunn and Charles Amidon, who were working at the time for the Greenfield Tool Company of Greenfield, Massachusetts, embarked on a side hustle to manufacture a clothes wringer that Amidon had designed. By 1864, in the depths of the Civil War, the partners had purchased the rights to a brace drill designed by William Barber, which sold so well that Gunn and Amidon were able to get out of the laundry business altogether. By 1868, the Barber Brace, as it was known, got a better chuck thanks to a new design by Amidon, and the company's new Barber Improved Brace sold better than ever. Two other popular products for the company that year were a hollow wooden handle that was filled with a number of bits that fit into the handle's chuck (drills, screwdrivers, etc.), as well as a Family Took Kit, which was basically a wooden box for this device plus a few extra bits and a wooden ruler. In the coming decades, Millers Falls would establish itself primarily as a manufacturer of drills, lathes, saws (its antique treadle saws from the 1870s are especially charming contraptions) and other woodworking tools. The company also sold items made by other manufacturers, including hacksaw blades made by Clemson Brothers and the Langdon mitre box. In the 1920s, Millers Falls simultaneously trimmed its product offerings and expanded by introducing new lines of levels, power tools, and planes—46 different plane models were offered in 1926, its first year of plane production. More contraction occurred in the 1930s, when Millers Falls merged with another Depression-battered tools manufacturer, Goodall-Pratt. Which is not to say that Millers Falls stagnated during the decade before World War II. Indeed, its embrace of plastics such as Bakelite made it an innovator in push drills and torpedo levels. Millers Falls even promoted a red plastic called permaloid for its "DeLuxe" line of tools, from planes to braces. But after the war, the company never found its footing in a marketplace dominated by brands such as Black & Decker and Craftsman.