Workmate 79-001 History/Timeline
Many owners want to know when their Workmate 79-001 was made. Unfortunately, Black & Decker has not published production or sales dates for the different Types of the 79-001. I've spent quite a bit of time studying the available information; the following lengthy discussion explains what I've found out.
As explained in my blog post of 9/28/2020 "A Breakthrough on Production Dates", I've broken the code for the numbers stamped on the bottom of the wooden jaws on most Workmate 79-001's. The discovery I've made is that they tell us the production dates that we've always wanted to know. Most of the timeline on this page is based on a spreadsheet I have compiled of Workmates with known codes. I include some other related tidbits about dates that come from other sources.
A Plea for Help------------
I want to add as many Workmate 79-001's as possible to my list of documented dates, in order to narrow down even further the start and end of each Type, as well as the dates when the changes in components happened within certain Types. I need the help of owners to do this. If you have a 79-001 with a readable 4- or 5-digit code stamped under the wooden jaws or under the metal step, please use my Contact page to send me the code. I will reply with my email and ask you to send one or more photos to document it. Please help with this crowd-sourcing effort to document the Workmate!
------------
For those who don't want to wade through all the verbiage that follows, here's the quick summary of the timeline of the 79-001 (all dates approximate):
Sources
There are four types of source material available to help with dating the Workmate 79-001.
79-001 Type E Dates
The first 79-001 sold in the U.S. was the Type E, which was a rebadged WM325 Type 3 imported from England. Since it was manufactured in England, the Type E does not have the Brockville production code to date it by. However, as mentioned above, it does have some marks cast into the foldout rear-leg casting that include the two-digit year of manufacture. I have verified the year on about ten Type E's, and they have all been marked with "74". This confirms the fact that the Type E was sold just before the Brockville factory began making the first North American Workmate, the 79-001 Type 1, in October 1974.
Dating the Type E any more precisely is difficult, since as far as I can determine it has never appeared in a catalog, advertisement, or review. Since the WM325 was sold widely in England, I have been able to establish that it was on the market from 1972 to 1976. This means that the ones imported to the U.S. in 1974 were from the middle production period of the WM325.
I will mention three brief accounts that my research has found regarding the very first Workmate sales in the United States. Unfortunately they are somewhat contradictory, so they don't really help establish more specific dates for sales of the Type E.
So it seems likely that the Type E was used for the test in southern California and/or Dallas, probably in early 1974. Then it was sold nationally starting in the spring or summer of 1974, while they simultaneously "tooled up their Brockville, Ontario plant" for production of the Type 1. Sales of the Type E would have ended when the Type 1 came to market in October 1974.
79-001 Type 1 Dates
The second 79-001 was the Type 1, but it was the first to be manufactured in North America, in Brockville, Ontario.
I have quite a few items on the Documents page from the introduction of the Type 1:
Landis' book could be seen as slightly contradictory to the above, but I don't think it is. He says: "Following its North American launch in 1975 and throughout the ten years that followed, all the large Workmates for the U.S. and Canadian markets have been manufactured in Brockville." It's likely that he's talking about the marketing launch, such as the 1975 catalog and Popular Science ad, rather than the start of manufacturing, which, of course, had to start before the launch.
So the Brockville production codes, the catalogs, the reviews, and the ads tell us that the 79-001 Type 1, the first Workmate to be manufactured in North America, was sold starting in October 1974, and was discontinued by May 1975.
79-001 Type 2 Dates
The Type 2 is the most commonly found Workmate 79-001 today, by a wide margin. For this reason, the Brockville production codes are enormously helpful for the Type 2, easily eclipsing any other source. But first I will mention that the first appearance in print for the Type 2 is in the 1976 Black & Decker catalog, printed in 10/75. (There is no mention of the Type number in the text, but the photo is of a Type 2.)
However, that catalog appearance is an illustration of what I was saying about the printed matter lagging behind what was actually on the market. The Brockville production codes tell us that production of the Type 2 actually started earlier that year. I have Brockville production codes for over 275 79-001 Type 2's. This data tells us that the start date for the Type 2 was early May 1975, with an end date of June 21, 1977. This is a long production run, which is consistent with the large number of Type 2's we see today.
