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Few Workmate owners have noticed, but Black & Decker's early North American marketing material for the Workmate, including newspaper ads, catalogs, and owner's manuals, featured images of a couple of prototype designs that never made it to market. One of these was an early design for the Workmate 79-001 Type 1, and the other was a Workmate 79-020 with a different color scheme. Take a look at the images below, and if you have ever seen one of these Workmates for real, by all means tell me about it! The 79-001 "Type .09" Prototype from 1974 If you are familiar with the design of the Workmate 79-001 and you look closely at Black & Decker's photographs and drawings of it from its introduction in 1974 up until 1977, you'll notice that some of the details don't look quite right. I discovered this several years ago but didn't get around to a full investigation until now. After examining these early images, it's pretty clear to me that they depict what I will call a "Workmate 79-001 Type .09", a prototype for the first North American Workmate. I'm not sure whether someone at Black & Decker used the prototype photos without realizing it, or perhaps they felt that the differences were not significant enough to matter. I can say that in all of my reading and discussions about the Workmate 79-001, I've never found any mention of it before now. In the photo below, from the introduction of the 79-001 Type 1 in the Canadian "Automotive Power Tools" catalog for 1975, I have highlighted the two features that didn't make it into production. First, the upper frame pieces that hold the vise screws are a pared-down, lighter-weight design. In the top right, you can see two large openings in the upper frame piece, which was almost entirely solid in the production model. Also, although you can't see it in this photo, that version of the frame piece tapers down faster in height toward the back of the Workmate. Second, where the folding leg mounts to the frame, the clip to hold the leg folded is located off to one side so that it will engage the side of the leg. The standard half-round clip from the production model that would engage the top center edge of the folding leg is missing.  (click to enlarge) I would guess that the design of the upper frame pieces in the prototype was intended to reduce weight, but perhaps testing showed that they were not strong enough for the intended loads. The clip that engaged with the side of the folding leg may have turned out to be more vulnerable to damage in that location than the center-mounted clip that was eventually used. Below are some other examples of images that depict the prototype model. This one, from the Type 2 owner's manual 975396-01 3/76 (but still showing a Type 1) provides a good view of the large holes in the upper frame pieces, as well as the tapered frame piece.  The next set of smaller color photos is excerpted from the single-page product flyer Form 0401A. As originally published, each is only about two inches square, but now that you know what to look for, you should be able to pick out all of these differences—the large holes in the upper frame pieces, the relocated clip for the folding legs, and the significant taper at the rear of the upper frame pieces. (click to enlarge).  This one, from the earlier Type 2 owner's manual 975396-01 10/75 is similar to the first photo above, but from a slightly lower angle.  I have found many other examples that depict the prototype 79-001, some of which appear on my Documents page. It even shows up in some line drawings used in the manual for the 79-001 Type 6, of all places! The 79-020 Prototype from 1978 In 1978 another prototype showed up in a Black & Decker catalog (Form 310 4/78), with the introduction of the 79-020 Bench Top Workmate. It might be an exaggeration to call it a prototype because it differed from the "real" 79-020 only in its dramatic charcoal and orange color scheme. The 79-020 that made it to market was a much plainer tan and gray. You may also notice that the photos do not show the removable metal vise jaw covers that came installed on the 79-020. Instead, the covers are listed as a separate accessory, part number 79-090. The next edition of this catalog (Form 315 9/78) has the covers shown as standard, and I never ran across the 79-090 accessory jaws listed anywhere again.
Many Workmate fans have a general idea of which 79-001's are easiest and hardest to find these days, but so far no one has quantified this. After more than three years of collecting data about 79-001's provided to me from their owners or listed for sale around the U.S. and Canada on the usual sites, I'm confident enough to give some estimates. The following is based on detailed observations I have collected on about 700 Workmate 79-001's, supplemented with casual browsing of a couple thousand more.
Although I'm giving you specific percentages here, realize that these are rough estimates, with an unknown standard error, so feel free to expand them to sensible percentage ranges if you wish. The Type 2 is far and away the most common 79-001, accounting for very roughly 43% of those found today. This makes sense because it had the longest production period of all the Types, from May 1975 to June 1977. Second most common is the Type 4, at very roughly 21% of all 79-001's. The Type 2 and Type 4 together comprise almost 2/3 of the 79-001's I have found. Next most common, vying for third, fourth, and fifth places, are the Type 6, Type 7, and Type 8, at about 8 to 10% each. That means the five most common Types—Type 2, Type 4, Type 6, Type 7, and Type 8—make up about 90% of the ten Types of the 79-001. That leaves the other five Types as rare ones. Almost half of those are Type 1's, putting it in sixth place at perhaps 4% of the overall numbers. Three more compete for seventh, eighth, and ninth places at about 2% each. One of these is the rarest Type manufactured in North America, the 79-001 Type 9. The other two were made in England and Ireland—the Type E and the Type 3 respectively. That brings us to tenth place, but wait—if you've been keeping track, you realize that the estimates I present above have already totaled 100%. My rough estimate is that there are so few of the made-in-Ireland 79-001 Type 5 out there that it would barely be the rounding error on estimates of the other Types. I'll just call it less than .5% of the overall quantity, and I actually doubt it is more than .25%. In years of looking, I have found just four 79-001 Type 5's, and I currently own two of them! A unique characteristic of what we know as the Workmate 79-001 Type 1 is that it was never marked in any way as a "Type 1". In particular, the label on the jaws said only "#79-001 'WORKMATE'", and there was no ink stamp with the Type number underneath the jaw. This was unlike the preceding version, which was marked on both the label and the jaws as the "#79-001 Type E". It was also unlike the following version, which had "79-001 Type 2" on the label and "Type 2" under the jaws. (See the photos on the Markings page.)
So what happened to make the Type 1 different? I think this anomaly in the marking indicates that Black & Decker didn't originally intend to produce the Workmate under a series of different Type numbers. In 1974, they imported the English-made WM325 Workmate with the mostly aluminum skeleton frame to North America as a test of consumer demand. They dubbed it the 79-001, a new model designation exclusive to the U.S. market. If the test was successful, they intended to retool their factory in Canada to manufacture a redesigned version of the Workmate for North America. In this sense, the first 79-001 was a temporary product, so they labeled it the Type E (for England) to differentiate it from the new-design, mostly steel 79-001 that they had planned to follow. The market test was a huge success, production of the new mostly steel "real" 79-001 began, and Black & Decker dropped the "Type' nomenclature since it was no longer necessary. What we now know as the Type 1 was on the market as simply the Workmate 79-001, the planned model number from the beginning. However, in less than a year they made a set of further changes to the 79-001. The most significant changes were a switch to metric sizing for the jaw holes and a new type of mount for the jaws, and the new parts were not interchangeable with those of the outgoing version. To keep the versions distinct, they decided to return to the Type numbering system they had used for the Type E. Since the newest one was the second version made in Canada, it became the Type 2, and the one that it was replacing became, retroactively, the Type 1, even though it was never marked or referred to as such while it was in production. The Type 1 has a second distinction worthy of note: It is the only 79-001 that Black & Decker ever referred to by Type number in any of their instruction manuals, advertisements, or catalogs. The single reference can be found in the original version of the Gripmate 79-011 manual on page 3. |
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