Quality of old USA Nicholson files vs modern offerings

[Clay Parrish]

I didn't want to derail the other files thread, so I am asking my question separately. I was wondering whether the older Nicholson saw files that were made in the USA are better than the current Bahco (and other branded) offerings? Was there a difference between the Black Diamond line vs. regular Nicholsons?

[george wilson]

NOW that the Mexican Nicholsons SEEM to have gotten their act together(no 100% guarantee),I think their files are just the same as USA made Nicholsons. I recently bought an 8" bastard file. It was just fine. Perfectly cut teeth,fully hardened,etc..

If they are now ALL properly hardened,etc.,I am perfectly happy with them. And,I am a REAL file user and huge FILE PIG!!!!

Black Diamond was just a name that Nicholson made up for exactly the same files but sold in the South. I was told that by the quality control guy from Nicholson,who walked into my shop one day. I didn't know who he was. He asked me what brand of files I was using. I launched into great praises for Nicholson files. He sent me about a cubic foot of Nicholson files!!

[Tom M King]

I haven't looked it up, but expect that Black Diamond was acquired sometime in the past by Nicolson. I have some boxes of Black Diamond brand files that were on the shelves in my Grandfather's General Store. There was no mention of another brand name on the boxes. That store was just closed up in 1935 with inventory still on the shelves, including those boxes of files. That's all I'm going on. Those Black Diamond files were as good as files get. I also have a bunch of US made Nicolsons that I fortunately stocked up on back in the 1970s. Both are equally good files. The only more modern files I've used were chainsaw files. Out of good luck with chainsaw files, I also stocked up on Pferd brand which I liked better than US made chainsaw files back when I bought them.

I expect someone like George Wilson might know more details about the brand history.

edited to add: I was writing my post while George was posting his.

[Patrick Chase]

I didn't want to derail the other files thread, so I am asking my question separately. I was wondering whether the older Nicholson saw files that were made in the USA are better than the current Bahco (and other branded) offerings? Was there a difference between the Black Diamond line vs. regular Nicholsons?

I think it's important to be clear about what type of files we're discussing. A lot of the manufacturers make their needle files in a completely different country/factory than their taper and mill files. That's certainly true of Bahco, Nicholson, and (now) Grobet USA.

If we're talking about taper/mill files then my experience is similar to George's: I've recently tried 6" 2XS taper saw files at 10" bastard-cut mill files, and they were pretty decent. Certainly not "horror story bad".

[george wilson]

Did you all see my post above where I said that the QC man from the Nicholson factory told me that Black Diamond was just another name for Nicholsons sold in the South? I wonder why they thought Southerners would like a different name better? Makes NO sense to me.

[Mel Fulks]

It does seem strange. There are old precedents,though. Food products ,in particular, had regional names years ago.And ,of course there have also cases of same product having two names in order to give appearance of two quality lines.

[Patrick Chase]

Did you all see my post above where I said that the QC man from the Nicholson factory told me that Black Diamond was just another name for Nicholsons sold in the South? I wonder why they thought Southerners would like a different name better? Makes NO sense to me.

I've unfortunately had more than a little exposure to marketing over the course of my career. The conventional wisdom is that peoples' buying habits tend to be very "sticky", particularly as they get older, so you always want to keep brands on the market if you can to exploit that.

If you remove a brand from the market and replace it with a new one (i.e. if Nicholson had killed the BD brand and just sold under their own name) then you force people to establish new habits, and they might not choose your new brand when they do. By keeping the old brand on the market you avoid that - everybody just keeps buying whatever they always have out of habit.

Then there's the matter of shelf space: Retail outlets will typically only devote so much space to a single brand, but they'll often give more to multiple brands even if they happen to come from the same producer.

Marketing is a sh*t-show.

[Tom M King]

I had never even thought about looking up the history of modern file making, but found some interesting stuff. http://www.charleswbullock.com/Guide/IndustryHistry/NicholsonFile/NicholsonFile.html

[Tom M King]

Looks like Black Diamond was bought in 1912 by Nicolson: http://americanmadefiles.blogspot.com/2014/02/nicholson-files.html

[Clay Parrish]

Thanks for the information on Black Diamond. I recall reading that they were originally a separate company that Nicholson acquired. I was just curious if Nicholson did anything differently with the files sold under that line.

My main question (and perhaps I was not sufficiently clear in my original post) is whether modern brands of taper files are superior to the older USA Nicholsons. I get the feeling from reading that Nicholson USA was about as good as it got, but now that they're gone, people are spinning their wheels looking for a brand of sufficient quality. The other option is to look for NOS Nicholson USA stuff, so I was just wondering if locating NOS Nicholson is worth the effort over just buying whatever the current best modern files are.

[Patrick Chase]

My main question (and perhaps I was not sufficiently clear in my original post) is whether modern brands of taper files are superior to the older USA Nicholsons. I get the feeling from reading that Nicholson USA was about as good as it got, but now that they're gone, people are spinning their wheels looking for a brand of sufficient quality.

The old Nicholson US files were certainly good enough. I don't know about "as good as it got" though. Bahco/Oberg and (particularly) Grobet/Vallorbe/Glardon have always had very strong reputations. I have some extra-hard, non-chromed Vallorbe ski files that are in a different league from the stuff we use for tool sharpening. They're also bloody expensive (though cheap compared to the solid Tungsten-Carbide files that are now all the rage).