Notice how specific the end date is: June 21, 1977. This specificity is made possible by the large number of Type 2's and Type 4's that were made. The last Type 2 for which I have a documented production code was made during the second shift on that date, and the first documented Type 4 was made during the third shift the same day!
This then is the perfect time to examine those "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates written on the Black & Decker part diagrams. The assumption has been that these tell us when the production of each Type ended and the next one started. (We know from Landis' book that all 79-001's were made in the single Brockville factory, which was unlikely to be making two different Types simultaneously.)
What happens if we apply this to the Type 2? Some pretty crazy stuff!
"UNIT DISCONTINUED" for the Type 1 is shown as April 1, 1976 , and for the Type 2 as June 1, 1976. Yes, you read that right, an implication that the production run of the Type 2 lasted two months. This is obviously impossible (which I have been pointing out for some time) given how common the Type 2 is. Now we have the Brockville production codes to prove it.
Among my documented examples, the oldest Type 2 is from May 7, 1975, eleven months before the supposed end of Type 1 production and thus the implied start of Type 2 production. The newest documented Type 2 in my list is from June 1977, more than twelve months after the supposed end of Type 2 production. So the actual production period for the Type 2 is at least 23 months longer (and probably a little more) than what is implied by the "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates.
This is just one example of inaccuracies in the "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates. I hope this makes it clear why I say those dates should be ignored.
79-001 Type 3 Dates
Since the Type 3 was manufactured in Ireland, it is not marked with the Brockville production code to help us date it. It would be logical to expect that the Type 3 was produced after the Type 2 and before the Type 4, but the Brockville production codes for those two Types tell us this is not what happened. I have collected so many dates for individual Type 2's and Type 4's that we can see that the changeover between the Type 2 and Type 4 happened between the second and third work shifts on June 21, 1977! There is no gap between the Type 2 and Type 4 into which sales of the Type 3 would fit.
So how does the Type 3 fit in? One clue is the owner's manual. I have photos of one 79-001 Type 3 with its manual, which matches the manual that came with the early production of the Type 2 during 1975 (available on the Documents page).
In addition, the Brockville codes I've documented on Type 2's indirectly confirm this and narrow down the approximate sales period for the Type 3 even further. There are two clues.
First, there are two 79-001 Type 2's that I have documented in photos with production codes 548 13 and 548 23, or November 23 and 24, 1975. They are stamped "TYPE 2" under the jaws and have exactly the expected features for a Type 2 from that date. So far, pretty unremarkable. What is remarkable is the labels on top of the jaws, which are the label for a Type 3! It's clear from the wear to the labels and the "shadow" left on the top where they are torn, that they are original, not something a later owner put on it. This tells us that in November 1975, Black & Decker had some Type 3 labels available in Brockville to be mistakenly applied to a Type 2. So the Type 3 was probably on the market before that date.
Second, there is an unusual gap in the Brockville codes for the Type 2's shortly before that. There is a period of 11 weeks from July to September 1975 where I have found only a single Workmate with a Brockville code.
I found the explanation during research in online newspaper archives. In May 1975, Black & Decker announced an upcoming temporary layoff of 185 employees at the Brockville factory "due to a weakening of export markets coupled with excessive retail store inventories." From my production code data, it seems like a pretty safe conclusion that the layoff ran from July through September 1975. Since Workmates for the UK were being manufactured in a brand-new factory in Ireland at the time, apparently they thought the best strategy was to shut down the Brockville line and temporarily supply North America with Workmates from Ireland.
So those four pieces of evidence make a pretty strong case that the 79-001 Type 3 was imported and sold from approximately July to September 1975. This short sales period is consistent with the relative rarity of the 79-001 Type 3.
79-001 Type 4-7 Dates
After the Type 2, there is very little documentation of the 79-001 in print, and most of what I have found is undated. For example, the manuals for the Type 4 and Type 7, as well as the first manual for the Type 6, have no dates. A second, later manual for the Type 6 is dated "2/78", which is confusing because that date is well before the Type 6 was manufactured. 2/79 would be a more logical date for the second Type 6 manual. As mentioned already, Black & Decker was very careless with the photographs of Workmates in their catalogs, so those are also unreliable. For example, the 1982 catalog uses a photograph of the 79-001 Type 4, but we know the Type 4 was last produced in 1978. The Type 8 or 9 would have been the current Workmate when the 1982 catalog was printed.
