SK Hand Tools

S-K Hand Tools is an American tool company located in Sycamore, Illinois. Major products include sockets and drive tools, wrenches, air tools, and other mechanics' tools. The company has a tool line of over 3,500 items including wrenches, ratchets, screwdrivers, tool boxes and air tools. It has manufacturing facilities in Sycamore, Illinois. Outlets for their products include independent tool-truck dealers, auto parts stores, and major internet vendors such as Sears and Amazon.com. The company prides itself with being a family-owned, blue-collar American company that believes in serving the hardest working tradesmen in the world, the American workers and craftsmen. It manufactures all of its products in America, using highest quality American steel only to forge its tools.

Jay Leno described SK as "an iconic American brand for decades," and the company is known for inventing the round-head ratchet wrench.

History

SK was founded as the Sherman-Klove Company, specializing in screw-machine products, by Mason H. Sherman and Noah Grover Klove. The company was founded in the early 1900s to supply munitions in WWI, and made mortar housings in a screw machine plant on Harrison Street in Chicago. During the 1920s SK operated primarily as a contract company, making tools for other brands (including Craftsman). Business thrived, they made specialty screw machine products that did well until the depression. William S. Sherman (W.S.), Mason's son, came to SK after graduating college in 1927 and was eventually a major owner of the company. One of the products the company made was socket wrenches for Hinsdale Socket and Wrench Company. The Hinsdale Company went out of business during the great depression leaving Sherman-Klove with a large inventory of this product, they then redesigned the product and changed the company name to S-K Tools.

Hand tool

A hand tool is any tool that is not a power tool – that is, one powered by hand (manual labour) rather than by an engine. Some examples of hand tools are garden forks, secateurs, rakes, hammers, spanners, pliers, screwdrivers and chisels. Hand tools are generally less dangerous than power tools.

Brief history

Hand tools have been used by humans since the stone age when stones were used for hammering and cutting. During the bronze age tools were made by casting the copper and tin alloys that the period is named after in clay moulds. Bronze tools were sharper and harder than those made of stone. During the iron age iron replaced bronze, and tools became even stronger and more durable. The Romans developed tools during this period which are similar to those being produced today. In the period since the industrial revolution, the manufacture of tools has transitioned from being craftsman made to being factory produced.

A large collection of British hand tools dating from 1700 to 1950 is held by St Albans Museums. Most of the tools were collected by Raphael Salaman (1906–1993) who wrote two classic works on the subject: Dictionary of Woodworking Tools and Dictionary of Leather-working Tools.