Brockville Production Codes
The Workmate 79-001 Types 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 were all manufactured at Black & Decker's factory in Brockville, Ontario, Canada. Most of them were stamped with a code number, in the format "547 51", but for forty years or more the meaning of the code was unknown to owners. I broke the code in September 2020, revealing in my blog post "A Breakthrough on Production Dates" that the code tells the date of manufacture. This page explains how the code works and what it tells us.
But First, A Request for Help------------
I want to add as many Workmate 79-001's as possible to my spreadsheet 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 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 (see immediately below for how to find it), please use my Contact page to send me the code. I will reply with my email and probably ask if you can send one or more photos to document it. Please help with this crowd-sourcing effort to document the Workmate!
But First, A Request for Help------------
I want to add as many Workmate 79-001's as possible to my spreadsheet 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 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 (see immediately below for how to find it), please use my Contact page to send me the code. I will reply with my email and probably ask if you can send one or more photos to document it. Please help with this crowd-sourcing effort to document the Workmate!
Decoding the Date
This is how to read the Brockville production code:
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Converting the Code to the Actual Date
Knowing the year, week, and day is kind of weird since the standard dating we're all used to is year, month and day. Fortunately, the internet can help. There are a number of sites that will take the year/week info and tell you the actual date that you want to know.
The one I have been using is
https://www.timeanddate.com/date/weeknumber.html,
but there are others to choose from. At timeanddate.com, you put in the week and year numbers in the right-hand part of the input form, and then click "Calculate Dates". It will show you the calendar for that week, so you can pick out the date for the specific day number in your code, using Monday as day 1.
Confirmation of the Code
My discovery of the meaning of the code wasn't completely random; it probably occurred to me because I have seen 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). Of course, that wasn't enough to go on; I then had to confirm that the code on the Workmate works the same way.
My initial confirmation consisted of compiling a spreadsheet based on Workmates for which I had photographs showing legible production codes. The initial list was about 50 entries long. (It is now over 500.) This revealed the following:
The next test was to sort the list of Workmates by the Brockville production code. As hoped, this also put them in order by Type number. For example, all of the Type 2's have later dates than the Type 1's and earlier dates than the Type 4's.
Finally, I went one step further by adding columns to the spreadsheet showing the actual components used on each Workmate. The expected pattern continued to hold, showing the parts changing over time in sequence with the production codes.
Download the Data
If you want to see the data, you can download the Excel spreadsheet Workmate 79-001 Brockville Codes
Each row has the info for one Workmate 79-001, with the rows sorted by the Brockville codes. The data demonstrates all of my claims above. It's really a working document created for myself, so some less important parts are incomplete and there's only a minimal legend to explain the formatting. You'll have to study it a bit to understand it, but I thought it was worthwhile to make it available for those who are interested. I post new versions periodically as I update it. (Reminder: I'm depending on owners to provide info on their own Workmates ... Please tell me what you find on yours!)
How Do We Use the Codes?
From this spreadsheet of Workmates and their Brockville production codes, we can now determine with some precision when the transitions between the Types occurred, something which we could only guess at before. I have enough observations that most of the transition dates are known within plus or minus one week or less. In one of the most precise cases, I can say that the changeover from the Type 2 to the Type 4 happened between the second and third shifts on June 21, 1977!
The spreadsheet also tells us the dates when the individual components of the Workmate changed. There were about twenty different changes in components on the 79-001 during its eight-year production life at the Brockville factory. An unexpected discovery is that as few as one-third of those changes coincided with the introduction of a new Type. All of the other parts changed during the production run for one or another of the Types. In my Type Study pages, the page for each Type lists the components that were new at the introduction of that Type, as well as the subsequent changes made during the production of that Type, with their corresponding dates.
The Type 2 had by far the most component changes, with about a dozen. Since I have data for so many Type 2's, the spreadsheet can tell us within just a few days when some of the parts changed. For example, we now know that the upper frame pieces on the Type 2 changed from a plated finish to gray paint during the third shift on February 11, 1977!
This level of specificity for the Type 2 gives us an unexpected ability—to narrow down the production date of a Type 2 that has no code at all! All that's needed is to determine each of the components found on the 79-001 Type 2 of interest and find one in the spreadsheet that is an exact match. Going up and down in the spreadsheet from there to find the first one that differs in components will bracket the production date for the unmarked one. I have made this easy for you so there's no need for you to examine the spreadsheet. The web page for each Type summarizes all of the component changes for that Type along with the dates they occurred, so it's pretty straightforward for you to use the components on your Workmate 79-001 to figure out when it was made.
I actually expected that I would find anomalies in the component changes, but so far there are only scattered minor ones. The evidence is overwhelming that this is the correct interpretation of these codes. The exceptions don't concern me; I find it hard to believe that the manufacturing process is so perfectly consistent that there would not be any.
What About the "UNIT DISCONTINUED" Dates?
You may be aware of the dates marked "UNIT DISCONTINUED" that are written by hand on the Black & Decker part diagrams for the ten Types of the Workmate 79-001. (The part diagrams are available on my Documents page.) These have been cited as an authoritative source for Workmate dates.
If you've read my 79-001 Timeline page, which was originally written before I figured out the Brockville production codes, you know that I have been skeptical of those discontinuation dates for multiple reasons. I won't repeat the reasons here; go read the Timeline page if you're interested.
With the new information from the Brockville production codes, I'm ready to say that the "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates should be ignored. Many of them are clearly wrong, and by quite a large amount. The "discontinued" dates are simply unreliable and will lead to wrong conclusions.
