Many Workmate fans have a general idea of which ones are easiest and hardest to find these days, but so far no one has quantified this. After more than three years of collecting data about 79-001's provided to me from their owners or listed for sale around the U.S. and Canada on the usual sites, I'm confident enough to give some estimates. The following is based on detailed observations I have collected on about 700 Workmate 79-001's and additional more casual browsing of a couple thousand.
Although I'm giving you specific percentages here, realize that these are rough estimates, with an unknown standard error, so feel free to expand them to sensible percentage ranges if you wish. The Type 2 is far and away the most common 79-001, accounting for very roughly 43% of those found today. This makes sense because it had the longest production period of all the Types, from May 1975 to June 1977. Second most common is the Type 4, at very roughly 21% of all 79-001's. The Type 2 and Type 4 together comprise almost 2/3 of the 79-001's I have found. Next most common, vying for third, fourth, and fifth places, are the Type 6, Type 7, and Type 8, at about 8 to 10% each. That means the five most common Types—Type 2, Type 4, Type 6, Type 7, and Type 8—make up about 90% of the ten Types of the 79-001. That leaves the other five Types as rare ones. Almost half of those are Type 1's, putting it in sixth place at perhaps 4% of the overall numbers. Three more compete for seventh, eighth, and ninth places at about 2% each. One of these is the rarest Type manufactured in North America, the 79-001 Type 9. The other two were made in England and Ireland—the Type E and the Type 3 respectively. That brings us to tenth place, but wait—if you've been keeping track, you realize that the estimates I present above have already totaled 100%. My rough estimate is that there are so few of the made-in-Ireland 79-001 Type 5 out there that it would barely be the rounding error on estimates of the other Types. I'll just call it less than .5% of the overall quantity, and I actually doubt it is more than .25%. In years of looking, I have found just four 79-001 Type 5's, and I currently own two of them! Using online historical newspaper archives, I have been able to construct a history of the manufacturing of the Black & Decker Workmate. Over its 50+-year history it has been manufactured in many countries worldwide, but my research has focused on North America and the UK.
Production of U.S. Workmates Black & Decker opened a Canadian factory in Brockville, Ontario in 1957. In 1968, manufacturing of the company's orbital sanders was moved from the U.S. to Brockville and the tools became highly successful worldwide for Black & Decker. Based on the success of the sander production, Brockville was able to establish its own product-development group in 1974. This group was the part of the company that saw that the Workmate, which had been selling well in the UK since 1972, had potential in the North American market. The Workmate was redesigned in Brockville , replacing most of the cast aluminum of the UK model with steel stampings, to create the 79-001 Type 1. In spite of pessimistic warnings from the U.S. marketing group, the company spent $4.5 million tooling up to manufacture the Workmate in Brockville. Production at Brockville began in October 1974. The gamble paid off, and very quickly the Workmate became the most successful product introduced by the Canadian branch, and one of the most successful for Black & Decker overall. The market success of the Workmate was undoubtedly the main driver for the expansion of the factory from 60,000 square feet in 1968 to 225,000 in 1975. In that year the Brockville plant was reported to be "the world's fourth largest power tool plant, and the third largest factory in the B and D empire." The Brockville plant was supplying all Workmates to the North American market, as well as many non-European international markets. There were occasional glitches for Workmate production through the 1970's and 1980's due to economic turbulence. One example occurred in mid-1975, when, due to "weakening of export markets, coupled with excessive retail store inventories", Black & Decker announced a temporary layoff of 185 employees at the Brockville factory. Interestingly this shows up in my inventory of Workmate 79-001's. There is a glaring 12-week gap in my collected production dates between June 27 and September 16, 1975, when apparently Brockville produced no Workmates. It appears that this is when they imported a Workmate WM625 from Ireland and sold it as the 79-001 Type 3 to satisfy North American demand during the layoff. Other reported layoff periods through 1982 also correspond roughly to gaps in the production dates of my documented Workmate 79-001's. By the early 1980's Workmates were being manufactured in nearly a