Thread: End of an era? End of a brand?

Thanks for that info Ian

LN and LV would be in direct competition I imagine so I gather you are surmising the supply of blades to LN may dry up. I have Ron's book, The Perfect Edge and, if I was in the market for blades, I would have headed towards his product.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by IanW

Just saw this in the AWR newsletter. Some of you may know about it already, so apologies if it's stale news....

But I can't help wondering what the implications are (Lie Nielsen must be wondering too since Hock made their blades). Will we punters still be able to buy "Hocks" in original specs, or will the Ottawa team change things dramatically? He does say the acquisition "will ensure his legacy" which would imply LV intend to carry the business on more or less as it was.

I suppose we can only wait & see what Lee Valley intends to do....

Cheers,

Ian, Ron Hock has posted a message on several forums: A New Chapter

My comment earlier than this was "It would not surprise me if this was a gesture by Rob Lee to show appreciation to Ron Hock for his years of service and passion for the woodworking community. What if, after 40 years of effort and now wanting to retire, Ron could not find a buyer for his business? These are not the best of times finance wise. Lee Valley have a solid reputation and really do not "need" the name to sell blades. Lee Valley/Veritas have a reputation for protecting small North American woodworking businesses. This is a win-win - they can benefit from Ron's name and goodwill, and Ron gets to have a well-deserved retirement."

Later, Rob Lee came on the forum to essentially confirm this: "One of the challenges any proprietorship or family business faces is succession planning - what do you if the next generation does not want to continue? It's something we all have to address, if we want to retire...

The most important important thing to any of us is the protection of the family name, and reputation. Who better to understand that than another family business? Then too - there has been a personal relationship that goes back decades, and an understanding of the principles and values the business embodies.

I don't think of this as buying a business, but as assuming responsibility for the future of the brand, and the continuation of Ron and Linda's legacy.

I will also note that we are doing the same thing for Beall Tools - I have just returned from Ohio where I spent two great days with the Bealls, and being familiarized with the inner working of their business as well (It's been a busy month!). There, too, we have had a very close family connection for more than 40 years.

Neither of these firms are strangers to us - we have carried and supported their products for many decades, and intend to continue doing so for many more!

Cheers -

Rob". Link: https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?301644-Lee-Valley-purchasing-Ron-Hock-Tools&p=3235639#post3235639


I hope that this answers questions.

Regards from Perth

Derek

I passed through Fort Bragg a few years ago and naively thought I'd find the Ron Hock shop and stock up. I think most here would be surprised at just how small an operation Hock tools is. If you google the address you might find a link to this picture for the address

l.jpg

Hock Tools is mostly in that basement doorway, no shop.

A testament to passion and pride in their product.

Franklin, as I understand it, Ron had his blades made for him in France. No factory needed in the basement.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Yes. I think the basement was really mostly just the shipping department with a few metal working machines out the back, presumably for custom work or perhaps even for working on his original passion for knife blades. Notwithstanding outsourcing the manufacturing of the steel in France the operation was still surprisingly small and not at all what we in Aus might think an American business that has made such a major worldwide influence would look like.

Originally Posted by derekcohen

Ian, Ron Hock has posted a message on several forums: A New Chapter

SNIP
Derek

The reality is: Lee Valley's financial department would have done their home work and came to the conclusion that it was a money maker at a specific selling price. Otherwise, they would have let it slide into history. I highly doubt loyalty, nostalgia, comradery, or whatever came into the decision making process...

Originally Posted by The Spin Doctor

The reality is: Lee Valley's financial department would have done their home work and came to the conclusion that it was a money maker at a specific selling price. Otherwise, they would have let it slide into history. I highly doubt loyalty, nostalgia, comradery, or whatever came into the decision making process...

Make a profit? Sure, that would be relevant.

The remainder of what you cynically suggest indicates that you do not know Rob Lee.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by Fuzzie

Yes. I think the basement was really mostly just the shipping department with a few metal working machines out the back, presumably for custom work or perhaps even for working on his original passion for knife blades. Notwithstanding outsourcing the manufacturing of the steel in France the operation was still surprisingly small and not at all what we in Aus might think an American business that has made such a major worldwide influence would look like.

I'm not sure what the implication is here. Ron Hock contracted O1 steel blades made elsewhere. He may have milled them earlier and had them contract heat treated. this is a typical thing, though the heat treatment services that used to do water hardening steel and oil hardening steel have dropped back to neither in some cases.

Ron mentioned that he was notified that he'd lose his heat treater (maybe this was older - I spent a little time reading his blog to find out how much he really knows about metallurgy and how much of it was more craft business).

he is more craft business and less of a metallurgical expert.

So why did he become popular? Just being honest here, I suspect there was a vacuum 40 years ago where nobody was making decent plane irons. If you went to a machine shop at the time and asked diemakers and others what they'd use to make an inexpensive blade, they would've told you O1 steel or some kind of euro DIN chrome vanadium steel (a purer more plain steel than O1 if done at a 1%-ish carbon level). I'm not aware of a steady supply of anything like that in the US (robust small supplies of 1% CV steels), but O1 steel is everywhere because it through hardens easily and is commonly used to make dies and low demand blades/shears.

