Ellen Furley 1877, Thomas W BONSER Cinderford. (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Thursday, September 28, 2017, 20:21 (2619 days ago) @ davidcastrejon

Hi David,
thanks for the background, very interesting and intriguing, as you say it does sound like an interesting piece and very substantial, just as it should do ! Wondering if your bench (that seems to date from the 1940s/50s wrt the vice) is somehow linked to the US Army troops that were stationed in the FoD during WW2, with some marrying local girls before returning home ?. Or then again maybe linked to the shipyards of Lydney etc, what with Charleston being a port on the Atlantic seaboard. ??
This US soldier(engineer?) was even from Carolina, but appears to have stayed in the FoD post war...
https://www.sungreen.co.uk/Parkend-Glos/John_B_Thomas.html

I'm not an expert but during my time as a mechanical engineer, and my woodwork classes at school in the 70s before that, the "Record" vices were THE ones to buy for many years in the UK. Certainly I've never been able to break one even when using massively overlong tommy bars on the handles etc ! The name still exists albeit on a much-inferior product, so your's is quite desirable. Similarly, our workshop's wood planes and clamps were all "Record" brand, I still own a couple, but maybe they were all that were available in the UK at the time ?.

Bit of a struggle to find definite source of history on this famous English brand name, but these links are good. My recollections of the 1980s are that our factory's hand tools & cutters etc were all from the James Neill company, but they don't seem part of the Record story.

http://www.recordhandplanes.com/history.html
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Record_Tools
(The Graces Guide website can be very useful and interesting indeed when researching old British brand names and their trees).

These forum threads may interest/help you date it etc.
http://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/record-vice-history-t68453.html
http://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/record-vice-no-24-spot-the-fake.69347/
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?168557-Information-on-Vintage-Record-52-1-2-...

Interesting to see that some were being made in India in the 1980s, whether by licence or backstreet dodgy-copies I don't know. This was certainly when engineering was taking a big downturn here so maybe it was by licence and they were properly-built for Record while taking advantage of cheaper labour rates etc, and not like the fragile pirate ones that sometimes sell nowadays (which are not "made in England" despite the casting displaying as such - easy to cast cheap copies using a genuine original casting as a pattern of course). Reminds me of our metalwork classes at the Royal Forest Grammar, we made G clamps which unfortunately broke the moment they were tightened-up - largely cos the clamp G body was made of weak aluminium that we'd cast ourselves, a good learning exercise on several levels if nowt else ! (and cheaper for the school, as the broken clamps were melted-down for the next class..)

hope this is of interest, thanks for your enquiry !
atb Jeff

PS Please note I've been updating my earlier post abt Thomas, so you may like to revisit it to catch the additions.