I have an auger bit with a manufacturer I don't recognize.  It is marked 
FORD PAT 1891 and then the stamp is light but I believe it says HOLYOKE.  It 
is a single spur hollow center style with a medium fast screw pitch....

Thanks for your help,

The Old Tool Nut

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Paul,
    You have a bit from the Holyoke (Mass) Mfg Co (I think that's the name).
The auger was probably based on patent 461,897 by Augustus Ford (10/27/91)
for a single twist auger bit with one "floor" lip.  These bits are not too
uncommon here in Massachusetts.  In fact, I  have a nearly complete set of
nice ones down in the basement.

    Curiously, the EAIA DAT seems to be silent on this company, even though
the auger bits were probably produced before 1900.  Of course, I could be
reading in wrong--that has happened before.

    Best regards,
    Sandy Moss

Tools for sale list at:
http://www.sydnassloot.com/
----- Original Message -----
From: "PAUL OLTMANNS" 
To: "oldtools" 
Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2002 10:26 PM
Subject: [oldtools] unknown auger

> I have an auger bit with a manufacturer I don't recognize.  It is marked
> FORD PAT 1891 and then the stamp is light but I believe it says HOLYOKE.
It
> is a single spur hollow center style with a medium fast screw pitch....
>
> Thanks for your help,
>
> The Old Tool Nut
>
>
>
>
> Please Visit The Old Tool Nut Journal Web Site
> http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/zaire/91/
>
> Also Visit: The MSN Antique Tools Community
> http://communities.msn.com/AntiqueTools
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
>
>
> --
> Archive: http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/archive
> To unsubscribe or change options, use the web interface:
>     http://galoots.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=oldtools
>

Hi Paul & Sandy & All,

Paul asked about an auger bit marked HOLYOKE and FORD PATENT 1891. Sandy
attributed that to a Holyoke (MA) Mfg. Co. and commented that the DAT
says nothing about that company. That naturally stirred my juices, so I
took a look myself. It took a bit of tracking to get there, but I
eventually found a Ford Auger Bit Co. which was also reported as the
Ford Bit Co. They worked in Holyoke, MA, from (assumed) ca. 1891. One
source  says they only worked until 1910, but another shows their bits
still being sold in 1914. Some other company may have taken them over in
1910 and continued to use the name; the DAT says that may have been
Millers Falls, but maybe it was really Sandy's Holyoke Mfg. Co.? The DAT
info came from one tool marked as Paul said, five primary source
documents and four secondary source documents. What the five primary
sources were is not specifically known, but they were probably
directories, advertisements, etc., from within their working years. That
many original sources conveys a pretty high level of certainty that the
name was as cited for the years shown. The DAT does not show the full
paptent date cited by Sandy - only the 1891 from the marking.

Best Wishes,
Bob 

hI all
Sandy mentioned Lewis bits and it stirred my memory that
I had looked at the 1886/87 Ken Robert's Millers Falls
reprint and at that point they were selling "Lewis Patent Single
Spur Bits" but by 1916 Millers Falls had purchased Ford Auger Bit Co of
Holyoke. I have seen many of these marked Millers Falls and Ford w patent
date.
Chuck Zitur
Billings, MT

Well, I guess its nice to know that Bob Nelson can get "his juices stirred"
even as retirement homes loom on the horizon.  :-)
>
Bob reported, "It took a bit of tracking to get there, but I
> eventually found a Ford Auger Bit Co. which was also reported as the
> Ford Bit Co. They worked in Holyoke, MA, from (assumed) ca. 1891. One
> source  says they only worked until 1910, but another shows their bits
> still being sold in 1914." (snip) "The DAT does not show the full
> paptent date cited by Sandy - only the 1891 from the marking.".

