Anyone know anything about JO-Line torque wrenches?

Lugz, I'll have a response for you when I have a bit more time over the next 24 hours. I am enjoying reliving a part of my life that I found formative through fielding your questions. However, responding to you requires telling some stories, and I want to do that right. Meanwhile, my wife is telling me that I have to get our Lab out for a run, or else he'll be in our faces during dinner. I'll get in trouble if he (the Lab) does that.

I have a more direct, if not necessarily more brief, response for Barry. My Grandfather got a bunch of patents that were integral to the micrometer torque wrench business in the 's and 's. My recall is that the heart of the patented system was the "pivot," a small, rectangular shaped piece of metal that sat in the spring tube between the hinge (that's what we called the piece at the top of the wrench that held the ratchet, if the tool in issue had a ratchet) and the spring. As I understood it, Jo-Line had the market largely to itself in high-quality micrometer torque wrenches from the 's on because of their patents on this system. Anyway, my Dad looked into the future in the mid-'70's and didn't like what he saw. The key patents were going to expire in the mid-'s. Already, the Japanese were showing signs of manufacturing precision hand tools at costs that he couldn't touch in the USA. So, he sold the business in late . I don't remember the name of the buyer, but Dad might. He turns 95 this fall, and will probably remember if anyone is curious. Anyway, the buyer closed the factory in California, and moved production back east, Unfortunately, the buyer didn't figure out that one of the crown jewels of the business was its work force, many of whom up through late loved to take me aside to tell me stories of when they were young men, and my Grandfather would terrorize them. Grandfather died in , so that gives you an idea about how loyal the employees had been. They knew those tools and the machines and processes necessary to manufacture them like no one else, and their loyalty to the company still amazes me. The buyer found himself with a bunch of machinery, expiring patents, and confused customers. What he didn't have was the know-how to make the manufacturing business smooth enough to make a profit at it. As my Dad put it to me, the business just kind of went away in the first few years of the 's. That's all he ever said about that, but I will never forget the sad shake of his head as he did so.

I don't know if Jo-Line's private label customers put pricing pressure on my Dad, as they saw the patents expiring and such. However, my Dad's big insight that helped Jo-Line support the second and third generations of my family to be involved in the business was to emphasize the manufacture of private label micrometer torque wrenches for the likes of Snap-On, Owatonna Tool, Central Tool, Ridgid, AC Delco (Dunno if you've seen the special hinge on the spark plug wrench), even Montgomery Ward (true!). Jo-Line manufactured all the Snap-On QJ and QJR s, As, and Bs. The first non-Jo-Line micrometer wrench was the C. I got personally involved in the business in , and the only Jo-Line branded wrenches I ever saw going out of the Shipping Room door were for military contracts and a dribble of some of the more unusual tools, like the JoMite and JoTite lines. Maybe some JoTes, although Ridgid got most of those, with private labelling and special paint jobs. My Dad saw Jo-Line branded product as competing with his private label product for customers whose distribution networks were far better than he could ever dream of having, and so he de-emphasized the Jo-Line brand starting in the early 's.

Anyway, my Dad was right from an economic sense. A couple of years ago, I went on Ebay and looked for micrometer torque wrenches. All the new ones were made in China, and they sold for prices that were less than Jo-Line's cost of manufacture in the 's, before taking inflation into account. Jo-Line would have been road-kill had he held onto it.

I'll be back to you, Lugz, probably tomorrow.

Bill Lugz:

OK, the dog is winded and the potatoes are in the oven. I have a few minutes, so here goes.

I noted in another post that my Grandfather was essentially a government contractor during World War II. American manufacturing in the first half of the 's was geared to the war effort, so a company like J O had one customer during that period. We have a picture of Grandfather around here somewhere showing him proudly receiving his "E For Excellence" award in from someone with a lot of scrambled eggs on the bill of his hat and a lot of action decorations on his chest. He was proud of that award long after the war was over.