dozen countries, but those for North America were still made in Brockville. However, in The Workbench Book, Scott Landis said that when he visited the Brockville plant in 1985, the Workmate line was in the process of being packed up to move to Brazil. He saw it as a cost-cutting move, although Black & Decker's executives cited "updated positioning", "rationalized markets", and "globalization". Sure enough, by the mid-1980's Workmates sold in the U.S. were marked "Made in Brazil". For some reason, this didn't last long. The Ottawa Citizen newspaper reported in 1993 that "an independent supplier based in Pennsylvania captured the [Workmate] contract in 1990." I have a photo of a Workmate 300 79-033 with its box, where the sticker on the Workmate shows that it was made in 1992 and the box says "Copyright 1991 Made in the U.S.A. However, I also have a photo of a box for a Workmate 100 79-028 that says "Made in Slovenia, Copyright 1991". Perhaps the independent supplier in Pennsylvania was subcontracting the production of cheaper models to overseas manufacturers. This only lasted three years, until declining U.S. duties on products imported from Canada made Canadian production more attractive again. The main subject of that 1993 article in The Ottawa Citizen was that the Brockville plant had "recaptured" Workmate production, with Black & Decker announcing the hiring of an additional 100 employees and anticipated production of 500,000 Workmates per year, with 90% intended for the U.S. market. The Brockville factory closed in 1998, and 500 people lost their jobs. As you can probably guess, Workmate manufacturing moved to China. Production of UK Workmates The first Workmate was produced starting in 1968 by Mate Tools Ltd. a company founded by Ron Hickman, the Workmate's inventor. He rented a barn at an old brewery in Hoddeston, Hertfordshire, England where two production workers assembled die-cast aluminum alloy parts contracted from a local foundry. Initially he sold the Workmate direct from the factory, but by 1970 he had at least one retail contract with the London department store Gamages. By 1971, he had the major manufacturing deal he had always hoped for, with Black & Decker UK. For a short time, he continued making the original Workmate at Hoddeston, with it now relabeled as the Black & Decker Workmate WM125. Meanwhile he was developing a more versatile dual-height model. In 1972, Black & Decker introduced Hickman's improved Workmate, sold as the WM225 and WM325. This was produced at Black & Decker's own factory in Spennymoor, County Durham, England, which had opened in 1965. The Workmate turned out to be extremely popular, which prompted another redesign, creating the WM525 and WM625. By this time, the Spennymoor facility had reached capacity so in 1975 Black & Decker built a new factory in Kildare, Ireland specifically for the Workmate. The plant in Kildare closed in 1984 and Workmate production returned to Spennymoor. In 1991 Black & Decker touted the Spennymoor factory as Europe's largest power-tool plant. A report in "The Journal" (Newcastle-upon-Tyne) newspaper from 1994, indicated the Workmate was still being made at Spennymoor. In 2002, Black & Decker announced that to lower wage costs, production would be moved from Spennymoor to Usti in the Czech Republic, which was then an applicant to join the European Union. As a result, 950 jobs were cut at Spennymoor. Mate Tools Ltd.—The Workmate Before Black & DeckerI've mostly stayed away from writing about the early history of the Workmate since it is covered well elsewhere, including a full chapter in The Workbench Book by Scott Landis. However, in my research I've compiled some material that I don't think has been generally available before, so I present it here as further documentation of that history. The quick background: When Ron Hickman developed the Workmate in England in the 1960's, he could not interest the major British tool companies in manufacturing it. Convinced of its potential, he set up his own company, Mate Tools, Ltd. in Hoddeston, Hertfordshire, to manufacture and sell it himself. A British magazine agreed to let him use a corner of their booth at a handycrafts and DIY show to demonstrate and promote his invention. The Workmate took off from there. Shown below are six newspaper appearances by the first commercial Workmate from Mate Tools, which, as you can see, had only a single, 23"-tall, sawhorse height setting. This version of the Workmate is now often referred to retrospectively as the "Mk. I", but at the time it was sold by Mate Tools it had no model number; it was simply the Workmate. Below that are some photographs of the Workmate, one including the rare, optional Team-Mate that added a taller working surface. (Click on any of the images to enlarge them.) In the first row on the left is what may be the Workmate's first ever