Workmate 79-001 History/Timeline
Many owners want to know when their Workmate 79-001 was made. Unfortunately, Black & Decker has not published production or sales dates for the different Types of the 79-001. I've spent quite a bit of time studying the available information; the following lengthy discussion explains what I've found out.
As explained in my blog post of 9/28/2020 "A Breakthrough on Production Dates", I've broken the code for the numbers stamped on the bottom of the wooden jaws on most Workmate 79-001's. The discovery I've made is that they tell us the production dates that we've always wanted to know. Most of the timeline on this page is based on a spreadsheet I have compiled of Workmates with known codes. I include some other related tidbits about dates that come from other sources.
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 4- or 5-digit code stamped under the wooden jaws or under the metal step, 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!
------------
For those who don't want to wade through all the verbiage that follows, here's the quick summary of the timeline of the 79-001 (all dates approximate):
Sources
There are four types of source material available to help with dating the Workmate 79-001.
79-001 Type E Dates
The first 79-001 sold in the U.S. was the Type E, which was a rebadged WM325 Type 3 imported from England. Since it was manufactured in England, the Type E does not have the Brockville production code to date it by. However, as mentioned above, it does have some marks cast into the foldout rear-leg casting that include the two-digit year of manufacture. I have verified the year on about ten Type E's, and they have all been marked with "74". This confirms the fact that the Type E was sold just before the Brockville factory began making the first North American Workmate, the 79-001 Type 1, in October 1974.
Dating the Type E any more precisely is difficult, since as far as I can determine it has never appeared in a catalog, advertisement, or review. Since the WM325 was sold widely in England, I have been able to establish that it was on the market from 1972 to 1976. This means that the ones imported to the U.S. in 1974 were from the middle production period of the WM325.
I will mention three brief accounts that my research has found regarding the very first Workmate sales in the United States. Unfortunately they are somewhat contradictory, so they don't really help establish more specific dates for sales of the Type E.
So it seems likely that the Type E was used for the test in southern California and/or Dallas, probably in early 1974. Then the Type E was sold nationally starting in the spring or summer of 1974, while they simultaneously "tooled up their Brockville, Ontario plant" for production of the Type 1. Sales of the Type E would have ended when the Type 1 came to market in October 1974.
79-001 Type 1 Dates
The second 79-001 was the Type 1, but it was the first to be manufactured in North America, in Brockville, Ontario.
I have quite a few items on the Documents page from the introduction of the Type 1:
Landis' book could be seen as slightly contradictory to the above, but I don't think it is. He says: "Following its North American launch in 1975 and throughout the ten years that followed, all the large Workmates for the U.S. and Canadian markets have been manufactured in Brockville." It's likely that he's talking about the marketing launch, such as the 1975 catalog and Popular Science ad, rather than the start of manufacturing, which, of course, had to start before the launch.
So the Brockville production codes, the catalogs, the reviews, and the ads tell us that the 79-001 Type 1, the first Workmate to be manufactured in North America, was sold starting in October 1974, and was discontinued by May 1975.
79-001 Type 2 Dates
The Type 2 is the most commonly found Workmate 79-001 today, by a wide margin. For this reason, the Brockville production codes are enormously helpful for the Type 2, easily eclipsing any other source. But first I will mention that the first appearance in print for the Type 2 is in the 1976 Black & Decker catalog, printed in 10/75. (There is no mention of the Type number in the text, but the photo is of a Type 2.)
However, that catalog appearance is an illustration of what I was saying about the printed matter lagging behind what was actually on the market. The Brockville production codes tell us that production of the Type 2 actually started earlier that year. I have Brockville production codes for over 325 79-001 Type 2's. This data tells us that the start date for the Type 2 was early May 1975, with an end date of June 21, 1977. This is a long production run, which is consistent with the large number of Type 2's we see today.
Notice how specific the end date is: June 21, 1977. This specificity is made possible by the large number of Type 2's and Type 4's that were made. The last Type 2 for which I have a documented production code was made during the second shift on that date, and the first documented Type 4 was made during the third shift the same day!
