With headquarters in Greenfield, Massachusetts, the Millers Falls company manufactured a wide variety of tools from the late 1860's until the early 1980's. After introducing a full line of planes (featuring a patented lever cap) in 1929, and buying Goodell-Pratt in 1931, Millers Falls entered their "heyday" in the 1930's and 1940's - just in time for the Great Depression, WWII, and the decline of hand tool usage. Their 70th anniversary catalog from 1938 featured over 200 pages of hand tools. By 1961, the Millers Falls hand tool catalog (see below) was down to a scant 68 pages.
Please note that many of the diagrams and image files on this page are quite large. Much of the information here consists of images that were scanned. Therefore we've done our best to balance file size against resolution/readability. If you have a slow dial-up connection, pack a lunch. Don't say we didn't warn you.
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Here is the complete Millers Falls Hand and Precision Tool
catalogue from 1961. Its 68 pages contain what was left of the MF hand tool line.
There's still a surprising number of planes (40 models in all). But the tool
selection isn't nearly what it was in 1938.
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Click here to view an 8-page ad from 1959. With lines like, "These Router Bits Really Bite!", the unintentional comedy rating is almost off the scale.
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Millers Falls bench planes, introduced in 1929, were not without innovation. One highly
promoted improvement was their patented jointed lever cap. This design placed pressure
on the iron at three points (rather than two points as do the non-jointed lever caps used
by Stanley). Click here to view the patent for the Millers
Falls bench plane.
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Here are various ads for Millers Falls tools. Most of these
came from industrial arts magazines from the 1930's and 1940's and were targeted at
young people.
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