appearance in print. It's from a regular feature entitled "Shopping" in The Birmingham Post on September 2, 1968. The price shown would equate to about $39 dollars in 1968. In the middle is an excerpt from a column in The Observer from September 7, 1969, reporting on the DIY show at the Olympia in London. On the right is one of the earliest ads for the Workmate, in The Observer from February 1, 1970. Notice that Hickman is already working on marketing strategy—he offers both "Credit terms" and "Money back guarantee". The triangle in the upper right of the ad is the symbol of the Design Centre of London, showing that the Workmate had already been selected by the Council of Industrial Design as a product that represented the best of British design. On the left below is another favorable review of the Workmate, this one from The Guardian on March 18, 1970. The "CoID Index" mentioned in the second paragraph refers to the Council of Industrial Design award described above. In the center, by the end of 1970 Ron Hickman had managed to place the Workmate into retail stores such as Gamages, a London department store well known for its tool department. This is from The Guardian on December 7, 1970. The price had increased by a pound and it now offered a "FIVE YEARS' GUARANTEE". On the right, from The Observer on March 28, 1971, Hickman was still running his own ads and still selling direct to customers. Notice the statement "Thousands now sold but NOT ONE UNIT returned under our complete money-back guarantee". It was in 1971 that Hickman finally reached a deal allowing Black & Decker to license the manufacturing rights from him. At the same time, he was working on the design of the more versatile dual-height model we are familiar with today. Mate Tools continued manufacturing the original Workmate unchanged into 1972, supplying them directly to Black & Decker who sold them under their own name. Black & Decker gave it an official model number for the first time, the WM125, although many today still refer to the WM125 as the Mk. I. The two photos on the left below show a WM125, labeled "Manufactured exclusively for Black & Decker by Mate Tools Ltd". The photo on the right shows the Workmate with the taller Team-Mate bench clamped in place. There is some confusion about the name of the model developed specifically for Black & Decker that followed. During development of the dual-height model, Hickman himself referred to it as the Workmate Mk. II, or sometimes Mark 2. That model was brought to market by Black & Decker in late 1972, and I have found a couple of newspaper articles of the time that referred to it at its introduction as the Mark 2. However, the official naming continued the pattern of the WM125 name used for the first model—WM225 for the new single-height model and WM325 for the dual-height model. It was never actually sold as the Mark 2.
The WM125 was then discontinued. The WM325 was manufactured at Black & Decker's factory in Spennymoor, and Mate Tools ceased production of Workmates. I have found later newspaper ads showing that Mate Tools continued as a retailer of various tools made by others until at least 1975. As you can imagine, I often search the web for Workmate-related information. One of the most remarkable things I have come across is a short recollection written by the original marketing manager for the Workmate in the United States. I found this in the comment section of a posting about the Workmate at the "toolmonger" blog. The blog appears to have been inactive since 2014 although the web site is still functioning as I write this. I didn't want to take a chance on it being deleted so I'm reproducing the posted comment below in its entirety, with numerous typos left intact. The poster gave his name only as "Thomas", posting the following on July 8, 2012:
(Title inspired by Leonard Cohen's raincoat)
In my quest to document all ten Types of the Workmate 79-001, the Type 3 and Type 5 had me stumped for quite a while. This was largely because of the general lack of info about all of the Types, exacerbated by the rarity of these two. Since I knew that the 79-001 had evolved gradually through the Types, the 3 and 5 logically should have looked very similar to the Types 2, 4, and 6. However, aside from some part diagrams for them on Black & Decker's website, there was no information about them to be found anywhere. But eventually luck came my way. I spent a little time looking the part diagrams over, but the ones for the Type 3 and Type 5 didn't seem to help much. The line drawings didn't reveal any differences from the Type 2 and Type 4 that jumped out at me. As I will explain, there are clues in the part diagrams that could have helped me, but I didn't see them. So the Type 3 and Type 5 just remained as unresolved issues. In my research, I would occasionally run across pictures of unusual