This then is the perfect time to examine those "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates written on the Black & Decker part diagrams. The assumption has been that these tell us when the production of each Type ended and the next one started. (We know from Landis' book that all 79-001's were made in the single Brockville factory, which was unlikely to be making two different Types simultaneously.)
What happens if we apply this to the Type 2? Some pretty crazy stuff!
"UNIT DISCONTINUED" for the Type 1 is shown as April 1, 1976, and for the Type 2 as June 1, 1976. Yes, you read that right, an implication that the production run of the Type 2 lasted two months. This is obviously impossible (which I have been pointing out for some time) given how common the Type 2 is. Now we have the Brockville production codes to prove it.
Among my documented examples, the oldest Type 2 is from May 7, 1975, eleven months before the supposed end of Type 1 production and thus the implied start of Type 2 production. The newest documented Type 2 in my list is from June 1977, more than twelve months after the supposed end of Type 2 production. So the actual production period for the Type 2 is at least 23 months longer (and probably a little more) than what is implied by the "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates.
This is just one example of inaccuracies in the "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates. I hope this makes it clear why I say those dates should be ignored.
79-001 Type 3 Dates
The Type 3 was not a "true" 79-001, but actually the UK-model Workmate WM625 E02, manufactured in Kildare, Ireland and imported to the U.S. The very existence of the Type 3 doesn't quite make sense, because, as mentioned just above, there is not even a one-day gap between production dates of the Type 2 and Type 4 for the Type 3 to fit into. This meant that the Type 3 must have been on the market at the same time as either the Type 2 or the Type 4.
Also, for quite some time I thought that the Type 3 had no Brockville code to help us date it. Eventually, one day I realized the code was there in plain sight, but I hadn't recognized it because it uses a slightly different format from the other Types.
The difference is that the mark stamped under the jaw of the 79-001 Type 3 has only three digits for the date, representing the year and week. Unlike the stamps on the other Types, this date is immediately followed by the Model and Type numbers, all on a single line, e.g. "621 79-001-TYPE 3". In this example the 621 would mean this Type 3 was from week 21 of 1976. The first several Type 3's that I documented all had the same code—621—which caused me to think those three digits were somehow part of the model number, not a date. It wasn't until I had found more Type 3's with codes ranging from 624 to 637 that I realized my mistake.
The date codes from 621 to 637 indicate that the 79-001 Type 3 was made from May through September 1976. This was midway through the production period of the Type 2, which was probably a time of very high demand for the Workmate in North America. It seems that perhaps the Type 3 was imported to help fill this high demand.
So why was the code on the Type 3 only three digits? My theory is that the jaws of the Type 3's were not stamped at the factory in Ireland at the time they were made. This seems logical because the UK model WM625's that were made there at this time had their Model and Type numbers engraved into the surface of the steel footrest, with no ink stamp under the jaws for either the Type number or the date. (You can, in fact, find the WM625 E02 mark engraved on the footrest of the 79-001 Type 3.) I believe that the Workmates to be sold as Type 3's were shipped from Ireland to Brockville, where the personnel there stamped an abbreviated date code on the bottom of the jaw to be somewhat consistent with the ones manufactured at Brockville. It may have been abbreviated simply because those applying the date code in Brockville didn't know the specific day of manufacture in Ireland, so they shortened the code to include only the year and the likely week that they were made. In fact, I have found a couple of Type 3's that have only single digit for the date code—a "6" for 1976. My theory is that they must be among the first ones imported and stamped, when perhaps they had not yet decided they wanted a week stamp or maybe weren't even sure of what week these were produced.
A peculiarity related to the Type 3 is that I have documented two 79-001 Type 2's that have the paper label for the Type 3 on their jaws. They are stamped "TYPE 2" under the jaws along with production codes 548 13 and 548 23, or November 23 and 24, 1975. They have exactly the expected features for a Type 2 from that date. It's clear from the wear to the labels and the "shadow" left on the top where they are torn, that the labels are original, not something a later owner put on it. This tells us that in November 1975, Black & Decker had some Type 3 labels available in Brockville to be mistakenly applied to a Type 2.