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I suspect nothing nefarious of LV. I know of at least one other toolmaker in the US where LV makes the blades for the toolmaker and there's no way it's worth their trouble money-wise - but they are filling a need. sometimes businesses do this. years ago when I bought beech to make planes, it needed to be very specifically sawn and one single mill in the US was sawing and drying it. Horizon. it was expensive, and when I called them, they said they were only making it because there were a few professional planemakers who wouldn't be able to get it anywhere else when they stopped. they explained the economics to me (it was 3 times as expensive as 8/4 beech, but still am money loser for them). they felt like it was the right thing to do for the community of makers, anyway and at least temporarily, gave up at one point when a load of it honeycombed.

if anyone wants to fill this void, though, there is nothing unusual or special about the blades that hock makes. I can match them, so can you, and I can have a lot more control and hit characteristics that hocks don't hit if needed.

Whether or not hock's market peaked at some point and then retracted a little, I don't know, but given that I used to be able to find them on the ground where I live and now can't, maybe that's the case. And maybe, too, it's not if the internet orders in the last 15 years have grown enough to replace them.

I just hope if LV wants to make the blades, presuming they'll keep the brand on them, that they don't temper them like O1 LV irons are tempered now. there is no good technical reason to make iron as soft as LV does, but maybe there's a manufacturing reason. something dead in the middle (about where Iles makes their chisels) would make for a better O1 iron than Hock or LV.

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I think there's plenty of purchasing of parts from machine shops and assembling them as far as boutique tools go in the US (not LV, think smaller), with the assumption that someone is sweating it out running machines in a garage. I'm sure there are some of those, too, but plenty of boutique toolmakers are just gifted marketers putting together and shipping things made from parts made elsewhere to their spec.

Originally Posted by IanW

Just saw this in the AWR newsletter. Some of you may know about it already, so apologies if it's stale news....

But I can't help wondering what the implications are (Lie Nielsen must be wondering too since Hock made their blades). Will we punters still be able to buy "Hocks" in original specs, or will the Ottawa team change things dramatically? He does say the acquisition "will ensure his legacy" which would imply LV intend to carry the business on more or less as it was.

I suppose we can only wait & see what Lee Valley intends to do....

Cheers,

Ian, I can give you a formula to duplicate and potentially better Ron's irons if you want to make your own. Most of the better O1 steel is delivered in such a way that it can be heated to nonmagnetic, very quickly heated a step past that, and then quenched in oil and thrown in the freezer to be tempered a couple of hours later.

Pretty good chance that you'll be starting off from a better point than any of the commercial irons before tempering.

Whether or not you can find someone who will want to do something like that for what's probably about $15 profit per iron - that's a different story.

Originally Posted by D.W.

… plenty of boutique toolmakers are just gifted marketers putting together and shipping things made from parts made elsewhere to their spec.

There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how business works, even if he was making them ‘himself’, the likelihood is that he’d have some employees doing some or all of the work anyway.

The fact is that he saw an opportunity, created products to fill the gap and did it consistently for many years. At the end of the day, actually doing it means far more than being able to do it better, but not doing it. I say this as someone who is able to do lots of stuff well but seldom get around to the actual doing, so there’s no criticism intended.


ps I see your shift key broke down in the middle of that post, so here are some capital letters you can copy and paste if you need them : ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Originally Posted by IanW

Just saw this in the AWR newsletter. Some of you may know about it already, so apologies if it's stale news....

I also got the junk mail from AWR, Ian, but my reaction was much more sanguine than yours. Like all of us, Ron Hock has birthdays, but only his quota. What happens to his craft business then?

if the business had been bought by the likes of Black & Decker Stanley or Home Depot or Rockler or a Chinese company, then I would regard it as a step above closure, but only a very small step.

If I had to chose an optimal panel of potential purchasers, then it would include both Lee Valley and Lie Nielsen. Both have that very consistent dedication to affordable quality.

I am optimistic, like Derek.

EDIT: Have thought about the above overnight. Wonder what the succession plans are at Lee Valley and Lie Nielsen?

Originally Posted by Colin62

There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how business works, even if he was making them ‘himself’, the likelihood is that he’d have some employees doing some or all of the work anyway.

The fact is that he saw an opportunity, created products to fill the gap and did it consistently for many years. At the end of the day, actually doing it means far more than being able to do it better, but not doing it. I say this as someone who is able to do lots of stuff well but seldom get around to the actual doing, so there’s no criticism intended.


ps I see your shift key broke down in the middle of that post, so here are some capital letters you can copy and paste if you need them : ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Ron is definitely not who I'm talking about sort of misleading customers by omission. he was very clear that he liked to outsource the routine stuff because it wasn't that interesting to him. I personally also never noticed a single greedy thing about him, or misleading. Just some antiquated ideas or maybe some incomplete or outdated steel comments. that's hardly that bad.

