One wall, four owners
Walk up to the tool wall at Home Depot and read the names. DeWalt, Craftsman, Stanley, Black and Decker, Irwin, Porter-Cable. F1 Six brands, and one owner: Stanley Black and Decker, of New Britain, Connecticut. F1 The orange tools on the next shelf, Ryobi and Ridgid, look like two more American companies. Both names are licensed, and both are made by the same group in Hong Kong. F2
In 2019, Craftsman announced it would make wrenches and sockets in Texas again. F12 The plant finally opened at the end of 2022. In March 2023, the company announced it was closing it. F12
We are going to draw the map of who owns that wall, show you what a famous name is really worth once it is sold, and give you the four tool makers that are still independent and still forge in America, with the one question that tells you each of them apart.
If you have ever bought a tool because your father had one with the same name, this one is for you. The name stayed, but almost everything behind it moved.
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When the brand on the tool was the company that made it
Picture it: in 1857, in Chicago, a German immigrant named Mathias Klein opens a forge and starts making tools. F7 The story the company still tells is a little different: a telegraph lineman brought in a broken pair of side-cutting pliers, and Klein forged a new half and riveted it on. When the man came back with the other half broken too, Klein forged that half as well, making what the company calls its first complete pair of pliers. F7 Klein has been making lineman's pliers ever since. Thirty years later, in western Pennsylvania, a blacksmith named George DeArment starts a company of his own, in 1886. F6 In 1904 he moves it to a small town called Meadville. F6
In 1923, in Rockford, Illinois, a Swedish immigrant named Ernest Estwing starts making hammers a new way: the head and the handle forged from one continuous piece of steel. F8 No wooden handle to split, no joint to work loose. And in 1927, in Barberton, Ohio, Nelson Wright opens a shop that forges tools for car mechanics. F9
That was the whole idea of an American tool. A family, a town, a forge, and a name stamped into the steel. If the tool broke, you knew exactly who to blame, and usually you could drive there.
That was the world your father bought from. The name on the handle told you where the tool was made and who stood behind it. For most of the twentieth century, that was simply true.
The crack: the roll-ups
Here's the crack. The names survived, but they started changing hands. In 2017, Stanley Black and Decker bought Craftsman from Sears for about nine hundred million dollars. F13 Today the same company also owns DeWalt, Stanley, Black and Decker, Irwin, Porter-Cable, Lenox, Proto and Mac Tools. F1 In 2025 its revenue was about fifteen billion dollars. F1
And when one company owns a dozen names, it decides which ones matter. In 2025, Stanley Black and Decker told investors it would put fewer resources behind some of its brands, including Irwin and Lenox. F1 Irwin makes the Vise-Grip. F1 Your grandfather's locking pliers now live in a company's second tier.
Some names did not even get a careful owner. GearWrench and Crescent belong to Apex Tool Group. F3 Bain Capital, the private equity firm, owned Apex for more than ten years. F3 In October 2025, Bain Capital announced it was handing ownership to a group of its lenders, led by TPG Angelo Gordon and American Industrial Partners. F3 Nobody bought the company. The debt took it.
The ownership map, brand by brand
Here is the map. Almost every name on the wall leads back to a handful of owners. Stanley Black and Decker, in Connecticut. F1 Techtronic Industries, in Hong Kong, which owns Milwaukee outright. F2 Apex, now run for its creditors. F3 And the stores themselves.
Now, the part almost nobody knows. Ryobi and Ridgid are not companies you can buy. The Ryobi name for power tools belongs to Ryobi Limited of Japan, and Ridgid belongs to Emerson Electric. F2 Techtronic makes both under license, and in North America, Home Depot is the store that sells them. F2 Techtronic's revenue in 2025 was about fifteen point three billion dollars. F2 That is a little more than the company that owns Craftsman.
Then there are the store brands. Husky started as a Stanley name; Home Depot made it exclusive in 1992 and later bought the name outright. F5 Today Husky tools come from several contract manufacturers, not one factory. F5 Kobalt is Lowe's own name, and its cordless tools are made by a Chinese company called Chervon. F5 The name on the box tells you which store you are standing in. It does not tell you who made the tool.