But now we no longer have to worry about the lack of reliable printed documentation, since the Brockville production codes give us as much accuracy as we need. All of my dates for the Type 4, 6, and 7 are based on the production codes.
The Type 5, like the Type 3, is a special case since it was made in Ireland and thus we have no Brockville codes for it. Also, similar to the situation with the Type 3, the interval between the last Type 4 and the first Type 6 that I have documented is only a matter of days, not long enough to make sense for the Type 5 to have been on the market all by itself. There are several gaps in dates as long as three weeks for my documented Type 4 Workmates. That could mean a shutdown of the Brockville factory that might have been filled by importing the Type 5, similar to what happened with the Type 3. We can only guess that the Type 5 was sold to augment supply during some portion of the run of the Type 4.
79-001 Type 8 and 9 Dates (plus the Workmate 300)
As with the Type 4, 6, and 7 the dates for the Type 8 and 9 come from the production codes, but they require a little additional explanation.
First, while collecting data, I was confounded by a number of Type 8's and Type 9's with Brockville production codes that made no sense. They were seriously messing up my timeline, indicating that some Type 8's and 9's were made much later than they should have been. A couple of them seemed to indicate they were from 1983, one of them had a 0 for the shift number, and a couple of them had an 8 or 9 for the day of the week. I came up with a number of theories to explain this, but none were very satisfactory.
After months of puzzling over this, I figured it out. In 1980 and 1981 some Workmates came out of the Brockville factory with their production codes reversed.
This is a result of the different ways dates can be presented. For example May 16, 2021 can be written as 2021/05/16 or as 16/05/2021. In the production codes, a Workmate made during the second shift on December 2, 1981 would normally be stamped 149 32, representing 1981, 49th week, third day, second shift. If you turn this around to shift, day, week, year, you get a stamp of 23 491. If you then try to read that reversed stamp normally, it would appear to be 1982, week 34, day 9(!), shift 1. That's the type of code I have found on about a dozen Workmates. Once I realized how to read them and corrected them to the regular format, they fit nicely into the timeline.
I can't explain why this happened, but it affects about 15% of the Type 7's, 8's and 9's for which I have codes. They seem randomly scattered through production from mid 1980 to late 1981.
Second, the Type 9 was the end of the line for the 79-001. In 1982 Black & Decker completely revamped the Workmate lineup, replacing the 79-001 with the 79-033, also known as the Workmate 300. They continued stamping the Workmate 300 with production codes, so the earliest codes found on the Workmate 300 help establish the end of production for the 79-001 Type 9. The codes that I have for the Type 9 show production starting in late November 1981 and continuing to April 1982. This is completely consistent with production codes I've collected for the Workmate 300 that show it started production in May 1982.
(The start of the Workmate 300 around this time is also documented by two Black & Decker catalog excerpts on the Documents page. The Consumer Products Catalog 323, dated 1/82, displays the 79-001 and its related models. The same Catalog 323 for the next year, dated "1/83 Rev. 5/83", no longer includes the 79-001. Instead it has the 79-033 Workmate 300 and a number of other new models.)
As explained in my blog post of 9/28/2020 "A Breakthrough on Production Dates", I've broken the code for the numbers stamped on the bottom of the wooden jaws on most Workmate 79-001's. The discovery I've made is that they tell us the production dates that we've always wanted to know. Most of the timeline on this page is based on a spreadsheet I have compiled of Workmates with known codes. I include some other related tidbits about dates that come from other sources.
A Plea for Help------------
I want to add as many Workmate 79-001's as possible to my list of documented dates, in order to narrow down even further the start and end of each Type, as well as the dates when the changes in components happened within certain Types. I need the help of owners to do this. If you have a 79-001 with a readable 4- or 5-digit code stamped under the wooden jaws or under the metal step, please use my Contact page to send me the code. I will reply with my email and ask you to send one or more photos to document it. Please help with this crowd-sourcing effort to document the Workmate!