For someone else who is floating out the idea that they're making things in a small shop but they're just assembling parts that are literally finished elsewhere, I don't care for it because it would change buyers decisions in some cases. Not all.

if you were making something, let's say a saw or some kind of simple plane, and you just admit it that you source the parts and assemble them- you may get a different market, but I doubt sales would stop. For example, Lie Nielsen doesn't do their castings. They probably machine them, but the casting is done by someone else. Does anyone care? No.

We do read pretty regularly of large toolmakers who sell their brand and then are just made of contracted parts by a new owner, or they sell their production, keep the brand and no longer make them. some of that is 50 years ago, and people don't really seek the later stuff. That's an indication.

My point about the metallurgy was probably more relevant - there's a notion that Ron's blades are something more than cut or blanked and heat treated O1 - they're just lower tempered O1 blades. If there is a market and LV doesn't do them right - which could always happen - someone else could do it. If you were in the states and told me you had a specific size of blade that you wanted, I would probably just make it for the cost of materials.

If I were retired, I would consider making production and custom blades with more options probably than hock provided, but I'm not retired and won't be for another decade.

I'm guessing that LV ended up with the business because nobody else wanted to pay much of anything for it, aside potentially from someone like woodpeckers, who would just likely take the brand and leave Ron's employees high and dry. We're probably not going to know the details, and it's not really that important.

OK, I tracked down my france O1 iron. They're blanked, which helps explain why they're not done in house.

They are good irons - blanking doesn't mean anything other than that the machining time is cut back. The business of making a good iron is in getting the steel in a pre-quench heat and structure that will result in good quality. The france blades are good quality, just untempered in my opinion, so this statement about cost is not related to quality.

I would imagine that the cost to make the blades in france is probably very little because of the blanking, though the steel is unlikely to be cheap compared to chrome vanadium drill rod that's been rolled flat. Even that's not a real statement of quality - you could buy drill rod for $2 a KG with a drop forge setup, a salt and oil bath and make better chisels than anything offered in the west now.

I think Ron ran a good operation. My second plane iron is one ...wait, I have three. Two are in infill planes. One is a 1/4" thick brese style iron that would cost the equivalent of about $140 now. I wouldn't buy it again, I'd make it for about $25, but a lot of us aren't makers.

the other is a slotted iron like the 1 1/2 inch irons that are in krenov kits, but I got ron to dig and find me one that was 5" long so that it wouldn't look quite so dippy. He was pleasant. it wasn't cheap, but I think those irons are machined in california or somewhere in the US, and often made to custom specs within reason - the longer one was left over from a batch made for some class. I would also just make it myself.

All of the irons are good.

the blanking and limited machining on the standard irons allows them to be made very inexpensively, and they're ugly. but they're like a stud bull missing an eye, maybe - the balls are the important part and the french irons have the balls. The big infill iron is a touch softer, I have no idea why. The small one is in the same hardness range as the french.

anyone wondering what blanking is, you can look it up. Not much of quantity is machined these days. Even the knife guys often send off their blanks to be waterjetted instead of cutting themselves. I don't get it in that case, but I get blanking and punching or laser cutting when it's doable on something that's going to be made in the thousands in number.

I suspect that there will be some variation in the final hardness of batches of blades made by anyone. The tighter the tolerances specified for the finished product, the more effort (= cost) it takes to keep things within the specified range. Hock managed to keep his blades in a pretty tight range over a long period and through out-sourcing, to judge by the blades I've had over the years. My first was from when he did the heat-treating himself, very early on - I liked the way it came with the oxide coating still on it, not ground & shiny like the later ones. It made it look more like a cottage-industry product, and a bit less prone to rusting, but was functionally the same as the last shiny blade I bought a few years ago.

Don't forget Ron started making his blades back when there wasn't a lot of choice and if you wanted anything other than standard bench & block plane blades, forget it, or be prepared for a long search. It's a little different today when the choice has expanded dramatically, not only of blade types but of composition. That first Hock blade I got was a revelation; up 'til then I had been using a Stanley blade from the 60s that was thin, chattery & held an edge only marginally better than mild steel. (After using many more Stanley & Record blades in subsequent years I realise that one was an outlier that somehow slipped through QC way under specs!) The Hock was thicker than the old one, but not so thick the cap-iron screw didn't reach through far enough to get a good grip. My plane suddenly became a different tool with a noticeably more 'solid' feel to it. The improvement in edge-retention was very gratifying, especially as it was as easy, if not easier to sharpen than the thing I'd been battling with before.

Someone who knows what they are doing can no doubt do a bit better than the average Hock with the same starting material in terms of toughness/edge-retention, but if that's what you need, the powder metal blades probably offer substantially more off the shelf. I still have & regularly use a couple of Hock blades & the affection that first experience engendered lingers on. They are just good, reliable, blades that work very well on "sensible" woods.....

Cheers,