Knowing the year, week, and day is kind of weird since the standard dating we're all used to is year, month and day. Fortunately, the internet can help. There are a number of sites that will take the year/week info and tell you the actual date that you want to know.
The one I have been using is
https://www.timeanddate.com/date/weeknumber.html,
but there are others to choose from. At timeanddate.com, you put in the week and year numbers in the right-hand part of the input form, and then click "Calculate Dates". It will show you the calendar for that week, so you can pick out the date for the specific day number in your code, using Monday as day 1.
Confirmation of the Code
My discovery of the meaning of the code wasn't completely random; it probably occurred to me because I have seen 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). Of course, that wasn't enough to go on; I then had to confirm that the code on the Workmate works the same way.
My initial confirmation consisted of compiling a spreadsheet based on Workmates for which I had photographs showing legible production codes. The initial list was about 50 entries long. (It is now over 500.) This revealed the following:
- The range of the first digit in the documented Workmates includes all numbers from 0 to 9, with the exception of the number 3. We know from other sources that the Workmate 79-001 was made in all of the years 1974 through 1982, but not in 1973 or 1983 (see the History/Timeline page for details), so this works out perfectly.
- The second two-digit number ranges from 01 to 52, perfectly consistent with it being the week number.
- The fourth digit ranges from 1 to 6, consistent with a factory that operated every day but Sunday. My data shows roughly equal numbers of 1 through 5, with a very small number (< 2%) of 6's, showing that the factory rarely operated on Saturday.
- The fifth digit ranges from 1 to 3, consistent with the typical number of shifts in factory work. My data shows a large preponderance of 2's and 3's. This suggests that shift 1 was the midnight shift, and that it operated only in times of high demand.
- So far, all of the Type 1's documented have only four-digit codes, missing the shift code. I see two possible explanations. One is that Black & Decker originally didn't think the shift information was useful. However, the one I prefer is that they didn't originally intend to have more than one production shift per day, but the overwhelming demand for the Workmate forced them to!
The next test was to sort the list of Workmates by the Brockville production code. As hoped, this also put them in order by Type number. For example, all of the Type 2's have later dates than the Type 1's and earlier dates than the Type 4's.
Finally, I went one step further by adding columns to the spreadsheet showing the actual components used on each Workmate. The expected pattern continued to hold, showing the parts changing over time in sequence with the production codes.
Download the Data
If you want to see the data, you can download the Excel spreadsheet Workmate 79-001 Brockville Codes
Each row has the info for one Workmate 79-001, with the rows sorted by the Brockville codes. The data demonstrates all of my claims above. It's really a working document created for myself, so some less important parts are incomplete and there's only a minimal legend to explain the formatting. You'll have to study it a bit to understand it, but I thought it was worthwhile to make it available for those who are interested. I post new versions periodically as I update it. (Reminder: I'm depending on owners to provide info on their own Workmates ... Please tell me what you find on yours!)
How Do We Use the Codes?
From this spreadsheet of Workmates and their Brockville production codes, we can now determine with some precision when the transitions between the Types occurred, something which we could only guess at before. I have enough observations that most of the transition dates are known within plus or minus one week or less. In one of the most precise cases, I can say that the changeover from the Type 2 to the Type 4 happened between the second and third shifts on June 21, 1977!
The spreadsheet also tells us the dates when the individual components of the Workmate changed. There were about twenty different changes in components on the 79-001 during its eight-year production life at the Brockville factory. An unexpected discovery is that as few as one-third of those changes coincided with the introduction of a new Type. All of the other parts changed during the production run for one or another of the Types. In my Type Study pages, the page for each Type lists the components that were new at the introduction of that Type, as well as the subsequent changes made during the production of that Type, with their corresponding dates.
The Type 2 had by far the most component changes, with about a dozen. Since I have data for so many Type 2's, the spreadsheet can tell us within just a few days when some of the parts changed. For example, we now know that the upper frame pieces on the Type 2 changed from a plated finish to gray paint during the third shift on February 11, 1977!
This level of specificity for the Type 2 gives us an unexpected ability—to narrow down the production date of a Type 2 that has no code at all! All that's needed is to determine each of the components found on the 79-001 Type 2 of interest and find one in the spreadsheet that is an exact match. Going up and down in the spreadsheet from there to find the first one that differs in components will bracket the production date for the unmarked one. I have made this easy for you so there's no need for you to examine the spreadsheet. The web page for each Type summarizes all of the component changes for that Type along with the dates they occurred, so it's pretty straightforward for you to use the components on your Workmate 79-001 to figure out when it was made.
I actually expected that I would find anomalies in the component changes, but so far there are only scattered minor ones. The evidence is overwhelming that this is the correct interpretation of these codes. The exceptions don't concern me; I find it hard to believe that the manufacturing process is so perfectly consistent that there would not be any.
What About the "UNIT DISCONTINUED" Dates?
You may be aware of the dates marked "UNIT DISCONTINUED" that are written by hand on the Black & Decker part diagrams for the ten Types of the Workmate 79-001. (The part diagrams are available on my Documents page.) These have been cited as an authoritative source for Workmate dates.
If you've read my 79-001 Timeline page, which was originally written before I figured out the Brockville production codes, you know that I have been skeptical of those discontinuation dates for multiple reasons. I won't repeat the reasons here; go read the Timeline page if you're interested.
With the new information from the Brockville production codes, I'm ready to say that the "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates should be ignored. Many of them are clearly wrong, and by quite a large amount. The "discontinued" dates are simply unreliable and will lead to wrong conclusions.