------------
For those who don't want to wade through all the verbiage that follows, here's the quick summary of the timeline of the 79-001 (all dates approximate):
- Type E - early 1974 through fall 1974
- Type 1 - October 1974 through April 1975
- Type 2 - May 1975 through June 21, 1977
- Type 3 - made in Ireland, temporarily replaced the Type 2 from July to September 1975
- Type 4 - June 21, 1977 through October 1978
- Type 5 - made in Ireland, supplemented the Type 4
- Type 6 - November 1978 through September 1979
- Type 7 - September 1979 through June 1980
- Type 8 - June 1980 through November 1981
- Type 9 - November 1981 through April 1982
Sources
There are four types of source material available to help with dating the Workmate 79-001.
- The most reliable dating is from the Brockville production codes stamped in ink on the bottom surface of the wooden jaws or on the metal step. These are found on the 79-001's Type 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9, the Types that were manufactured in Brockville, Ontario. The 79-001 Type E, which was made in England, has a two-digit year number cast into its foldout rear-leg casting. I have not found any date markings on the Type 3, and 5, which were made in Ireland. I have collected enough production codes from Workmate owners to now have a very complete and accurate timeline for the 79-001.
- There is also paper ephemera such as ads and reviews in magazines, and Black & Decker catalogs. I have collected some of these in print form and found others online, many of which can be found on the Documents page. A problem with them is that none of them explicitly says what Type of 79-001 is being advertised or reviewed. Black & Decker never advertised the changeover from one Type to the next, and most buyers didn't know what Type they were buying. Ads and reviews often included a photograph that allows us to recognize the Type being shown, but at times it is almost certain that they are showing a photograph of a Type that had already been superseded at the time of publication. These materials are interesting to look at, but must be used with caution when it comes to dating.
- The most extensive coverage of the Workmate's early history is an 11-page chapter in The Workbench Book by Scott Landis, originally published in 1987 (and republished in 2021). Unfortunately it is a little short on details about dates, especially for the United States. In addition, Landis was not involved with the Workmate 79-001 in any way during the time it was originally being developed, produced, and sold; he collected his information through interviews a decade later. He did a great job of telling the fascinating story of Ron Hickman and his invention, but, unfortunately for us, precise dates and the changes between the 79-001 Types were not a priority for what Landis was trying to do. He never mentions the model 79-001 by name, much less the various Types.
- We also have Black & Decker's part diagrams for all ten types of the Workmate, which were available for many years on their support web site, but which are no longer there. Copies of these can be found on the Documents page. Each of them is stamped "UNIT DISCONTINUED" followed by a hand-written date. These have been cited in the past as an authoritative source for Workmate dates, but we now know that they are simply wrong. As I have pointed out previously, we know nothing about who wrote the dates, when, or what they based them on. Examination of the writing indicates that they may have all been written by the same person with the same pen, possibly all at the same time rather than at the time of each discontinuation, which also makes them appear untrustworthy. And now we know that most of these "discontinued" dates are directly contradicted by actual Workmates and their Brockville production codes. Using these dates will mostly lead to wrong conclusions.
79-001 Type E Dates
The first 79-001 sold in the U.S. was the Type E, which was a rebadged WM325 Type 3 imported from England. Since it was manufactured in England, the Type E does not have the Brockville production code to date it by. However, as mentioned above, it does have some marks cast into the foldout rear-leg casting that include the two-digit year of manufacture. I have verified the year on about ten Type E's, and they have all been marked with "74". This confirms the fact that the Type E was sold just before the Brockville factory began making the first North American Workmate, the 79-001 Type 1, in October 1974.
Dating the Type E any more precisely is difficult, since as far as I can determine it has never appeared in a catalog, advertisement, or review. Since the WM325 was sold widely in England, I have been able to establish that it was on the market from 1972 to 1976. This means that the ones imported to the U.S. in 1974 were from the middle production period of the WM325.
I will mention three brief accounts that my research has found regarding the very first Workmate sales in the United States. Unfortunately they are somewhat contradictory, so they don't really help establish more specific dates for sales of the Type E.
