5/16" Square drive socket set?

During WW2 the Navy used some 1/4"+ sockets and drives. I have always assumed it was to reduce theft. Are these exactly 5/16"? Or are they somewhere in between?

-- --Pete "Peter W. Meek"

Ernie,

It probably dates to around 1920 to 1930.

Does it say, "Plumb" or "Plomb?" The reason I ask is that back in the early part of the 20th century there were two tool companies with similar names, the Plumb Hammer Co. and Plomb Foundry. The name of both companies were pronounced like "plum," the little purple fruit. The Plomb Foundry made wrenches and other mechanic's tools, and the Plumb Hammer Co. made hammers (duh). Sometime in the mid-to-late 1930s the Plomb Foundry tried to introduce a ball peen hammer to their tool line, promptly got sued by the Plumb Hammer Co. for trademark infringement, and subsequently changed their name from "Plomb" to "Proto," which is a contraction of the words, "PROfessional TOols."

Plumb Hammer is an English company and is still in business. Plomb, or Proto, has gone through several acquisitions since around 1940 and is now owned by Stanley Toolworks. IFAIK, Plumb Hammer never made wrenches, so I'd bet that your neighbor's wrenches were made by Plomb, probably sometime in the

1920-to-1940 time-frame.

Plomb was founded in 1907 and began making ratchet handles around 1920, if memory serves. Snap-on, founded in 1919, and S-K (Sherman-Klove) both began making sockets around that time, too. Socket drive sizes weren't "standardized" until around 1935, and when they were, it was more by industry caveat rather than through some standards agency.

If you can post the patent number off of it here I can do a patent search and maybe find out a little more, and at least verify who made the tools and when. And I won't be a bit surprised if everything I've written above turns out to be off in left field; the patent office has proved me wrong before.

Good luck and I'll look forward to your reply.

Regards, Scotty

*** This post was written us> My neighbor is a bus mechanic and he brought over the strangest thing > tonight.

Hello Ernie, strangely enough I myself have a 5/16 SNAP ON ratchet,given to me as an apprentice 51 years ago pat/no 1*54513 midget 14-7ol '' G'' made in USA. It is still in perfect working order.I also managed to at some time,to obtain a 5/16 x 2" extension bar with markings......wf4a*pi*mb* the asterics look like some sort of inverted triangles,could possibly be War Department product. I have shown the ratchet to a lot of my engineering friends.and they all have never seen one at 5/16 " before,so I think we both have quite a rarity here. All the best for now, John.

snip---------

Wow! Very cool information, Scotty! Thanks.

Harold

It is Plomb, not Plumb. You were right. I didn't know that Plomb became Proto. I have always liked both brands of wrenches. Now I know why.

That would be Plomb. See the early post about Plomb and Plumb.

You're welcome.

Scotty

Ernie Leimkuhler writes:

< SNIP >

< BIG SNIP >

Yep. The changeover to Proto happened around 1940. When the lawsuit with Plumb was served, Plomb backed right out and held an in-company contest to "Rename the Company." A secretary in the front office came up with the new name. I don't know if they ever resumed making hammers, though.

Still, if your neighbor's ratchet handle has a patent number on it, you can look it up in the U.S. Patent Office database. Just go to

select the patent search option. They offer several searches; select the one that says, "Simple Search" or "Beginner's Search" or something like that. Type in your number at the search engine and it'll bring up everything they've got about the item, including the original description and drawings. Be sure to specify that you want the search to include all patents dated from 1790 to present. In the patent papers will also be the dates the patent was filed, granted, and other good stuff.

Good Luck in your search, my friend.

Scotty

*** No animals were harmed during the production of this reply ***

I trust you are an old tool collector? Or maybe one of those folks that simply knows stuff?

Harold

Let me re-phrase that. I trust you are a collector of old tools? Or maybe one of those folks that

And > Let me re-phrase that. I trust you are a collector of old tools?

Harold,

LOL !!!

You're right on both counts; I'm an old tool collector AND I collect old tools.

But as for knowing stuff, well... I don't know much, and what I do know is about enough to make me dangerous.

My grandfather was a carpenter and a cabinet maker and left his tools to my father. Dad was a diesel mechanic and when he died I inherited both his and Grandpa's tools. I've picked up a few other pieces over the years on my own, too.

Although I wasn't a mechanic by profession, I do enjoy mechanics and metalworking, and handling these old tools brings back a lot of very fond memories from my youth (I worked for my Dad during my jr high and high school years). So a few months ago, I set out on a quest to find out as much as I could about the 3/4"-drive Blackhawk socket set that Dad used daily for 40 years. I learned a little about several of the early makers of mechanic's tools along the way, and that's how I knew about Ernie's wrench set.

Take care and be well, my friend.

Scotty

*** WARNING: Do not operate heavy machinery while reading this reply ***

Peter may have the answer. My A&P instructor told us that it was made for the U.S. military during WW 2 or maybe post war. This was a replacement for the 1/4 inch drive and the 3/8 drive one set. It may also have been to prevent theft. Any of the tool collectors that have Snap-on catalogs from the 50's or early

60's, Snap -on made an adapter from 1/4 inch to the odd size (for lack of a better reference). I bought one at a surplus store and that is what prompted the question to my instructor

Incidentally, the standard 1/4" spindle would fit the body of the "odd" size handle, making it easy and relatively cheap to convert the surplus ratchet to a standard size. I still have such a converted ratchet handle. Maybe it was to keep people from liberating the *sockets* rather than the drives. They showed up at the big surplus stores like Silversteins in Detroit after WW2. I had a sandbox made from a self-sealing wing tank that came from Silversteins. My dad's barn is still full of things like Norden and Sperry bombsights, aileron servos, IFF boxes and all manner of magical mechanical wonders. What a great collection to grow up with. There is nothing like a ball-and-disk integrator to make calculus come alive before your eyes and in your hands. (A B&D integrator takes data in the form of rotations of input shafts, performs an integration, and outputs the result via rotation of an output shaft. Air speed, altitude, wind drift as inputs; output to the angle of a little mirror to put your aim point out ahead of the plane.)

-- --Pete "Peter W. Meek"

John,

After reading your post to Ernie, my curiosity got the best of me so I looked-up the patent you mentioned. The complete number is 1854513. The application was submitted by Snap-on designer Louis A. Hummel on March 29,

1930, and was titled "Reversible Ratchet Handle." The patent was granted on April 19, 1932.

This means that Snap-on could have begun production of this as early as March,

1930, if it is marked "Patent Pending," and definitely would have been producing it after April, 1932. And I could be wrong, but I doubt that it stayed in production all that long because the design of ratchet handles was evolving very rapidly during the 30s and 40s.

Nothing in the patent papers talks about the drive size, which is pretty typical. Once the patent was granted, Snap-on would have begun production of it in each of the different sizes for which they offered sockets. On the other hand, if it was developed for a special one-off run such as a government contract, then it might have only been in production long enough to satisfy the contract plus a few extras for replacement purposes. Who knows?

It's rare, so hang onto it.

Regards, Scotty

*** CAUTION: Reading this reply may make you drowsy ***

Are you sure it in not 8mm??