The new plant will manufacture a wide range of Craftsman mechanics tools, including sockets, ratchets, wrenches and general sets. The plant will also leverage some of the most advanced manufacturing technologies available to optimize productivity and sustainability, including pre-flattening steel technologies to improve material yield by almost 25 percent, as well as water and energy management technologies to reduce resource consumption. The Fort Worth plant will employ approximately 500 full-time employees to support the facility.

“When we purchased Craftsman in 2017, we were determined to revitalize this iconic U.S. brand and bring back its American manufacturing heritage,” says Stanley Black & Decker president and CEO Jim Loree. “From the launch of Craftsman’s refreshed brand identity last year to our announcement of the first new manufacturing facility in many years, we’re demonstrating our continued commitment to grow the brand and bring even more production of these great products back to the United States.”

Stanley Black & Decker purchased Craftsman in 2017 and unveiled more than 1,200 new products last August. The brand is now on pace for an accelerated growth trajectory to reach $1 billion in incremental revenues by 2021.

“This new plant will also be the latest in our network of manufacturing facilities — one that uses state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies and demonstrates our commitment to becoming one of the world’s leaders in advanced manufacturing,” Loree continues.

Stanley Black & Decker currently operates approximately 30 manufacturing facilities in the United States, with more than 100 manufacturing facilities globally. The company has five locations that have started implementing advanced Industry 4.0 technologies across their facilities, from manufacturing execution systems (MES), to 3-D printing, virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

Last month, Stanley Black & Decker also opened a new 23,000-square-foot Advanced Manufacturing Center of Excellence, called “Manufactory 4.0”, in Hartford, Connecticut. The facility is the focal point of the company’s global Industry 4.0 “smart factory” initiative, housing a team of approximately 50 Industry 4.0 experts focused on accelerating the company’s adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies and programs to help prepare the company’s workforce for today’s digital-led manufacturing environment.

Stanley Black & Decker is a $14-billion revenue, purpose-driven industrial organization. The company has 61,000 employees in more than 60 countries and operates the world’s largest tools and storage business, the world’s second-largest commercial electronic security services company and a leading engineered fastening business, among others. The company’s iconic brands include Black & Decker, Bostitch, Craftsman, DeWALT, FACOM, Irwin, Lenox, Porter-Cable and Stanley.

For more information about Craftsman and its U.S. manufacturing footprint, click here.

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It features a self-centering, 2-in. three-jaw micro chuck with a standard #2 Morse taper shaft. The head and tail stock units, made of precision machined aluminum parts, can be positioned anywhere on the machine bed. They will accept stock up to 2-7/8 in. in diameter.

The kit is compatible with any pendant style NWA machine running VCarve Desktop 9.5+ and any version of VCarve Pro. Made in the USA, Next Wave’s Mini 4th Axis Kit (item 20024) is available now and sells for $499.99.

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The Easy Wire Burning Kit will be priced at $49.99, while replaceable wires (three in a pack) will range from $7.99 to $8.99.

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Tim Inman: You are right to be concerned about the interaction of your quilt with the wood suspending it for display. You don’t want a discolored line to ruin your special keepsake if the oils in the finish — or chemicals in the wood like tannins — should stain the cloth. Quilt conservation is a topic unto itself. One conservator friend suggests that displaying a quilt in the light and air is just a very slow way to degrade the fabric and cause its eventual demise. I personally think fine antiques and works of art like quilts that are kept in dark drawers and safe rooms is a waste. They should be enjoyed. Some do not share my views!

So, what finish to use? First, use something that will harden and not change over time due to interaction with air or moisture. No linseed oil! Shellac is inert, but it will get soft with heat. A poly varnish? Well, maybe. But here is a conservator’s input: Use a sleeve made for the purpose to slip over the finished wooden hanging bar. There are specialty products made for this; they are usually made from archival polyester or Mylar® film. Another approach might be to lay a protective piece of undyed polyester fabric over the rack bar to further distance the quilt from the wood surface beneath. Finally, whatever you do decide to use, move the quilt from time to time. Don’t let it simply stay in place forever; shift it a little every Sunday morning, for example. Did you know that in museums with precious books, they often turn one page every week? It’s good advice for objects and for we humans, too: Keep moving!

The University of Nebraska, near me, has an International Quilt Study Center and Museum. I can offer them as an excellent resource for more information. Their website is: www.quiltstudy.org. Click here to visit a page on their site dedicated to Care and Conservation.

Chris Marshall: Congratulations on your quilt of valor, and thank you for your service. If this were just an ordinary wall hanging, a rod or simple bracket of some sort might be all that would be required to get it up and displayed. Case in point: we’ve had a hand-dyed quilt hanging on our wall at home (it’s in the photo above) for enjoyment for more than 15 years. We were of modest means at the time and so simply stitched a hook-and-loop strip to the back and mounted it to a narrow, unfinished wooden board on the wall with the mating hook-and-loop strip. It has hung well for all of these years with no special fuss. But, I’m sure our hanging “method” would be a conservator’s worst nightmare.)

However, in your case Dave, this isn’t just a decorative wall dressing like ours is. It’s a special historical keepsake to be treasured and preserved. So, I’d get in touch with a textile conservation organization such as the one Tim suggests and seek some advice from the experts. Seems worth the effort to make sure your quilt not only will display beautifully now but also in a decade or three, too.