I have newspaper reports that Black & Decker had planned to start Workmate production at their Kildare factory in the second half of 1975, but it did not actually begin until early 1976. I suspect that the North American division was already intending to receive some of that production, so they were probably already prepared with a stock of Type 3 labels in November 1975. Perhaps the UK division decided that because of the delay in startup, they needed all of the Kildare production for the UK and couldn't spare any Workmates for North America which meant the U.S. had to wait until May 1976 for the Type 3.
And finally, I will add that this production history of the factory in Ireland fits in well with the dates of May through September 1976 for the 79-001 Type 3. When the factory in Ireland started production of the WM625 at the beginning of 1976, it would have been making the E01. The timing is about right that it would have moved on to making the E02 (which became the 79-001 Type 3 in North America) by June of that year.
79-001 Type 4, 6, and 7 Dates
After the Type 2, there is very little documentation of the 79-001 in print, and much of what I have found is undated. Some of the manuals that are dated bear dates that are as much as a year before that Type was produced, leading me to conclude that their documentation team was well ahead of the manufacturing process. As mentioned already, Black & Decker was very careless with the photographs of Workmates in their catalogs, so those are also unreliable. For example, the 1982 catalog uses a photograph of the 79-001 Type 4, but we know the Type 4 was last produced in 1978. The Type 8 or 9 would have been the current Workmate when the 1982 catalog was printed.
However, the Brockville production codes give us as much accuracy as we need. All of my dates for the Type 4, 6, and 7 are based on the production codes.
79-001 Type 5 Dates
The Type 5, like the Type 3, is a special case since it was made in Ireland. However, unlike the Type 3, the Type 5 was not stamped with a date code when it arrived in North America. Also, similar to the situation with the Type 3, the interval in October 1978 between the last Type 4 and the first Type 6 that I have documented is only a matter of days, not long enough to make sense for the Type 5 to have been on the market all by itself. Based on what I uncovered about the Type 3, I believe the Type 5 was also a temporary "fill-in" model, imported to supplement Brockville production of the Type 4.
As a starting point for determining the dates for the Type 5, it only makes sense numerically that Black & Decker brought the Type 5 to market some time after the Type 4 was first produced. That gives us June 21, 1977, the start of production of the Type 4, as the absolute earliest likely date for sales of the Type 5. However, for a long time I couldn't come up with a latest likely date; it seemed as though it could have been any time up to November 1978 when Type 6 production started.
However, there is a major clue to be found in, of all places, the swivel grips, that narrows down the dates for the Type 5. I have come across a total of only five 79-001 Type 5's in about five years of looking. Three of them had swivel grips with them. I own one of these Type 5's and I have photos of the other two with swivel grips. I discovered that all three have the same style of swivel grips, the style that was introduced in October 1976 partway through the run of the Type 2. That style was replaced with a slightly different style in early October 1977 during the run of the Type 4. (See my page about the swivel grips to learn about the four different styles that were used on the 79-001.) From that we can deduce that the Type 5 was produced prior to the change in swivel grips that occurred in October 1977. (Of course, I realize that swivel grips can easily be switched from one Workmate to another, however it seems highly unlikely that all three of these Type 5's would have coincidentally wound up with the same relatively rare style of swivel grips.)
Based on that evidence, I believe the production period for the Type 5 was approximately July to September 1977.
79-001 Type 8 and 9 Dates (plus the Workmate 300)
As with the Type 4, 6, and 7 the dates for the Type 8 and 9 come from the production codes, but they require a little additional explanation.
First, while collecting data, I was confounded by a number of Type 8's and Type 9's with Brockville production codes that made no sense. They were seriously messing up my timeline, indicating that some Type 8's and 9's were made much later than they should have been. A couple of them seemed to indicate they were from 1983, one of them had a 0 for the shift number, and a couple of them had an 8 or 9 for the day of the week. I came up with a number of theories to explain this, but none were very satisfactory.
After months of puzzling over this, I figured it out. In 1980 and 1981 some Workmates came out of the Brockville factory with their production codes reversed.
This is a result of the different ways dates can be presented. For example, May 16, 2021 can be written as 2021/05/16 or as 16/05/2021. In the production codes, a Workmate made during the second shift on December 2, 1981 would normally be stamped 149 32, representing 1981, 49th week, third day, second shift. If you turn this around to shift, day, week, year, you get a stamp of 23 491. If you then try to read that reversed stamp normally, it will appear to be 1982, week 34, day 9(!), shift 1. That's the type of code I have found on about fifteen Workmates. Once I realized how to read them and corrected them to the regular format, they fit nicely into the timeline.
