I hearby summon the Yankee Mechanic

Joe, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to once and for all, put this damn Silver and Deming story to rest ! What's the absolute scoop ? (below is my tidbit from Chaski) As usual, if you are captured we will disavow any knowledge of you or your mission. This post will self destruct in 10 days.

Joe Scope wrote--
Does anyone know the history of these drills?
Was Silver & Deming the inventors?


D. Thomas replied--
This has come up before and my research indicated that the drill was actually named for the Silver & Deming drill *press* rather than the drills themselves. In other words, Silver & Deming made a blacksmiths post drill, that utilized reduced shank drills...they probably didn't actually make drills. I seem to recall that there was a split in the company, where it became just the "Silver" or "Deming" company....another tidbit that is just the opposite of what you would have expected. Still, none of this is definite, and I'm open to further revelations by others.

Golly, my reputation precedes myself! I'm flattered actually, and we Yankees don't flatter easily.

Actually D., I think you got it about right. I don't remember the details but generally I seem to remember that S&D, an Ohio company (Salem, Ohio?) "pioneered" the straight shank drill concept a bit prior to the invention of the Jacobs chuck. I would put it at about 1870.

Their system involved a "standardized" straight shanked bit and a drillpress "quill" that was bored to receive it. A small flat on the drill and setscrew in the quill was used to hold the drill (any drill of the set) in place.

I seem to remember that Silver & Deming the company had the capability to create both the drills and it's mated tool and at first sold them together as "sets" to their specialized blacksmith market.

Prior to S&D blacksmith/mechanics were limited in their drilling to the "two jaw" type "barber chuck" that was utilized first on bitbraces, or even a bit earlier to square tanged drills that mimic'ed the tapered drive tang of a bitbrace bit.

I've seen some reports that the S&D concept was utilized in at least a couple of sizes, to include 5/8th inch and 1/2 inch.

With the rise of the Jacobs chuck in the late 1880's, the future of the DRILLS part of the S&D company was assured. Like us today, when the old timers were given the choice of buying a larger "full size" drill and a chuck to match it, most instead adopted a "we'll see if we can get by" sort of methodology of drilling larger diameter holes and would buy the S&D drills as a "dodge." We yankee mechanics generally approve of this mindset.

There is SOME material on S&D on the 'net. Earlier you almost tempted me to take a look and go find it but I guess I'll now leave this to the "search engine" researchers among us. I don't exactly have a monopoly on this information myself.

Thanks for the thought though,
Best regards,
Joe
"Yankee Mechanic"