The Millers Falls Company was an important maker of hand tools for woodworking. However, this Vintage Machinery website's interest in them is restricted to certain other products they made, namely, foot-powered woodworking machines, hand-powered timber mortisers, vises, and, in their later years, bench grinders and portable power tools.
The
Millers Falls Manufacturing Co.'s genesis was the 1868 founding of
Gunn & Amidon, by Levi J. Gunn and Charles H. Amidon, to manufacture bit braces and related products. In January 1873 the company merged with a tenant of theirs, the
Backus Vise Co., to form the
Millers Falls Co., which continued to manufacture Quimby Backus's line of vises for some years. In 1875, the prosperous and successful business introduced its first woodworking machine, a fairly heavy-duty foot-powered scrollsaw. In 1877 they introduced the light-weight Lester combination saw, which was a runaway success. The New Rogers was an inexpensive treadle scrollsaw aimed at the home market; it became the biggest-selling machine of its type, at a time when such machines were extremely popular. The Cricket saw was even cheaper than the New Rogers, priced at only $2.50. The Companion was a lathe with optional scrollsaw attachment, and was marketed to youths.
Another Millers Falls product, the timber boring machine, straddles the line between hand tool and machine. It is a small hand-powered drill press mounted on a wooden base that can be set on a timber beam and used to bore bolt-holes or rough out mortises. The Millers Falls boring machines are considered by many to be the best of their type, and remain popular among timber framers.
In 1931, Goodell-Pratt Co. was merged into Millers Falls Co. The Goodell-Pratt Company was originally established as the Goodell Brothers in 1888, by two former employees of Millers Falls Company.
In 1962 the company was acquired by Ingersoll-Rand Corp.; by this time the company had about 600 employees, less than half of what they had only 10 years earlier. Obsolete plants and equipment, plus the high cost of doing business in Massachusetts, continued to take its toll on the company. In the mid-1970s they announced their intentions to relocate south. The state of Massachusetts responded with a package of tax incentives, bonds, loans, and wage cuts that funded a new plant in Deerfield, MA that opened in 1978.
In 1982, Ingersoll-Rand sold the Millers Falls business to the newly-created Millers Falls Tool Co., headquartered in Alpha, NJ. Any woodworking machines had long since disappeared from the Millers Falls product line.
Millers Falls Co. sold bench grinders that were actually manufactured by Kingston-Conley Electric Co.
Information Sources
- Most of the information here is taken from Randy Roeder's definitive Millers Falls website.
- We have a modest collection of Millers Falls catalogs, including some that cover hand tools, under the Publication Reprints tab. Archive.org's collection of Millers Falls Co. ephemera includes several catalogs.
- The Kingston-Conley bench grinders have been discussed numerous times in the owwm.org "The Shop" forum (registration required).
- An owwm.org forum discussion has pictures of a new-in-box Millers Falls timber mortiser, including a clear photograph of the instructions that were pasted to the box.
- Among other companies selling Millers Falls foot-powered machines was the Larkin Soap Co. of Buffalo, NY., which called the machines Chautauqua.
- Millers Falls began calling their power tools Dyno-Mite in early 1955.
- A higher-resolution version of the 1915 catalog is on Archive.org.