I can't explain why the reversed codes happened, but it affects about 15% of the Type 7's, 8's and 9's for which I have codes. They seem randomly scattered through production from mid 1980 to late 1981.
Second, the Type 9 was the end of the line for the 79-001. In 1982 Black & Decker completely revamped the Workmate lineup, replacing the 79-001 with the 79-033, also known as the Workmate 300. They continued stamping the Workmate 300 with production codes, so the earliest codes found on the Workmate 300 help establish the end of production for the 79-001 Type 9. The codes that I have for the Type 9 show production starting in late November 1981 and continuing to April 1982. This is completely consistent with production codes I've collected for the Workmate 300 that show it started production in May 1982.
(The start of the Workmate 300 around this time is also documented by two Black & Decker catalog excerpts on the Documents page. The Consumer Products Catalog 323, dated 1/82, displays the 79-001 and its related models. The same Catalog 323 for the next year, dated "1/83 Rev. 5/83", no longer includes the 79-001. Instead it has the 79-033 Workmate 300 and a number of other new models.)
As explained in my blog post of 9/28/2020 "A Breakthrough on Production Dates", I've broken the code for the numbers stamped on the bottom of the wooden jaws on most Workmate 79-001's. The discovery I've made is that they tell us the production dates that we've always wanted to know. Most of the timeline on this page is based on a spreadsheet I have compiled of Workmates with known codes. I include some other related tidbits about dates that come from other sources.
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 4- or 5-digit code stamped under the wooden jaws or under the metal step, 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!
------------
For those who don't want to wade through all the verbiage that follows, here's the quick summary of the timeline of the 79-001 (all dates approximate):
- Type E - early 1974 through fall 1974
- Type 1 - October 1974 through April 1975
- Type 2 - April 1975 through June 21, 1977
- Type 3 - made in Ireland, supplemented the Type 2 from June to September 1976
- Type 4 - June 21, 1977 through October 1978
- Type 5 - made in Ireland, supplemented the Type 4 from July to September 1977
- Type 6 - November 1978 through September 1979
- Type 7 - September 1979 through June 1980
- Type 8 - June 1980 through November 1981
- Type 9 - November 1981 through April 1982
Sources
There are four types of source material available to help with dating the Workmate 79-001.
- The most reliable dating is from the Brockville production codes stamped in ink on the bottom surface of the wooden jaws or on the metal step. These are found on the 79-001's Type 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9, the Types that were manufactured in Brockville, Ontario. The 79-001 Type E, which was made in England, has a two-digit year number cast into its foldout rear-leg casting. I have not found any date markings on the Type 5. I have collected enough production codes from Workmate owners to now have a very complete and accurate timeline for the 79-001.
- There is also paper ephemera such as ads and reviews in magazines, and Black & Decker catalogs. I have collected some of these in print form and found others online, many of which can be found on the Documents page. A problem with them is that none of them explicitly says what Type of 79-001 is being advertised or reviewed. Black & Decker never advertised the changeover from one Type to the next, and most buyers didn't know what Type they were buying. Ads and reviews often included a photograph that allows us to recognize the Type being shown, but at times it is almost certain that they are showing a photograph of a Type that had already been superseded at the time of publication. These materials are interesting to look at, but must be used with caution when it comes to dating.
- The most extensive coverage of the Workmate's early history is an 11-page chapter in The Workbench Book by Scott Landis, originally published in 1987 (and republished in 2021). Unfortunately, it is a little short on details about dates, especially for the United States. In addition, Landis was not involved with the Workmate 79-001 in any way during the time it was originally being developed, produced, and sold; he collected his information through interviews much later. He did a great job of telling the fascinating story of Ron Hickman and his invention, but, unfortunately for us, precise dates and the changes between the 79-001 Types were not a priority for what Landis was trying to do. He never mentions the model 79-001 by name, much less the various Types.
