Sears Tool Catalogs...... they WERE the greatest

[Bill Huber]

I am cleaning out some stuff and came across my Sears tool catalogs. I am going to donate them to the OWWM site.

So before I did I thought I would shot the covers just for the heck of it.
Here they are, was that the good old days of Sears or was it.

Just thought you may like to see them.

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[Bill Huber]

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[Bill Huber]

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[Virgil Johnson]

Sort of brings back good old memories of when I was in my early 20s (now I am 62) when Sears tools were the thing to get.

Glad to see the covers again Bill.

Virgil

[Rick Potter]

I have a couple from the early 40's and the late 40's. What a difference! Those were SERIOUS catalogs. For example, there were at least a half dozen metal lathes available, plus all the tooling. Table saws ran the gamut from a cast iron benchtop with tilting table, to a Unisaw clone. I picked these up in an estate sale, and really enjoy looking at them.

Rick Potter

[David DeCristoforo]

What is that odd material those tools are made of? Doesn't look like any plastic I've seen.

[Ben Martin]

I lust over that table saw on the cover of the 1955 catalog.

I actually have the circular saw on the cover of that 1957 catalog, pretty cool to look at but not much of a work horse. Will barely cut through 3/4" ply, no ponies...

[george wilson]

I have the 1955 catalog. Also,last year,I actually got to see the floor model saw pictured on the 1955 cover. I don't think it was much of a clone of the Unisaw. The handles were thin,hollow on their backsides,and made of potmetal. Except for sentimental reasons,I don't think anyone would really like it.

Speaking of old machines,last year I also had the opportunity to buy a minty 12" Parks planer. I might have gotten it,except I already have too much stuff crowding a shop I thought I'd never fill up. the Parks was a faulty planer anyway. The power feed gearboxes always were broken down on every other one I ever saw. back in the 60's,I was able to get hold of one which had a real Rube Goldberg affair cobbled together to replace the missing gearbox. Since I had no money back then,it was as good as I could do.

The neatest redone 12" Parks planer sans gearbox I ever saw was a neat job someone had done of using an old floor shift truck transmission to make a 3 speed power feed!! It was put together quite nicely.It took up a LOT more space than a planer its size should have,but I bet it never broke down again!

One machine that Sears sold that was pretty decent was the Craftsman drill press. I still have my original 1963 drill press. just weeks ago the motor finally pooped out. It has the thin,chrome plated 3 spoke handwheel that looks like it could easily break,though I have been the only user.It hasn't broken yet. It has a real Jacobs chuck with a screw on collar that cannot fly off,and still runs very true. On all newer drill presses,including a Delta variable speed,I've had to replace the crappy chucks with a real Jacobs. I also have had no trouble with the spindle being loose in the headstock,as some Jet drill presses apparently have,causing .060" runout when extended. It also has a pretty good,easily adjusted depth stop. I bought the 3rd.pulley attachment when new. That gives me very low speeds,up to 10,000 RPM.

The only bad thing about the drill press has been the rubber cushioned spindle. Very bad for routing. I think I paid $125.00 on sale for it. That was a lot of money back then. But,we didn't have the cheap imports back then.

Sears Atlas metal lathes were always miserable,light,under constructed things. My first lathe was a Sears 12". It took all day to make something like a milling arbor on it,that I could knock out pretty quickly now on my 16" lathe. I couldn't ever take more than a 1/32" deep cut in steel,and even then the bed would spring and cause the diameters to be wrong. It also needed new pot metal half nuts every 6 months. A lot of hobbyists still seek old Atlas lathes. When I got my first 10" Taiwan made lathe,it was INFINITELY BETTER!!!!! I could hog off steel like crazy,and it would hold tolerances nicely. I bought the Sears lathe just before their prices jumped from $850.00(might have been on sale) to about $2500.00,IIRC. I was able to sell the lathe for more than I had paid for it!

[Jerome Hanby]

I guess the all mighty dollar is the be all end all of evey thing, but it's a little sad that Sears has passed away as a tool company. I remember being eight or nine and drooling over the new tool catalog when it came out and dreaming of what I was going to have one day.

I still get a kick out of going through the tool department at Sears with my Dad. But these days it's more "so and so" makes a good version of this than this is a cool tool.

[Harold Burrell]

Dude...do you realize that many of these came out before I was even born???

And I'm a grandfather...

[Fred Hargis]

Many of those look familiar to me. They also remind me of the days when if I needed a tool, I'd pick up the Sears tool catalog and find, then go get it. Now, it's been probably 20+ years since I've been in a Sears store, and even then it wasn't for tools.

[Matt Meiser]

I remember the last two--I probably had my own dog-eared copies. All but the last from the first post were printed before I was born.

[John Thompson]

Thanks for the memories, Bill. I worked with a JC Penny circular under a sheet of 2x4 ply from 1972-1974 before my wife got me a Craftsman contractor saw on sale for Xmas. I still have the 1 HP ring collar lock router and use it if I need to trim laminate edges. The squeeze trigger is built into the egornomic handle which was unsual for the time. That is the most comfortable handle I have ever seen on a router.

The good thing about Sears and their Craftsman line in those days was that the catalog department would have sales about every 4 months so you basically never had to pay retail for a tool really and I took advantage of that in the 70's.

[Angie Orfanedes]

In my 30's my wife claimed I had a Sears tool addiction. I couldn't walk through the tool department without buying something. She may have been right.

Now (more than) 30 years later, I still have most of those tools. I am thinking I need to specify what will happen to them in my will.

[Bill Huber]

The saw that is on the first 2 covers is the table saw I got from my Dad and started out with. After I got the Jet I sold it to a person and they are still using it, the motor was replaced and the fence but the main saw is still going great.

When he bought it, he only got one wing and did not get the stand. I would still be using it if it were not for the fact that it only had a 1/2 inch arbor and I needed a dado blade.



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