Bob's research stirred my own somnolent early morning juices enough to
stumble downstairs, and root out some of the Ford pattern bits that I have
down there.  What I found is essentially that Bob (as usual) is correct, and
that my memory of a "Holyoke Mfg. Co" seems to be in error.  But after
arraying a number of my Ford patent bits, and some similar ones, some
interesting things arise (don't they always when you look critically at
tools?)

First, my earlier report of the complete 1891 patent date comes from Jim
Price's book on bitstock tools, and that reference notes Ford's location
when the patent was awarded as New Haven.  At my side I have eight auger
bits that are marked with Ford's name.  Five conform to the patent for a
"single twist auger bit with 1 floor lip".  The bits are  distinctive,
having a single twist with very heavy sidewalls.  Imagine an open circular
staircase with wide, flat risers.  This is quite different from the narrow
tapered risers in the typical Jennings pattern double twist bit.  In the
Ford pattern, imagine looking at the working end of the bit so you are
looking directly down the length of the lead screw.  If you orient the
single cutting edge so that it points to 12 o'clock, the single spur or
"floor lip" is centered at about 2 o'clock.  This is true for three of the
eight bits.  All three are marked, "The Ford Bit.  Pat. Oct. 27, 1891."  I
regard these as the earliest of the bits I have.  Note that there is no
Holyoke location given, and the patent date is complete.   Of the remaining
five bits, an additional two are marked, "Ford Pat. 1891 Holyoke U.S.A."  A
closer look at these shows that they have two cutting edges (not one), and
there are two spurs, one at about 2 o'clock, and the other at 7.  A third
example also shows the two cutting edge arrangement, but it is marked, "Ford
Pat. 1891 Hudson."  Finally, the remaining two bits (of the eight) are
marked only, "Ford, Holyoke U.S.A."  And these have but a single cutting
edge, and the lip is located right adjacent to the edge, essentially at
12:30.  Clearly there is considerable variation here, and not all of it
conforms very closely to Ellsworth Ford's original patent.

While on the subject of single twist bits, I have another group of them that
are very similar to the Ford pattern.  But these are marked with the patent
date of June 1, 1869 of patent number 90,759 awarded to Henry C. Lewis, also
of New Haven, Conn.  The patent is for "auger bit with one lip, one spur."
Three of these bits differ only from the Ford pattern by having the single
spur located at 6 o'clock rather than 2 o'clock.  A fourth bit with the same
feature is marked only "Atlas Tool Co."  The patent records assembled by Jim
Price show another patent for an "auger bit with one lip, one spur" that was
awarded on the same day, June 1, 1869 (#90,755) to the brace maker, William
A. Ives, also of New Haven.  I don't have an example of this bit, but it
seems remarkable that New Haven was host to three patents for very similar
bits over a span of 22 years.

    Best regards,
    Sandy

 the DAT says that may have been Millers Falls

Hi all,

It was definitely purchased by Millers Falls. In 1916, the Millers Falls
Company took advantage of an opportunity to "purchase outright the
stock, machinery, good will and any other assets" of the Ford Auger Bit
Company of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Production was moved to the Millers
Falls plant. The next several catalogs after the purchase contained
notice of it. The purchase put M-F into the actual manufacture of auger
bits for the first time.

Ford Auger Bit manufactured a number of different types of bits, so the
Millers Falls Company was able to offer a fairly complete line right
from the start. The Ford Auger Bit Company established its reputation on
its manufacture of Ellsworth Ford's 1891 patent for a single lip, single
twist auger bit. Single twist augers (ie. with a hollow center) hand
been around practically forever, but Ford made some improvements in
manufacture and and design. Ford's single lip bits were well-suited to
general carpentry because they cut fast and worked fairly well in wood
with grain irregularities.

There will will be a longish paragraph on Ford Auger Bit when the
expanded history section of the website for Millers Falls collectors is
released in June. It will be 1200 percent larger than the current
history section and include somewhere on the order of 60 illustratons.

I'll drop a line to the list when it goes live.

Randy Roeder               Repaint houses, not old tools.