- One of these is a few sentences in Landis' book: "Finally in 1973, on the initiative of two of their North American managers, Black & Decker negotiated a license for 'the rest of the world' with Hickman, and tooled up their Brockville, Ontario plant for Workmate production. Black & Decker, Inc. (U.S.) placed 10,000 Workmates in about 50 stores in southern California to test their marketing strategy. People snapped them up and the following spring Black & Decker went national."
Notice that he makes no mention of any Workmates imported from England, implying that all U.S. sales from the beginning came from the Brockville factory. Also, the sequence he describes seems odd. Wouldn't Black & Decker have done the market test prior to tooling up a North American factory? Otherwise, if the market test was a failure, they would have already made a heavy investment in the factory that would have been wasted. I think Landis (or an editor) got this a little bit garbled.
Since the Type E was actually the made-in-England WM325 Type 3, it would have been the obvious candidate to use for a marketing test without requiring any investment in changes to a factory. I'm also quite sure that the Type E was sold nationally, not just in southern California. I have heard from original owners of Workmate 79-001's who remember the all-aluminum-frame Type E in stores in various parts of the country. I have purchased four vintage Type E's myself in Michigan and the eastern U.S., which seems unlikely if they were not sold more widely throughout the country. - Slightly contradictory to Landis is an account from the Canadian newspaper The National Post from August 23, 1980. It states that "As Black & Decker's manufacturing base grew in Canada, it was able to establish its own product development group in 1974...This group saw that the Workmate, a portable workbench developed in Britain, had potential in the North American market. The product was redesigned in Brockville with steel stampings instead of aluminum castings..." If that is accurate and the group that convinced the company to bring the Workmate to North America wasn't formed until 1974, then the test marketing of the Type E could not have begun until 1974.
- Another account online of the beginnings of the Workmate, written by someone who was there, tells it yet differently. I have preserved that account in this blog post. It claims that a market test was conducted in Dallas, but unfortunately it gives no dates to help us.
So it seems likely that the Type E was used for the test in southern California and/or Dallas, probably in early 1974. Then it was sold nationally starting in the spring or summer of 1974, while they simultaneously "tooled up their Brockville, Ontario plant" for production of the Type 1. Sales of the Type E would have ended when the Type 1 came to market in October 1974.
79-001 Type 1 Dates
The second 79-001 was the Type 1, but it was the first to be manufactured in North America, in Brockville, Ontario.
I have quite a few items on the Documents page from the introduction of the Type 1:
- I believe that the first appearance of the Workmate in print in the United States was in the Black & Decker catalog for 1975, with a printing date of 10/74. The Workmate that is pictured is the 79-001 Type 1. The October printing date matches the earliest Type 1's that I have found.
- The earliest known newspaper ad for a Workmate 79-001 is from the October 23, 1974 Montreal (Canada) Star, showing the Workmate 79-001 Type 1.
- The first article/review I have found about the Workmate 79-001 is from the New York Times on January 26, 1975, showing the Type 1.
- The first national ad for the Workmate, showing the Type 1, appeared in Popular Science in February 1975. This issue would have reached readers in January 1975, and the actual ad would have been created and scheduled with the magazine months before that, also indicating that Type 1 production started in fall 1974.
- Another clue comes from the review in Popular Mechanics from August 1975. It states that the Workmate "was introduced here last August" which would mean August of 1974. I suspect that isn't entirely accurate, but it fits reasonably well with a fall 1974 start for the Type 1. The pictures in the review are of a Type 1 even though the Type 2 was already on the market by the time the review was published in 1975.
Landis' book could be seen as slightly contradictory to the above, but I don't think it is. He says: "Following its North American launch in 1975 and throughout the ten years that followed, all the large Workmates for the U.S. and Canadian markets have been manufactured in Brockville." It's likely that he's talking about the marketing launch, such as the 1975 catalog and Popular Science ad, rather than the start of manufacturing, which, of course, had to start before the launch.
So the Brockville production codes, the catalogs, the reviews, and the ads tell us that the 79-001 Type 1, the first Workmate to be manufactured in North America, was sold starting in October 1974, and was discontinued by May 1975.