blue Workmates with cast-aluminum H-frames. From their similarity to the 79-001, I could tell they were from the right time period, but they always turned out to be from Europe, not the U.S. Since all of the 79-001's that were manufactured in Canada for the North American market were either bare metal or painted gray, I expected the Type 3 and Type 5 to be gray as well. Then in May 2019 I came across a blue Workmate with aluminum H-brace for $75 on Craigslist in what looked like good condition, and with a surprise -- it wasn't European! The label on the jaws was the same style as that of the Type 1 and 2, but said it was a 79-001 Type 3! I contacted the seller immediately. He said he had owned it for about eight years after inheriting it from his uncle. His uncle had been in the TV repair business and had used it only as a stand for working on electronics, not for anything rough or dirty. The seller had used it very little himself and felt it was just taking up space. I drove about 100 miles to get it and fortunately it was in just as good condition as it looked in the photos, and complete with all its feet and swivel pegs. The seller somewhat apologetically told me that the price was firm, while bargaining was the furthest thing from my mind! When I got it home, I looked at the bottom of the jaws and saw that "79-001 TYPE 3" was also stamped there. In addition, there was a marking on the metal step "WM625 TYPE E02, MADE IN REPUBLIC OF IRELAND". That fit perfectly with the model numbers on the blue European models I had run across in pictures. So I had one more piece of the 79-001 puzzle—the Type 3 was an import that Black & Decker had brought over in small numbers from the Kildare, Ireland factory and marked with the 79-001 model number, similar to what they had done previously with the English-made Type E. I posted my fantastic find on the Garage Journal forum and got a totally unexpected reply. Another member replied with photos of his TWO blue Workmates. One appeared to be exactly like mine, but the other was slightly different in some minor ways. Neither of his had a label on the top of the jaws, so he had no idea what model they were. Thanks to my posting, he looked at the bottom of the jaws for the first time. One of them was stamped as a 79-001 Type 3, like mine, and the other was stamped as a "WM79-001 TYPE E05"! I had found the Type 5! Like the Type 3, it was stamped "MADE IN REPUBLIC OF IRELAND", making it the third, limited-number import in the 79-001 lineup. In studying my Type 2 from the Brockville factory and the Type 3 from the Kildare factory side by side, I discovered many detail differences in the parts. This sent me back to the part diagrams, and now I could see what I had missed earlier. The key was in the part numbers. First, on the Type 2, Type 4 and others with gray steel parts, I noticed that the parts that are painted all have a suffix "-01" on their part numbers. It's very common for manufacturers to use a suffix of that style to denote a color, so I guessed that "-01" must be for the gray paint. I checked the part numbers for the Type 3 and Type 5. Sure enough, the painted parts for them have the suffix "-38", which would identify the blue paint. Second, apart from the color suffixes, many of the part numbers for the Type 3 and 5 are in an entirely different numeric range than those for the Types that we know were made in Brockville. Looking again at the Type 2 and 4, most of the 6-digit part numbers start with 975 and 993. On the Type 3 and 5, about twenty of the corresponding parts all have numbers starting with 723. In retrospect, it seems obvious that this is because the factory in Kildare, Ireland that made the Type 3 and 5 was using almost entirely different parts than were used in the North American Workmates. In the U.S., the Workmate 79-034 (also known as the 400) was introduced in 1982 in a shade of blue similar to the UK models, while the new companion models 100, 200, and 300 continued the gray color of the 79-001. The blue was a short-lived experiment here and after a few years all the U.S. Workmates changed to black. All UK models continued as blue until 1986 when they also became black. It's been an exciting past couple of weeks here! I'm thrilled to announce a breakthrough in my documentation of the Workmate 79-001—I have broken the code to determine the actual production date of many, if not most, Workmate 79-001's!
A few weeks ago I was idly looking at the number on a Workmate and had an inspiration—the pattern of the digits could be seen as a type of date. I started checking my own Workmates as well as my large collection of Workmate photos, and it all clicked into place. Once I had it, it was actually embarrassing that I had not figured it out sooner. These numbers are production codes from the Brockville, Ontario factory that date our Workmates for us!