Anyway, he found himself in the position of needing new customers beginning in the fall of . The military had all the micrometer torque wrenches it was going to need for a while in peacetime. Further, most of his natural customers were converting from wartime production to civilian, peacetime production. Car companies, shipbuilding companies, and aircraft companies had made nothing but tanks, jeeps, Victory ships and landing craft, and warplanes for 5 years or so at that point. Car dealers and gas stations had been pinched by the unavailability of new cars and trucks to sell/work on, and parts with which to repair them. On the other hand, he faced a tremendous opportunity. He had sold a ton of micrometer torque wrenches to car, shipbuilding and aircraft companies during the war. Many more had been shipped overseas for use in repairing things that had gotten busted up in the war. A whole generation of engineers and mechanics had seen what they could do and were used to them. On yet a third hand, none of these potential customers had a lot of loose change banging around in their pockets. It wasn't that these potential customers were poor; in many cases, far from it. The problem was that the financial cost and physical effort to convert from wartime to peacetime production was nothing short of daunting. There was SO much to do, SO little time in which to do it, and SO much cost involved in getting it all done that getting managers at potential customers to focus on micrometer torque wrenches was a real task.

On top of that, my Grandfather was an inventor and a mechanic at heart, not a businessman. He got to California starting from Missouri in (I think) , at the age of 16 by using all the money he had to buy a train ticket for as far west as he could get. That turned out to be Boulder, Colorado. He got employed by a wealthy man in Boulder who was an early adopter of one of those things called an automobile. Grandfather's job was to keep the darn thing on the road, and to drive his employer around in it. After a couple of years on the Western Front as a motorcycle messenger (see the thread of motor vehicles developing?) where he was gassed, he returned to Boulder, married my Grandmother (she wasn't "Grandma," either) and drove her, crying most of the way and pregnant with my father, to the outskirts of Los Angeles, then Huntington Park. He started what became J O in the 's.

In case it's of interest to you, J O's (and Jo-Line's) address in South Gate was Otis Street, South Gate, California. That's a skip and maybe a jump-and-a-half from Huntington Park, so the commute for Grandfather was good. That building was old, and was not an efficient place in which to manufacture torque wrenches. I remember narrow passageways through a dark and dank enclosed space that smelled deeply of decades of oil and grease. The offices where my dad worked were upstairs. The rubber pads on the wooden stairs were worn smooth and all the wood floors creaked. My Dad moved the business to East La Palma Avenue, Anaheim in , and there it remained until its buyer moved it back east in the early 's. The building that appears at the Anaheim address on Google is the one my Dad built, but the owners since have changed the front so much as to be unrecognizable to me. The parking lot that appears on Google at Otis certainly doesn't resemble the building I remember....

But I digress. I think Grandfather tried to survive in the dislocations following World War II by giving in to his natural inclinations - inventing, designing, and manufacturing stuff that someone (he hoped) would buy. He continued to manufacture and sell micrometer torque wrenches. But he also built and tried to sell other things in the off-times, when he had sold all the micrometer torque wrenches the market would bear. Unfortunately, these other products just didn't sell. My Dad had to rescue the business a few times.

My Dad put together a wall display of my Grandfather's inventions. He hung it in the Anaheim front office just behind reception. It may have had your 9/32nds socket on it -- I can't recall. What I do recall (remember, I was a teenager at this time), was the most barbaric-appearing eyelash curler I could ever imagine, much less had ever seen. Each of the pair (there were two) were maybe two inches across, and looked like an instrument of torture.

I remember seeing a couple of old Joars, gathering dust in a storage room in the plant. Same with the Joels. I don't recall the Joex. The Jote was very popular, primarily for tightening the lugs on the fittings that joined together PVC piping for plumbers. In my era - -79 - Ridgid bought a lot of these under private label. I do recall Jote's under the Jo-Line brand being shipped, but they were kind of unusual. As I noted to Barry, my Dad knew where his bread was buttered.

Your Jote is unusual to me, but that may be because the market had shifted since yours were manufactured. They were all preset, because they were all intended for a single purpose. I recall the Ridgid tools being preset at 46 ft/lbs for plumbing uses, but that's a recollection that goes back nearly fifty years. Further, unlike all the other torque wrenches Jo-Line (or J O ) produced, these were tested and calibrated on preset testing machines, so that the assembly team didn't even have to pay attention to the calibration. So long as the wrench "broke" when the testing needle was between two lines, you were good. I don't know what industry your Jote was intended to be used in. It predates me.

I don't recall your Joda. It REALLY looks like one of my Grandfather's pipe dreams to become a big-time manufacturer of all sorts of tools. It is unquestionably a J O product. JO was spelled with either "Manufacturing" or "Mfg.," as here. I would date your Joda to the 's, probably the first half. My Grandfather would make this kind of stuff all the time. My Dad got more involved at a senior level as the 's wore on, and he wouldn't stand for investing in the tools and jigs to manufacture stuff that just didn't sell.