- We also have Black & Decker's part diagrams for all ten types of the Workmate, which were available for many years on their support web site, but which are no longer there. Copies of these can be found on the Documents page. Each of them is stamped "UNIT DISCONTINUED" followed by a hand-written date. These have been cited in the past as an authoritative source for Workmate dates, but we now know that they are simply wrong. As I have pointed out previously, we know nothing about who wrote the dates, when, or what they based them on. Examination of the writing indicates that they may have all been written by the same person with the same pen, possibly all at the same time rather than at the time of each discontinuation, which also makes them appear untrustworthy. And now we know that most of these "discontinued" dates are directly contradicted by actual Workmates and their Brockville production codes. Using these dates will mostly lead to wrong conclusions.
79-001 Type E Dates
The first 79-001 sold in the U.S. was the Type E, which was a rebadged WM325 Type 3 imported from England. Since it was manufactured in England, the Type E does not have the Brockville production code to date it by. However, as mentioned above, it does have some marks cast into the foldout rear-leg casting that include the two-digit year of manufacture. I have verified the year on about ten Type E's, and they have all been marked with "74". This confirms the fact that the Type E was sold just before the Brockville factory began making the first North American Workmate, the 79-001 Type 1, in October 1974.
Dating the Type E any more precisely is difficult, since as far as I can determine it has never appeared in a catalog, advertisement, or review. Since the WM325 was sold widely in England, I have been able to establish that it was on the market from 1972 to 1976. This means that the ones imported to the U.S. in 1974 were from the middle production period of the WM325.
I will mention three brief accounts that my research has found regarding the very first Workmate sales in the United States. Unfortunately they are somewhat contradictory, so they don't really help establish more specific dates for sales of the Type E.
- One of these is a few sentences in Landis' book: "Finally in 1973, on the initiative of two of their North American managers, Black & Decker negotiated a license for 'the rest of the world' with Hickman, and tooled up their Brockville, Ontario plant for Workmate production. Black & Decker, Inc. (U.S.) placed 10,000 Workmates in about 50 stores in southern California to test their marketing strategy. People snapped them up and the following spring Black & Decker went national."
Notice that he makes no mention of any Workmates imported from England, implying that all U.S. sales from the beginning came from the Brockville factory. Also, the sequence he describes seems odd. Wouldn't Black & Decker have done the market test prior to tooling up a North American factory? Otherwise, if the market test was a failure, they would have already made a heavy investment in the factory that would have been wasted. I think Landis (or an editor) got this a little bit garbled.
Since the Type E was actually the made-in-England WM325 Type 3, it would have been the obvious candidate to use for a marketing test without requiring any investment in changes to a factory. I'm also quite sure that the Type E was sold nationally, not just in southern California. I have heard from original owners of Workmate 79-001's who remember the all-aluminum-frame Type E in stores in many different parts of the country. I have purchased four vintage Type E's myself in Michigan and the eastern U.S., which seems unlikely if they were not sold more widely throughout the country. - Slightly contradictory to Landis is an account from the Canadian newspaper The National Post from August 23, 1980. It states that "As Black & Decker's manufacturing base grew in Canada, it was able to establish its own product development group in 1974...This group saw that the Workmate, a portable workbench developed in Britain, had potential in the North American market. The product was redesigned in Brockville with steel stampings instead of aluminum castings..." If that is accurate and the group that convinced the company to bring the Workmate to North America wasn't formed until 1974, then the test marketing of the Type E could not have begun until 1974.
- Another account online of the beginnings of the Workmate, written by someone who was there, tells it yet differently. I have preserved that account in this blog post. It claims that a market test was conducted in Dallas, but unfortunately it gives no dates to help us.
So it seems likely that the Type E was used for the test in southern California and/or Dallas, probably in early 1974. Then the Type E was sold nationally starting in the spring or summer of 1974, while they simultaneously "tooled up their Brockville, Ontario plant" for production of the Type 1. Sales of the Type E would have ended when the Type 1 came to market in October 1974.
79-001 Type 1 Dates
The second 79-001 was the Type 1, but it was the first to be manufactured in North America, in Brockville, Ontario.