And then there is Harbor Freight. One man, its co-founder Eric Smidt, owns the whole company. F4 Its names, Pittsburgh, Icon, Hercules, are its own labels, and the tools are made for it by contract suppliers, mostly in Taiwan and China. F4 That is not a secret, and at those prices it can be a fair deal. But it is a label, not a forge.
If you want the full ownership map, every brand on the wall and who is behind it, it is on the site. One page. No email required.
What consolidation did to the plants
Now count what it cost. Stanley was founded in New Britain, Connecticut, in 1843. F1 The company's headquarters is still there. Its manufacturing plant in New Britain is closing in 2026. F1
The Texas plant was supposed to be the answer. It was announced in 2019 with four hundred and twenty-five thousand square feet of space for American-made Craftsman sockets and wrenches. F12 Automation problems and supply chain delays pushed the opening back two years. F12 About a hundred and seventy-five people were hired, and then told the plant was closing, a few months after it finally opened. F12
Picture the customer. A man brings a broken Craftsman tool back to the store, the way his father did for fifty years. [EX] For hand tools, the lifetime warranty still stands, with exclusions for wear and abuse. F14 But the old blanket promise is gone. Craftsman power tools, outdoor equipment and storage now carry warranties of one to fifteen years. F14 The name is the one his father trusted, and the promise behind it got smaller.
That is what a name is worth once it has been sold. It still sells the tool, but it no longer tells you who will be there when the tool breaks.
Try it on a store brand. Who owns Husky? Home Depot. F5 Where is it forged? At several contract manufacturers, which change over the years. F5 What happens when it breaks? You go back to the store, and the store decides. None of that makes a Husky wrench bad. It means the answer to all three questions is a store.
The four tool brands still worth the money
So what do you buy instead? You ask three questions. Who owns it: a family or its own people, or a fund? Where is it forged? And what happens when it breaks? Four makers still give the right answer.
One. Channellock, of Meadville, Pennsylvania. F6 The same DeArment family, now in its fifth generation: William DeArment as chairman and CEO, his sons Jon and Ryan running the plant and sales. F6 More than three hundred and fifty people work in two buildings in Meadville. F6 They forge their own carbon steel there, and the pliers carry a limited lifetime warranty. F6 The 420 tongue-and-groove pliers cost under twenty dollars. F10
Two. Klein Tools, the company Mathias Klein started in 1857, now run by the fifth and sixth generations of his family. F7 Klein has seven factories in the United States and about twenty-five hundred employees. F7 Electricians have carried their lineman's pliers for generations, and most Klein hand tools carry a limited lifetime warranty. F7
Three. Estwing, still in Rockford, Illinois, since 1923, and still in the hands of the Estwing family. F8 Their warranty is not the lifetime kind. F15 But the all-steel hammer is warranted against failure in normal use, and there is no joint to fail: head and handle are one piece of forged steel. F15 A sixteen-ounce Estwing costs somewhere between twenty and thirty dollars, depending on the retailer. F11
Four. Wright Tool, of Barberton, Ohio, since 1927. F9 The Wright family no longer owns it: in 2007 it was bought by its own managers, who still run it. F9 That is why it passes the test. It is not part of a conglomerate or a fund, and they still forge wrenches and sockets in Barberton with drop hammers. F9 Wright began hot-forging sockets in that same plant in 1940. F9
Cost per year of use, not price on the sticker. A pair of Channellock pliers at about nineteen dollars that lasts forty years costs you less than fifty cents a year. [EX] A cheap pair at about nine dollars, replaced every five years, costs you a dollar eighty a year. F16 [EX] The cheaper pair costs more than three times as much.
The full Lifetime List for hand tools, with every source in this video, is linked below. Buying through those links supports the channel and costs you nothing.
How to read a tool wall in thirty seconds
Somewhere in America right now, a young man is standing at the tool wall with a pair of pliers in each hand. One has a name he recognizes from his father's toolbox. The other has a name he has never heard of, from a family forge in Pennsylvania. [EX] He thinks the name he knows is the safe choice. Now you know it is the name that changed hands.
Ask the three questions. Who owns it, where it is forged, and what happens when it breaks. Then buy the tool, not the logo on it.
If you own a tool from one of these four makers, tell us in the comments: which one, how old it is, and whether it still works. This archive gets written by the people who use the tools, not by the people who sell them.
And if you want the full story of how Craftsman was sold, and what happened to the forges behind it, that video is on screen now. Tap the card, and I will see you there.