79-001 Type 2 Dates
The Type 2 is the most commonly found Workmate 79-001 today, by a wide margin. For this reason, the Brockville production codes are enormously helpful for the Type 2, easily eclipsing any other source. But first I will mention that the first appearance in print for the Type 2 is in the 1976 Black & Decker catalog, printed in 10/75. (There is no mention of the Type number in the text, but the photo is of a Type 2.)
However, that catalog appearance is an illustration of what I was saying about the printed matter lagging behind what was actually on the market. The Brockville production codes tell us that production of the Type 2 actually started earlier that year. I have Brockville production codes for over 275 79-001 Type 2's. This data tells us that the start date for the Type 2 was early May 1975, with an end date of June 21, 1977. This is a long production run, which is consistent with the large number of Type 2's we see today.
Notice how specific the end date is: June 21, 1977. This specificity is made possible by the large number of Type 2's and Type 4's that were made. The last Type 2 for which I have a documented production code was made during the second shift on that date, and the first documented Type 4 was made during the third shift the same day!
This then is the perfect time to examine those "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates written on the Black & Decker part diagrams. The assumption has been that these tell us when the production of each Type ended and the next one started. (We know from Landis' book that all 79-001's were made in the single Brockville factory, which was unlikely to be making two different Types simultaneously.)
What happens if we apply this to the Type 2? Some pretty crazy stuff!
"UNIT DISCONTINUED" for the Type 1 is shown as April 1, 1976 , and for the Type 2 as June 1, 1976. Yes, you read that right, an implication that the production run of the Type 2 lasted two months. This is obviously impossible (which I have been pointing out for some time) given how common the Type 2 is. Now we have the Brockville production codes to prove it.
Among my documented examples, the oldest Type 2 is from May 7, 1975, eleven months before the supposed end of Type 1 production and thus the implied start of Type 2 production. The newest documented Type 2 in my list is from June 1977, more than twelve months after the supposed end of Type 2 production. So the actual production period for the Type 2 is at least 23 months longer (and probably a little more) than what is implied by the "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates.
This is just one example of inaccuracies in the "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates. I hope this makes it clear why I say those dates should be ignored.
79-001 Type 3 Dates
Since the Type 3 was manufactured in Ireland, it is not marked with the Brockville production code to help us date it. It would be logical to expect that the Type 3 was produced after the Type 2 and before the Type 4, but the Brockville production codes for those two Types tell us this is not what happened. I have collected so many dates for individual Type 2's and Type 4's that we can see that the changeover between the Type 2 and Type 4 happened between the second and third work shifts on June 21, 1977! There is no gap between the Type 2 and Type 4 into which sales of the Type 3 would fit.
So how does the Type 3 fit in? One clue is the owner's manual. I have photos of one 79-001 Type 3 with its manual, which matches the manual that came with the early production of the Type 2 during 1975 (available on the Documents page).
In addition, the Brockville codes I've documented on Type 2's indirectly confirm this and narrow down the approximate sales period for the Type 3 even further. There are two clues.
First, there are two 79-001 Type 2's that I have documented in photos with production codes 548 13 and 548 23, or November 23 and 24, 1975. They are stamped "TYPE 2" under the jaws and have exactly the expected features for a Type 2 from that date. So far, pretty unremarkable. What is remarkable is the labels on top of the jaws, which are the label for a Type 3! It's clear from the wear to the labels and the "shadow" left on the top where they are torn, that they are original, not something a later owner put on it. This tells us that in November 1975, Black & Decker had some Type 3 labels available in Brockville to be mistakenly applied to a Type 2. So the Type 3 was probably on the market before that date.
Second, there is an unusual gap in the Brockville codes for the Type 2's shortly before that. There is a period of 11 weeks from July to September 1975 where I have found only a single Workmate with a Brockville code.
I found the explanation during research in online newspaper archives. In May 1975, Black & Decker announced an upcoming temporary layoff of 185 employees at the Brockville factory "due to a weakening of export markets coupled with excessive retail store inventories." From my production code data, it seems like a pretty safe conclusion that the layoff ran from July through September 1975. Since Workmates for the UK were being manufactured in a brand-new factory in Ireland at the time, apparently they thought the best strategy was to shut down the Brockville line and temporarily supply North America with Workmates from Ireland.