I am not familiar with your 9/32 inch drive pieces. But the fact that you found them in a box marked USAAF with other tools from the war era sounds right. Clearly J O products, as well.

One last digression. I have an ad from the January edition of Air News with Air Tech. The ad is for the Jomi, of which there was an inch-pound and a foot-pound model. The character that appears on the front of your catalog also appears in the ad, but here he has a name. It is "GI (Good InTENSIONS) JO." The capitalized TENSIONS was lower case and italicized in the original. GI JO is dressed in a hat with a shirt having buttons that really resemble (OK, they're nuts, but they are arranged in a manner that would be familiar) an enlisted man's uniform in World War II. It isn't hard to see the market to which Grandfather was trying to sell - the young men returning from the war, hanging up but deeply remembering the khakis they had worn in the conflict - and, or so Grandfather hoped, their micrometer torque wrenches.

I wonder if we can sue Habro for a cut of their "G.I. Joe" profits. I mean, Grandfather came up with it first!

Just kidding......

Bill I think this one is directed most to Lugz, but maybe there is broader interest. I had a chance to talk to Dad this morning after church. He filled me in on a few details.

First, those wingnut 9/32 inch sockets are from a wrench that Lugz photographed yesterday. As Dad put it, these wrench/socket sets were designed to permit Rosie the Riveter to quickly and accurately tighten wingnuts in the aircraft factories. Women don't quite have the same arm-strength as men as a general rule, so the wrench operated as a lever allowing the women to get the wingnuts tight without expending undue effort. They predated the micrometer torque wrench. Definitely a World War II item.

It sounds like I got my description of the Jote wrong yesterday. Dad said that 25 inch pounds sounded about right on that one. He also said that the plumbers bought a bunch of Jotes, but they eventually found that they could estimate the necessary tightness on their fittings and stopped buying them.

The Joar in the catalog has some history behind it. The B-17 bomber was a revolutionary aircraft in the late 's. Revolutionary machines inevitably have things that are thought through right the first time, and other things that need tweaking in later models.

The electrical system in the B-17 was one of its revolutionary aspects. The Sperry machine guns on top and in the belly of the aircraft were electrical from the start, and electrical systems proliferated through the aircraft, as electrical power helped the crew make the aircraft a "Flying Fortress." This was important, because the B-17 flew without escort in daylight over the heart of Germany until the P-47 and P-51 came along.

The electrical wire in the B-17 originally was routed through the aircraft in conduit. This caused manufacturing issues. The conduit had to be installed into the aircraft and the wiring run through it in the body of each aircraft. Essentially, electricians stuffing wire into conduit had to get involved in the manufacturing process at the same place in the airplane and at the same time as plumbers were installing the hydraulics, equipment installers were installing equipment, and structure people were building out the airframe. The conduit helped create a manufacturing bottleneck. It was discovered that eliminating the conduit would save over 100 pounds of weight, streamline manufacturing, and allow quality control checks to be much more efficient.

Oh, and one other thing. The B-17As and B-17-Bs didn't do a whole lot of unescorted flying over hostile territory. However, the USAAF lent some B-17Cs to the RAF in . The RAF tried these B-17Cs in unescorted daytime raids, and experienced losses they deemed unacceptable. One of the things that led to these losses was that a lucky German shot that hit the electrical conduit tended to shatter the conduit it hit, causing complete loss of whatever electrical systems passed through the affected conduit.

The USAAF and Boeing responded by eliminating the conduit, introducing the revolutionary electrical harnesses, and running the electrical wiring through numerous spots in the B-17's inner hull, so that a lucky shot might sever one strand of wiring, but not a bunch of them. I don't know when this change was made, but the B-17D is a likely suspect. It was manufactured in large numbers, and the conduit problem came to white-hot light in the B-17C.

So, how does the Joar figure in this story? Well, the Joar was designed to be used in the installation of conduit in those early B-17s. Each piece of conduit was only so many feet long, and did not run in a single piece from nose to tail of the aircraft. The fasteners and joints where pieces of conduit were joined needed to be tightened to within specified tolerances. Boeing used Joars to do that.

Dad says that J O was selling Joars like hotcakes in the early years of World War II, but that sales fell off a cliff once Boeing eliminated conduit from the B-17. Your catalog indicates that Grandfather was still trying to sell Joars in the early 's. Why not? He had all the tools and jigs to make them. However, Dad says that selling Joars after their use on the B-17 was done was like beating a dead horse.

So you have a little (OK, tiny) piece of history in your hands when you hold one of J O's Joars in your hand.