But First, 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 5-digit code stamped under the wooden jaws or on the metal footrest, 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! Decoding the Date How does the Brockville production code work?
Can You Prove This? So the first logical question is: Since I'm the only one making this claim, why should you believe me? First I'll explain that the reason I was embarrassed not to have figured this out sooner is that I have run across the "YWW" year-week pattern of three digits as a date code from another manufacturer in the past (although I can't recall who it was). Why I did not connect this to the Workmate numbers years ago, I can't explain. So that was the first clue... ...Remainder of discussion moved 12/15/2020... Note: Originally this blog entry was much longer. By December 15, 2020 I realized that the detailed explanation of the Brockville production codes was much too important to have only in the blog, but required its own standard page on my web site. You can continue reading it at the Brockville Production Codes page. What's the most obscure feature of the Workmate 79-001? A leading contender would be the "scratch guards" that can be found only on the Type 2. The scratch guards are found on the lower edge of the upper frame pieces on each side that hold the vise screw assemblies. They are about 3/8" wide, made of a soft gray plastic. They slip over the edge of the frame, held only by the springiness of the plastic. Four were installed on each Workmate, two per side. The one closer to the front is up to 1-3/4" long while the one toward the rear can be over 3". They come off pretty easily, so many of them have since fallen off and been lost. Until I wrote about them, I never heard a single owner mention them, so I think owners never noticed them or thought much about them. I would estimate that up to one in four Type 2's still has one or more scratch guards. If a guard stayed on the frame for a long time before being lost, a ghost image remains, where the finish of the frame is visibly lighter. There is no official explanation of what the guards are for. Black & Decker never mentioned them in the instruction manuals, and they never appeared on the part diagrams. However, it isn't hard to deduce their likely function. The 79-001 Type 2 was the first North American Workmate to have some painted parts in the frame. When folded for storage, the upper and lower frames contact each other slightly along about eight inches of their length, right where these guards are located. In my spreadsheet, the earliest Type 2 with a painted lower frame is also the first one to have scratch guards. A logical conclusion is that Black & Decker was worried about scratches to the paint from this contact, so they added the scratch guards for protection. It could be that the scratch guards were only intended for protection during shipping, so the customer's new Workmate didn't arrive with scratched or chipped paint. That would explain why they used something that falls off so easily in normal use, rather than a more permanent solution. I have documented Type 2 79-001's with scratch guards during a period of just over a year, from September 1975 to about November 1976. After using them for a while, the company decided they weren't worth the trouble and eliminated them. If you look carefully at this area of the upper and lower frame pieces on Workmates without scratch guards, you can often find marks from the contact. (Note: This blog entry was updated December 16, 2020 with new information and new photos.) We're all aware of the many warning labels to be found on consumer products in the U.S. today. This phenomenon is attributed to strong consumer-protection laws, the litigiousness of American society, and the need for manufacturers to protect themselves. Looking at vintage Workmates provides an interesting and amusing illustration of this. If you've read about the Workmate 79-001 Type E, you know that it is the same model that was produced and sold in the U.K. as the WM325. You may also have noticed that the instruction manuals for both of these two models are available here on the Documents page. Since the two Workmates are the same, obviously Black & Decker would have used the same instruction manual in the U.S. and the U.K., right? Well, no. Take a look at the three photos below for the U.S. model 79-001 Type E. The first two are warnings from page 2 of the U.S. instruction manual, and the third is the caution label applied to the step of the Type E. These warnings for U.S. owners are a stark contrast to the approach taken by Black & Decker in the U.K., where none of these rules or cautions had been deemed necessary for the WM325. Instead, the U.K. instruction manual illustrates a reckless British Workmate user throwing caution to the wind by using the WM325 in the following ways: The photo on the left shows the user perched on a Workmate on hands and knees, with his full weight on top of a board that he is cutting with a hand saw. His lower legs extend off the end of the Workmate, slightly bending the board he is cutting. The middle drawing shows the user sitting on the jaws with his legs straddling the Workmate front to back while shaping a board with a rasp. And finally, the right-hand drawing shows the same user standing atop the jaws while doing some painting, with the caption assuring us that it's "no problem".