I have quite a few items on the Documents page from the introduction of the Type 1:
- I believe that the first appearance of the Workmate in print in the United States was in the Black & Decker catalog for 1975, with a printing date of 10/74. The Workmate that is pictured is the 79-001 Type 1. The October printing date matches the production code dates on the earliest Type 1's that I have found.
- The earliest known newspaper ad for a Workmate 79-001 is from the October 23, 1974 Montreal (Canada) Star, showing the Workmate 79-001 Type 1.
- The first article/review I have found about the Workmate 79-001 is from the New York Times on January 26, 1975, showing the Type 1.
- The first national ad for the Workmate, showing the Type 1, appeared in Popular Science in February 1975. This issue would have reached readers in January 1975, and the actual ad would have been created and scheduled with the magazine months before that, also indicating that Type 1 production started in fall 1974.
- Another clue comes from the review in the August 1975 issue of Popular Mechanics. It states that the Workmate "was introduced here last August" which would mean August of 1974. I suspect that isn't entirely accurate, but it fits reasonably well with a fall 1974 start for the Type 1. The pictures in the review are of a Type 1 even though the Type 2 was already on the market by the time the review was published in 1975.
Landis' book could be seen as slightly contradictory to the above, but I don't think it is. He says: "Following its North American launch in 1975 and throughout the ten years that followed, all the large Workmates for the U.S. and Canadian markets have been manufactured in Brockville." It's likely that he's talking about the marketing launch, such as the 1975 catalog and Popular Science ad, rather than the start of manufacturing, which, of course, had to start before the launch.
So the Brockville production codes, the catalogs, the reviews, and the ads tell us that the 79-001 Type 1, the first Workmate to be manufactured in North America, was sold starting in October 1974, and was discontinued by May 1975.
79-001 Type 2 Dates
The Type 2 is the most commonly found Workmate 79-001 today, by a wide margin. For this reason, the Brockville production codes are enormously helpful for the Type 2, easily eclipsing any other source. But first I will mention that the first appearance in print for the Type 2 is in the 1976 Black & Decker catalog, printed in 10/75. (There is no mention of the Type number in the text, but the photo is of a Type 2.)
However, that catalog appearance is an illustration of what I was saying about the printed matter lagging behind what was actually on the market. The Brockville production codes tell us that production of the Type 2 actually started earlier that year. I have Brockville production codes for over 325 79-001 Type 2's. This data tells us that the start date for the Type 2 was early May 1975, with an end date of June 21, 1977. This is a long production run, which is consistent with the large number of Type 2's we see today.
Notice how specific the end date is: June 21, 1977. This specificity is made possible by the large number of Type 2's and Type 4's that were made. The last Type 2 for which I have a documented production code was made during the second shift on that date, and the first documented Type 4 was made during the third shift the same day!
This then is the perfect time to examine those "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates written on the Black & Decker part diagrams. The assumption has been that these tell us when the production of each Type ended and the next one started. (We know from Landis' book that all 79-001's were made in the single Brockville factory, which was unlikely to be making two different Types simultaneously.)
What happens if we apply this to the Type 2? Some pretty crazy stuff!
"UNIT DISCONTINUED" for the Type 1 is shown as April 1, 1976, and for the Type 2 as June 1, 1976. Yes, you read that right, an implication that the production run of the Type 2 lasted two months. This is obviously impossible (which I have been pointing out for some time) given how common the Type 2 is. Now we have the Brockville production codes to prove it.
Among my documented examples, the oldest Type 2 is from May 7, 1975, eleven months before the supposed end of Type 1 production and thus the implied start of Type 2 production. The newest documented Type 2 in my list is from June 1977, more than twelve months after the supposed end of Type 2 production. So the actual production period for the Type 2 is at least 23 months longer (and probably a little more) than what is implied by the "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates.
This is just one example of inaccuracies in the "UNIT DISCONTINUED" dates. I hope this makes it clear why I say those dates should be ignored.
79-001 Type 3 Dates
The Type 3 was not a "true" 79-001, but actually the UK-model Workmate WM625 E02, manufactured in Kildare, Ireland and imported to the U.S. The very existence of the Type 3 doesn't quite make sense, because, as mentioned just above, there is not even a one-day gap between production dates of the Type 2 and Type 4 for the Type 3 to fit into. This meant that the Type 3 must have been on the market at the same time as either the Type 2 or the Type 4.
