Milwaukee. ICONIC. My youth was spent lugging red steel tool boxes, emblazoned with the lightning bolt logo, up and down innumerable flights of stairs in New York apartment buildings. The Sawzall is legendary, the Magnum is what all other drills aspire to. I still hang drywall with my 30 year old Screw Shooter… the first top-of-the-line tool I ever bought. Read More
made in USA
A Video Tour Inside the Channellock Pliers Factory
I recently visited the headquarters of Channellock, Inc. in Meadville, Pennsylvania for my second tour of their production facilities. The family-owned, family-run company has proudly made pliers in the USA since 1886 and from the looks of their bustling production floors, they are ready for another 128 years of making tools for the worldwide market. Channellock, Inc. is most famous for its trademark tongue and groove pliers, almost universally called “Channellocks” by generations of tradesmen, but they manufacture about 120 varieties of pliers here. The company also sells wrenches, screwdrivers and other hand tools, but only the pliers are produced domestically. This video and the photo sequence below follows along the process of how pliers are made. Read More