I forgot to ask Dad about your Joda at church, but sent him a text about it later. I hope to have a little more for you later.

Bill

It reminds me of a valve adjuster. My guess is special valve adjuster. The socket would hold the lock nut and the flat head tip would turn the adjuster. J.O. Mfg had a close relationship, not just in geographic vicinity, with Plomb, due to them both supplying stuff to the US Army Air Forces. Both of the JO pre-set torque wrenches I have found had Plomb 9/32-inch drive sockets attached to them!

That is an intriguing and, dare I say it, probably unique find, Roob!

Rubicon and Lugz:

I was able to catch up with Dad. He had some strong impressions.

Rubicon and Lugz:

I caught up with Dad. He had some things to say.

First, the Jotru 10. Van Belknap regularly came up with "great ideas" for new applications of torque wrench technologies in the auto industry. And why not? He got 15% of the gross for each one he sold and bore none of the expenses of developing the tool. However, he needed demonstration models to show the automakers concretely what his great idea was. Les Trimble was the senior engineer for J O and Jo-Line for decades. Van would call Les to tell Les what he needed in a spec tool to show the automakers. Les would build it, and it would be sent to Van. Dad immediately identified Rubicon's Jotru 10 as one of Les Trimble's one-offs at Van's request. He thought it might be the only one that exists. I told Dad that I had seen a Jotru 10A in a post to this board about ten years ago. Dad replied, "Well, OK, maybe we built 10-15 of these, but that's it. No more." So, Rubicon, you have a rare one. I don't know if it is still properly calibrated or if there is any use for it these days, but it is rare.

Dad said your Jotru probably dated to the second half of the 's, given its Belknap labelling and its J O Mfg. source.

I asked Dad what a Jotru 10 might have been used for. He didn't know immediately. I passed on Lugz' suggestion that it might be a valve adjuster. Dad reacted to that immediately, saying that using this tool as a valve adjuster would be a "perfect application" for it.

Oh, and I misstated one detail in my earlier post. Dad told me that he formed his relationship with Van Belknap in the mid-'s, shortly after he (Dad) came to work at J O Mfg. Thus, it appears that Van was selling J O and Jo-Line Tools wrenches before he founded his Belknap tool company that we can find on the web.

Lugz, I also followed up with Dad re Plomb Tool. I had never heard of Plomb Tool over 9 years working at Jo-Line, and decades looking at its history since, so I was intrigued. I had heard of Proto, the new name for Plomb after it got sued, but I couldn't recall any Jo-Line product ever being sold to Proto. Thus, when you wrote about a "close relationship" between these two Los Angeles-based companies, I wanted to hear more.

Turns out there was something there, but not something most of us would consider a "close relationship." Dad knew Morris Pendleton. He said Morris was a "nice old guy" with whom he enjoyed talking at Hand Tool Institute meetings. Morris lived in La Canada, California, which is right next door to Pasadena, from which I am typing this tonight. He gave a lot of money to the Crescenta-Canada YMCA, which accounts for why his picture hangs in the lobby of the YMCA building to this day. Dad said that Morris (or his Dad) started off making wrenches out of the axles of Model T cars. However, Morris moved on to manufacturing Richmont Torque Wrenches, a line of tools Dad believes was directly competitive with the product of J O Mfg. and Jo-Line Tools. Dad said that neither J O nor Jo-Line ever bought anything from Plomb Tool, nor sold anything to them. Instead, Plomb Tool was a vigorous competitor of J O Mfg. and Jo-Line. Dad said that there were only two major distributors of hand tools in the US during the relevant time period to which he was never able to sell private-label torque wrenches manufactured by J O or Jo-Line. One was Sears Roebuck, and the other was Plomb Tool. Dad called Plomb his "bitter enemies" and said that J O on the one hand and Plomb on the other "didn't like each other very much." I have never in my life - 64 years now and going strong - heard my Dad ever refer to anyone as his "enemy," bitter or otherwise. Until earlier today. Thus, I am taking him at his word on the relationship between him and Morris.

Based on my conversation with Dad, I think I can explain why you find J O wrenches with Plomb sockets. The USAAF needed wrenches with sockets. It had a contract with my grandfather for wrenches, and a contract with Morris for sockets. The grunts maintaining the aircraft for USAAF during WWII combined the two. Then, they left the tools combined when WWII ended. Each of Grandfather and Morris simply had a government contract. They didn't cooperate at all.

I hope this is interesting!

Bill