Also, for quite some time I thought that the Type 3 had no Brockville code to help us date it. Eventually, one day I realized the code was there in plain sight, but I hadn't recognized it because it uses a slightly different format from the other Types.
The difference is that the mark stamped under the jaw of the 79-001 Type 3 has only three digits for the date, representing the year and week. Unlike the stamps on the other Types, this date is immediately followed by the Model and Type numbers, all on a single line, e.g. "621 79-001-TYPE 3". In this example the 621 would mean this Type 3 was from week 21 of 1976. The first several Type 3's that I documented all had the same code—621—which caused me to think those three digits were somehow part of the model number, not a date. It wasn't until I had found more Type 3's with codes ranging from 624 to 637 that I realized my mistake.
The date codes from 621 to 637 indicate that the 79-001 Type 3 was made from May through September 1976. This was midway through the production period of the Type 2, which was probably a time of very high demand for the Workmate in North America. It seems that perhaps the Type 3 was imported to help fill this high demand.
So why was the code on the Type 3 only three digits? My theory is that the jaws of the Type 3's were not stamped at the factory in Ireland at the time they were made. This seems logical because the UK model WM625's that were made there at this time had their Model and Type numbers engraved into the surface of the steel footrest, with no ink stamp under the jaws for either the Type number or the date. (You can, in fact, find the WM625 E02 mark engraved on the footrest of the 79-001 Type 3.) I believe that the Workmates to be sold as Type 3's were shipped from Ireland to Brockville, where the personnel there stamped an abbreviated date code on the bottom of the jaw to be somewhat consistent with the ones manufactured at Brockville. It may have been abbreviated simply because those applying the date code in Brockville didn't know the specific day of manufacture in Ireland, so they shortened the code to include only the year and the likely week that they were made. In fact, I have found a couple of Type 3's that have only single digit for the date code—a "6" for 1976. My theory is that they must be among the first ones imported and stamped, when perhaps they had not yet decided they wanted a week stamp or maybe weren't even sure of what week these were produced.
A peculiarity related to the Type 3 is that I have documented two 79-001 Type 2's that have the paper label for the Type 3 on their jaws. They are stamped "TYPE 2" under the jaws along with production codes 548 13 and 548 23, or November 23 and 24, 1975. They have exactly the expected features for a Type 2 from that date. It's clear from the wear to the labels and the "shadow" left on the top where they are torn, that the labels are original, not something a later owner put on it. This tells us that in November 1975, Black & Decker had some Type 3 labels available in Brockville to be mistakenly applied to a Type 2.
I have newspaper reports that Black & Decker had planned to start Workmate production at their Kildare factory in the second half of 1975, but it did not actually begin until early 1976. I suspect that the North American division was already intending to receive some of that production, so they were probably already prepared with a stock of Type 3 labels in November 1975. Perhaps the UK division decided that because of the delay in startup, they needed all of the Kildare production for the UK and couldn't spare any Workmates for North America which meant the U.S. had to wait until May 1976 for the Type 3.
And finally, I will add that this production history of the factory in Ireland fits in well with the dates of May through September 1976 for the 79-001 Type 3. When the factory in Ireland started production of the WM625 at the beginning of 1976, it would have been making the E01. The timing is about right that it would have moved on to making the E02 (which became the 79-001 Type 3 in North America) by June of that year.
79-001 Type 4, 6, and 7 Dates
After the Type 2, there is very little documentation of the 79-001 in print, and much of what I have found is undated. Some of the manuals that are dated bear dates that are as much as a year before that Type was produced, leading me to conclude that their documentation team was well ahead of the manufacturing process. As mentioned already, Black & Decker was very careless with the photographs of Workmates in their catalogs, so those are also unreliable. For example, the 1982 catalog uses a photograph of the 79-001 Type 4, but we know the Type 4 was last produced in 1978. The Type 8 or 9 would have been the current Workmate when the 1982 catalog was printed.
However, the Brockville production codes give us as much accuracy as we need. All of my dates for the Type 4, 6, and 7 are based on the production codes.