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1. What’s in a name? To say that your board has “warped” is not really very descriptive nor useful. There are specific names that help us understand what type of movement is occurring, and that helps to define how to deal with the distortion. The bad news is that these conditions are not rare. The good news is that once a piece of wood gets to about a 12% moisture content, the gross movement stops — it has “stabilized.”

2. Our first term is “cup.” This is most common in flat or plainsawn lumber. The board stays reasonably flat in its length, but it curves across its width, away from the heart of the tree. Simply put, there is more shrinkage on one face of the board than the other. Once the wood stabilizes, use a jointer to flatten the face opposite the crown of the cup. Then run the board through a planer.

3. “Bow” describes a board that is flat across its width but curves in length: like a classic bow that powers an arrow. Once this board reaches equilibrium, the best way to make use of it is by cutting the board into very short pieces. The short length lessens the effect of the bow. You will still need to prepare the stock to be useable, but by starting with the short pieces, more material will remain useable.

4. “Spring,” often called “crooked,” means the board faces are flat in length and width, but from above the edges look a bit like a stream meandering around a bend. To produce the most material from this distortion, cutting the board to shorter pieces is again a first step. Then, straighten an edge, on a jointer or with a straight-line jig, so you can complete your stock preparation.

5. A “twist” is just what it sounds like. The board curves both in length and width, a bit like a corkscrew. This is perhaps the worst of all the possible distortions, and there is little to do to salvage a large, twisted board. You can, of course, chop it into small enough pieces so that the distortion is not evident (and there is always the fireplace or woodburning stove).

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“Does this question bring back memories! In Grandfather’s garage in Vinita Oklahoma, we ripped 1-in. x 12-in.’s down to maybe 3-in. for a contract for 100 mirror frames for the new ‘old folks home.’ I was there for the summer, and he thought I would be occupied by this most of the summer. I found out what ‘off by a little’ meant when I drilled a hole for the dowels that were to align and hold the corners of the frame together. After drilling at an angle (downward) I wound up doweling and gluing the first one to the plywood frame we built to align them. After chiseling the piece off the frame, the remaining 99 were done a different way.” – Riley Grotts

“As far as today’s request about mistakes made in the past, I probably have an abundance of them I could share. But the single largest batch of mistakes made involved a restoration of a 1965 vintage ’26 sailboat that I completed after five years of hard work. Had I known now what I did not know when I started, I could probably have done the restoration in two and a half years since I probably made enough pieces to restore two boats as I learned what worked and what did not.  What can I say? Woodworking keeps me humble.” – Jerry Carpenter

“While growing up, my dad hammered me with the idea of accuracy. He often told the story of “old Greenaway,” under whom he had served as an apprentice on the Victoria Railway in South Africa. The teaching point was how far out of alignment would one track be if 1/16-in. per foot error was extended to the end of the mile. I hesitate to put my math abilities on display, so I’ll let you do the math. What I really recall was when Dad ‘encouraged’ me to lay out the 1/16-in. error on the street in front of our house using the curb and his chalk line for presumably parallel rails!” – Roland Weisser

“Who hasn’t done the old use the one-inch mark for zero and forget to add one inch to the end?” – Bob Janousek

Some managed to still make their projects work, even if the math was a little iffy. – Editor

“Once I built a 4-ft. diameter waterwheel with 16 sections for my goldfish pond. With 16 sections, each joint was 22-1/2 degrees and therefore each cut had to be 12-1/4 degrees. Then, too, I had two sides that had to match with the paddles to make the 16 buckets. Due to my design, much like yours, I was able to allow for the little error. On top of that, the wheel had to be balanced when finished. When I completed it, I was well-pleased. All the buckets held water without any sealing and the wheel was so well-balanced, without having to add any additional weight, that with the ball bearing pillow block supports, the wheel would continue turning for 30 seconds after the water flow stopped. Now, with all that said, were there small cracks in places? Of course. I was using an older chop saw. The waterwheel worked really well for about eight years before the pressure-treated materials just finally gave it up. After a day of teaching school and driving a school bus, I would sit and watch the waterwheel turn from my recliner in the den. It was just like unwinding a spring that had become wound tight during the day.” – Charles Buster

And, for this reader, it wasn’t so much the math problems as it was the attention problem. – Editor

“My recent mistake wasn’t so much of a math problem as it was a lack of paying attention. I was building two foot placement aids for my daughter’s softball pitching instructor. (In February, all of his equipment was stolen from his pickup truck in his driveway.) He had commercially made equipment, but I offered a free, wood-made alternative. Anyway, I cut my pieces, six in total for two traps. Each one has two long sides of 18-in. and a spreader of 6-in. I decided to use dovetails as opposed to pocket screws and butt joints. I don’t have a jig made to cut box joints, so why not use dovetails? I cut my tails first and marked out the pins on the spreader boards. Cut all of the tails and pins and dry fit them, sort of. I never flipped the spreader the right way for the pins and never caught my mistake. So I made new spreaders, paying close attention to direction the second time around. They are made from soft maple that I salvaged from a desk someone was throwing away last summer, and applied BLO to the pieces. He was very happy with the foot traps.” – Kevin Hanes

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