Thread: Braces ... Restoring Tools. Ron Herman

Thanks for posting Paul,
I thought perhaps to expand on the handle attachment of the Spofford style brace may be of interest.
The one Ron has there was probably made by John S Fray of Bridgeport Connecticut, possibly from the 1870's into the early 1900's.
Various methods were used to attach the wrist handle to the brace. Splitting and glueing, pinning or the use of conical retainers at either end of the handle. Fray choose to saw the handles in two then retain them with a pair of pewter rings as we saw in the video. One of the advantages of this method is to not have to keep the two halves together between splitting and installation on the brace.
As early as 1861 Harry S Bartholemew has a patent (32347) for bending the frame of the brace after the one piece handle has been installed. By the late 1880's this method was adopted by the majority of brace manufacturers.
The elegance of Fray's pewter retaining rings handle served as a trade mark for the company and although they made braces with the one piece handle they continued to use the pewter rings right up to, and after,their takeover by Stanley in 1906. I have a Stanley with Spofford chuck, pewter retained handle with the sweetheart logo stamped on the frame, which dates it to 1919-1920. It is significant that Fray's facility at Bridgeport continued to make braces for more than 25 years after Stanley's ownership.
Nelson Spofford patented his chuck in 1859 (25984) and this style was made, by various manufacturers, as recently as the early 1940's with Fray being the main player in the US and, for instance, Mathieson in the UK.
In 1879 John Fray patented a chuck (219574) which modified Spoffords split chuck from being closed by a thumb screw, as seen in the video, to being closed by the rotary motion of a chuck shell.Fray 001.jpgFray 002.jpg This brace uses the sawn handle with pewter rings.

Two examples from the post Stanley era using a chuck patented by Joseph Bartholemew in 1908 (904501) ratchet model no 104
Fray 003.jpg
and the non ratchet no 80 Fray 004.jpg both use this handle attachment.

Finally, a bit closer to home, the Tough company was manufacturing braces in Perth WA for twenty years from 1946 and one of their versions of the Bakelite handled Minor brace also used a split handle retained by two rings. In this case a couple of wraps of copper wire secured by solder.
Fray 005.jpg By this time Stanley USA had ceased making braces with this style of handle and as part of a production expansion could Tough possibly have bought the now redundant machinery from Stanley?

Regards,
Geoff.

I'm sure we have a Ron Herman/Saws thread ... but I didn't look very hard

He's selling on ebay apparently ...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ron-Herman-H...item417d93b68f

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ron-Herman-H...item417d44d366

He has two sets of restored photos and a representative 'before' photo ... so might give his idea for definite 'user' saws ...

rh1a.JPG rh1b.JPG rh2.jpg

Cheers,
Paul