It would be interesting to know if these differences still exist in the owners' manuals for current models. If you happen to have any current users' manuals from the U.K. please leave a comment to let us know! On a related topic, you have probably noticed that most Workmate owners refer to the low horizontal panel at the front of the Workmate as a "step". This was a term that Black & Decker assiduously avoided, even in the U.K. The U.K. manual for the WM325 consistently uses the term "footboard", which at least acknowledges that you're going to place a foot on it occasionally. In the U.S. manual for the 79-001 Type E they tried to emphasize that you should not stand on it, by changing those references to "base board" and "lower platform". However, if you look carefully, you can find one spot they missed, where the U.S. manual still says "foot board". A unique characteristic of what we know as the Workmate 79-001 Type 1 is that it was never marked in any way as a "Type 1". In particular, the label on the jaws said only "#79-001 'WORKMATE'", and there was no ink stamp with the Type number underneath the jaw. This was unlike the preceding version, which was marked on both the label and the jaws as the "#79-001 Type E". It was also unlike the following version, which had "79-001 Type 2" on the label and "Type 2" under the jaws. (See the photos on the Markings page.)
So what happened to make the Type 1 different? I think this anomaly in the marking indicates that Black & Decker didn't originally intend to produce the Workmate under a series of different Type numbers. In 1974, they imported the English-made WM325 Workmate with the mostly aluminum skeleton frame to North America as a test of consumer demand. They dubbed it the 79-001, a new model designation exclusive to the U.S. market. If the test was successful, they intended to retool their factory in Canada to manufacture a redesigned version of the Workmate for North America. In this sense, the first 79-001 was a temporary product, so they labeled it the Type E (for England) to differentiate it from the new-design, mostly steel 79-001 that they had planned to follow. The market test was a huge success, production of the new mostly steel "real" 79-001 began, and Black & Decker dropped the "Type' nomenclature since it was no longer necessary. What we now know as the Type 1 was on the market as simply the Workmate 79-001, the planned model number from the beginning. However, in less than a year they made a set of further changes to the 79-001. The most significant changes were a switch to metric sizing for the jaw holes and a new type of mount for the jaws, and the new parts were not interchangeable with those of the outgoing version. To keep the versions distinct, they decided to return to the Type numbering system they had used for the Type E. Since the newest one was the second version made in Canada, it became the Type 2, and the one that it was replacing became, retroactively, the Type 1, even though it was never marked or referred to as such while it was in production. The Type 1 has a second distinction worthy of note: It is the only 79-001 that Black & Decker ever referred to by Type number in any of their instruction manuals, advertisements, or catalogs. The single reference can be found in the original version of the Gripmate 79-011 manual on page 3. I mention this a couple of times in this site already, but it's well worth a blog entry as well.
Ten years ago when I went looking for information about my first two vintage Black & Decker Workmates, I found Kirk Eppler's pages on the photo-sharing service SmugMug. He documented a 2008 meeting of old-tool enthusiasts, the Bay Area Galoots, where they brought their Workmates of various vintages together and compared them side-by-side. Kirk created a spreadsheet cataloging those fifteen or so Workmates by their features, along with the Type numbers for those that could be identified, and he also posted numerous photos. This was enormously helpful to me as I began studying the variety of vintage Workmates that were manufactured. Since Black & Decker had hardly any information available about these models (which were then 30 or more years old) and no one else had done anything similar, this was the only starting point I found. The next major resource I found was a lengthy message thread about the Workmate on the Garage Journal forum. When I found it in 2016 or so, it was 25 or 30 pages long; as of today, it is 69 pages. It was amazing to find all these Workmate owner/fans who were asking questions, posting photos, and helping each other with detailed information about their own Workmates. So, I want to acknowledge how important these two sites were to the creation of this web site; I wouldn't have been able to do it without them! |