So those four pieces of evidence make a pretty strong case that the 79-001 Type 3 was imported and sold from approximately July to September 1975. This short sales period is consistent with the relative rarity of the 79-001 Type 3.
79-001 Type 4-7 Dates
After the Type 2, there is very little documentation of the 79-001 in print, and most of what I have found is undated. For example, the manuals for the Type 4 and Type 7, as well as the first manual for the Type 6, have no dates. A second, later manual for the Type 6 is dated "2/78", which is confusing because that date is well before the Type 6 was manufactured. 2/79 would be a more logical date for the second Type 6 manual. As mentioned already, Black & Decker was very careless with the photographs of Workmates in their catalogs, so those are also unreliable. For example, the 1982 catalog uses a photograph of the 79-001 Type 4, but we know the Type 4 was last produced in 1978. The Type 8 or 9 would have been the current Workmate when the 1982 catalog was printed.
But now we no longer have to worry about the lack of reliable printed documentation, since the Brockville production codes give us as much accuracy as we need. All of my dates for the Type 4, 6, and 7 are based on the production codes.
The Type 5, like the Type 3, is a special case since it was made in Ireland and thus we have no Brockville codes for it. Also, similar to the situation with the Type 3, the interval between the last Type 4 and the first Type 6 that I have documented is only a matter of days, not long enough to make sense for the Type 5 to have been on the market all by itself. There are several gaps in dates as long as three weeks for my documented Type 4 Workmates. That could mean a shutdown of the Brockville factory that might have been filled by importing the Type 5, similar to what happened with the Type 3. We can only guess that the Type 5 was sold to augment supply during some portion of the run of the Type 4.
79-001 Type 8 and 9 Dates (plus the Workmate 300)
As with the Type 4, 6, and 7 the dates for the Type 8 and 9 come from the production codes, but they require a little additional explanation.
First, while collecting data, I was confounded by a number of Type 8's and Type 9's with Brockville production codes that made no sense. They were seriously messing up my timeline, indicating that some Type 8's and 9's were made much later than they should have been. A couple of them seemed to indicate they were from 1983, one of them had a 0 for the shift number, and a couple of them had an 8 or 9 for the day of the week. I came up with a number of theories to explain this, but none were very satisfactory.
After months of puzzling over this, I figured it out. In 1980 and 1981 some Workmates came out of the Brockville factory with their production codes reversed.
This is a result of the different ways dates can be presented. For example May 16, 2021 can be written as 2021/05/16 or as 16/05/2021. In the production codes, a Workmate made during the second shift on December 2, 1981 would normally be stamped 149 32, representing 1981, 49th week, third day, second shift. If you turn this around to shift, day, week, year, you get a stamp of 23 491. If you then try to read that reversed stamp normally, it would appear to be 1982, week 34, day 9(!), shift 1. That's the type of code I have found on about a dozen Workmates. Once I realized how to read them and corrected them to the regular format, they fit nicely into the timeline.
I can't explain why this happened, but it affects about 15% of the Type 7's, 8's and 9's for which I have codes. They seem randomly scattered through production from mid 1980 to late 1981.
Second, the Type 9 was the end of the line for the 79-001. In 1982 Black & Decker completely revamped the Workmate lineup, replacing the 79-001 with the 79-033, also known as the Workmate 300. They continued stamping the Workmate 300 with production codes, so the earliest codes found on the Workmate 300 help establish the end of production for the 79-001 Type 9. The codes that I have for the Type 9 show production starting in late November 1981 and continuing to April 1982. This is completely consistent with production codes I've collected for the Workmate 300 that show it started production in May 1982.
(The start of the Workmate 300 around this time is also documented by two Black & Decker catalog excerpts on the Documents page. The Consumer Products Catalog 323, dated 1/82, displays the 79-001 and its related models. The same Catalog 323 for the next year, dated "1/83 Rev. 5/83", no longer includes the 79-001. Instead it has the 79-033 Workmate 300 and a number of other new models.)