Hall of fame: honoring the people behind the tools that changed our lives - Tools Of The Trade's 2003

Tools of the Trade, Jan-Feb, 2003 by Michael Morris

Tradesmen and contractors today enjoy almost unlimited choices of tools and equipment, but it wasn't always this way. Only a generation or so ago, the tools used in construction and in many other types of work were restricted to relatively few options. When a carpenter or mason arrived on the job, he generally carried every tool he needed or owned--in one toolbox.

That's not to say those tools were primitive or that workers were under-equipped for the jobs at hand. The tool-making segment of the hardware industry in America was well-established 50 and even 100 years ago, but mainly it produced tools based on traditional, time-tested designs. New ideas developed slowly, one tool at a time. Individuals, not R&D departments, exercised their creative impulses both inside and outside the manufacturing centers. Often, when a tradesman saw a need for some specialized tool, he would get help from a local metal shop or fabricate it himself. Self-reliance was the order of the day, the tools were simpler in design, and the materials used to make them were readily available. Inventors and inventions abounded.

Of course, not every great idea stands the test of time--many of those early, one-of-a-kind tools never got much further than their inventors' toolboxes. But some of those inventions earned their keep on the job, claimed their place in history, and are still helping tradesmen earn a living today. The TOOLS OF THE TRADE. Hall of Fame celebrates the original thinkers whose vision, creativity, and persistence brought those ideas into the world, helping to make our work easier, more satisfying, and more productive.

Steve Wilson

Engineer responsible for the development of the Paslode SK 312, a milestone in pneumatic nail drivers.

Every once in a while, a design or invention comes along that changes everything--the way work gets done, the way the competition follows instead of leads, the designs of future products from that point forward. Sometimes the ripple effects of such a change spread far beyond an industry, resulting in improvements on a vast scale, such as in the economy and production of--in this case--home building itself.

The Paslode SK 312 pneumatic framing nailer was, according to its developers, that kind of tool design. Before it came along in 1973, pneumatic nail guns had reached a developmental threshold. Due to design limitations, even the best nailers could adequately handle only up to 2 1/2-inch nails. Beyond that length, the guns became too large, heavy, and cumbersome for practical, everyday use. This meant that they could not be used for stick-frame production home building, which by code requires 3-inch and longer fasteners (10d to 16d nails).

At the time, Steve Wilson was a young design engineer working for Paslode. The manufacturer already had a highly respected pneumatic nailer in its GN 212, which fired 2 1/2-inch common nails and gave rise to the term "gun nailer." Despite its usefulness, says Wilson, like most air-powered nailers of its day, the GN 212 had a long spool-type piston that required an elongated tool body. A tool that could handle longer nails was possible using this system, but early designs proved less than satisfactory. Paslode and its competitors were working furiously to overcome this barrier.

"My first project was to figure out how to come up with a tool that was better than what our competition had," Wilson recalls. "Paslode absolutely had to develop a tool for 3 1/2-inch nails." He and his crew worked on the problem for three years before finding the solution--the SK 312, a totally new design for a disk-type piston that not only did the job but was more compact, lighter in weight, and had significantly better reliability than other nailers available at the time. "It was a one-of-a-kind tool at that point, and it became the workhorse on the job" for carpenters and house framers.

The tool was so successful, it earned both the manufacturer and Wilson a longstanding reputation in the homebuilding industry. Wilson even had a special "SK 312" license plate made for his car. According to Bob Bellock, senior marketing development manager at Paslode today who was originally hired by Wilson, the SK 312 "was the first practical, high-powered, high-speed [nail] gun in the market." Paslode produced the model for more than 10 years, replacing it only when manufacturing advances made newer tools even smaller, lighter, and less costly to build.

William Petersen

Danish immigrant blacksmith who hammered out the invention of the Vise-Grip locking pliers in his Nebraska workshop in 1921.

Bill Petersen embodied the quiet individualism and pioneering spirit that built America. As a 20-year-old journeyman blacksmith, he emigrated from Denmark in 1902 to make his future in the Land of Opportunity. His trade skills served him well, enabling him to start a family and build moderately successful businesses in one Midwest town after another. But the horse-and-buggy era was ending, and old-time blacksmithing was rapidly making way for modern machinery and manufacturing.