79-001 Type 5 Dates
The Type 5, like the Type 3, is a special case since it was made in Ireland. However, unlike the Type 3, the Type 5 was not stamped with a date code when it arrived in North America. Also, similar to the situation with the Type 3, the interval in October 1978 between the last Type 4 and the first Type 6 that I have documented is only a matter of days, not long enough to make sense for the Type 5 to have been on the market all by itself. Based on what I uncovered about the Type 3, I believe the Type 5 was also a temporary "fill-in" model, imported to supplement Brockville production of the Type 4.
As a starting point for determining the dates for the Type 5, it only makes sense numerically that Black & Decker brought the Type 5 to market some time after the Type 4 was first produced. That gives us June 21, 1977, the start of production of the Type 4, as the absolute earliest likely date for sales of the Type 5. However, for a long time I couldn't come up with a latest likely date; it seemed as though it could have been any time up to November 1978 when Type 6 production started.
However, there is a major clue to be found in, of all places, the swivel grips, that narrows down the dates for the Type 5. I have come across a total of only five 79-001 Type 5's in about five years of looking. Three of them had swivel grips with them. I own one of these Type 5's and I have photos of the other two with swivel grips. I discovered that all three have the same style of swivel grips, the style that was introduced in October 1976 partway through the run of the Type 2. That style was replaced with a slightly different style in early October 1977 during the run of the Type 4. (See my page about the swivel grips to learn about the four different styles that were used on the 79-001.) From that we can deduce that the Type 5 was produced prior to the change in swivel grips that occurred in October 1977. (Of course, I realize that swivel grips can easily be switched from one Workmate to another, however it seems highly unlikely that all three of these Type 5's would have coincidentally wound up with the same relatively rare style of swivel grips.)
Based on that evidence, I believe the production period for the Type 5 was approximately July to September 1977.
79-001 Type 8 and 9 Dates (plus the Workmate 300)
As with the Type 4, 6, and 7 the dates for the Type 8 and 9 come from the production codes, but they require a little additional explanation.
First, while collecting data, I was confounded by a number of Type 8's and Type 9's with Brockville production codes that made no sense. They were seriously messing up my timeline, indicating that some Type 8's and 9's were made much later than they should have been. A couple of them seemed to indicate they were from 1983, one of them had a 0 for the shift number, and a couple of them had an 8 or 9 for the day of the week. I came up with a number of theories to explain this, but none were very satisfactory.
After months of puzzling over this, I figured it out. In 1980 and 1981 some Workmates came out of the Brockville factory with their production codes reversed.
This is a result of the different ways dates can be presented. For example, May 16, 2021 can be written as 2021/05/16 or as 16/05/2021. In the production codes, a Workmate made during the second shift on December 2, 1981 would normally be stamped 149 32, representing 1981, 49th week, third day, second shift. If you turn this around to shift, day, week, year, you get a stamp of 23 491. If you then try to read that reversed stamp normally, it will appear to be 1982, week 34, day 9(!), shift 1. That's the type of code I have found on about fifteen Workmates. Once I realized how to read them and corrected them to the regular format, they fit nicely into the timeline.
I can't explain why the reversed codes happened, but it affects about 15% of the Type 7's, 8's and 9's for which I have codes. They seem randomly scattered through production from mid 1980 to late 1981.
Second, the Type 9 was the end of the line for the 79-001. In 1982 Black & Decker completely revamped the Workmate lineup, replacing the 79-001 with the 79-033, also known as the Workmate 300. They continued stamping the Workmate 300 with production codes, so the earliest codes found on the Workmate 300 help establish the end of production for the 79-001 Type 9. The codes that I have for the Type 9 show production starting in late November 1981 and continuing to April 1982. This is completely consistent with production codes I've collected for the Workmate 300 that show it started production in May 1982.
(The start of the Workmate 300 around this time is also documented by two Black & Decker catalog excerpts on the Documents page. The Consumer Products Catalog 323, dated 1/82, displays the 79-001 and its related models. The same Catalog 323 for the next year, dated "1/83 Rev. 5/83", no longer includes the 79-001. Instead it has the 79-033 Workmate 300 and a number of other new models.)