Last week, your intrepid editor flew to New York City at the invitation of Stanley Bostitch – specifically, the behest of the director of marketing at Stanley and Black & Decker, Todd Langston. (While it is always a tough job to spend time in the Big Apple, home to unlimited and excellent dining and entertainment opportunities, I persevered and did my duty.)

As many of you know, The Stanley Works purchased Black & Decker a short while ago, creating one of the biggest and most diverse tool manufacturing companies in the world. And, while this specific invitation to New York was mainly from the Stanley Bostitch side of things, it gave many of us editors our first opportunity to meet with this new and larger organization. And the event did not disappoint.

Stanley Bostitch rolled out many new tools, some of which I can write about right now and others that I am pledged to silence about … until a later date. In addition, we were enlightened about some Porter-Cable and DeWalt tools as well. (More on DeWalt and perhaps other B&D offerings after I fly to Maryland to a DeWalt editor’s event this week. Whew, what a jet-setter!)

While I won’t go into details about all of the tools right now (check out the Woodworker’s Journal eZine Tool Previews in upcoming issues to see more of these products), I continue to be pleased at Stanley’s renewed focus on hand tools. And I confess to be looking forward to getting my hands on a few of their new chisels, especially their Sweetheart™ socket chisels. Formed from high carbon steel so as to be easy to sharpen while creating a durable edge, they also have hornbeam handles. They look like the real deal, so I’d like to give them a spin.

Be it Manhattan or Minnesota, woodworking continues to be a story of the new and the old, the innovative and the tried and true. From my perspective, Stanley Bostitch seem to be sitting right in the sweet spot of that continuum with innovative new tools complemented by their return to their hand tool roots.

Rob Johnstone,
Woodworker’s Journal