The Strange, possibly plagiaristic story of Mackintosh Hutchinson
While they were best known for the manufacture of handheld power tools, Porter-Cable has had many forays into the world of stationary machines- after all, George G. Porter was the inventor of the hi-production lathe ( in addition to his patents for automotive parts and his pioneering work in diet culture. But that’s another story).
Truth be told, Porter-Cable tended to do better by bringing in outside talent when it came to the larger tools, which is where Syracuse sander and Mulliner Enlund came in. Our focus, however, is on a little-known connection to an obscure maker who managed to develop several machines that were simultaneously painstakingly machined and haphazardly finished.
I give you the Hutchinson Manufacturing Company, Inc., of Norristown, PA.
Originally based in Toronto, Mackintosh Hutchinson started out around 1912 making a machine known as the woodworker. this was, in essence, a flat belt driven radial arm saw, powered by a rear-mounted motor and adjustable via a column that rose from the floor; there appears to have been nothing linking the working parts to the tall wooden bench that the work sat on.
This machine went through a number of changes over the next few years, but unfortunately for Hutchinson, it remained suspiciously similar to another machine, the Elliot Woodworker.
Elliot was another Toronto builder, who opened their doors in 1910 making the Woodworker; they didn’t take kindly to anyone cribbing their notes, and there were several years of courtroom drama where our boy Mackintosh gave as good as he got, but, in the end, Hutchinson had to relinquish the rights to his machine to Elliot. It’s unknown whether Hutchinson copied Elliot or just happened to come up with a similar design by chance, but like the song the sirens sang, it isn’t beyond conjecture. For my money, I think it was a case of great minds thinking alike- while the basic concepts are the same, the two machines are different in quite a few ways, if the advertising cuts are any indication. Regardless, Mackintosh was forced out of production, at least in Canada.
Cue the move to Pennsylvania.
By 1921, Hutchinson manufacturing was offering a variety of combination machines. In fact, there were only a few standalone machines in the lineup,, such as the Speed Marvel bandsaw. Or the Speed Marvel shaper. Or the Speed Marvel jointer.
It strikes me that, for an inventor, Mackintosh Hutchinson wasn’t very imaginative.
Hutchinson products all have two things in common: First, endless running changes to the design, wherein a given machine would be improved upon subtly throughout production life, and secondly, being somehow both well and poorly constructed at the same time.
Most Hutchinson machines are built around a similar concept- the twin screw mechanism. In this system, a table saw, shaper, or radial arm saw table is raised or lowered via two acme thread screws, attached to the bottom of the table in such a way that they aren’t free to rotate. These screws pass through a pair of helical gears that are internally threaded; turning the gears will cause the screws to move up and down. These gears are held captive in a notch in the main casting and are acted upon by another set of gears mounted to a horizontal rod. This allows everything to be adjusted via a handwheel, and is an accurate and robust system, but it requires a great deal of machining to build. This work was done well, and I have yet to see a Hutchinson machine with a raising mechanism that was damaged- the design is just about indestructible. Equal in quality are the beautifully planed cast iron tops, the massive, perfectly fitted flanges and spacers on the arbor, and the rather elegant toggle levers for locking adjustments, all top-notch manufacturing.
However, similar care was eschewed for virtually anything else, and most machines are comprised of castings that are for all intents unfinished, with visible casting flash, bolt slots that are fresh out of the mold, and barely any attention to looks beyond the omnipresent, muddy gray-blue paint every machine bore. A Hutchinson machine is a joy to use, but only after some filing and tweaking.
This bizarre set of priorities is equally evident in the lack of scales, pointers, and any other form of onboard mensuration ( the sole exception that comes to mind is the rather crude angle scale found on the radial arm saws. This has no real means of adjustment, the pointer being a chisel mark in the accompanying casting). Ol’ Mack firmly expected the user to have a box rule and square handy at all times, It seems.
All this aside, Hutchinson products are very well made where it counts. I have three of their machines, a “Handy Hutch” table saw/ jointer, a “Beaver” combination woodworker ( radial arm saw, rip saw, jointer, and horizontal borer), and the “Speed Marvel” shaper, and have nothing but good to say of them ( though several upgrades, mainly to dust collection and guarding, definitely improve the experience). These machines were mainly intended for the homebuilder, and are constructed for the job site, more so than the workshop ( there are several machines that were available with a gasoline engine instead of the usual electric motor). They are accurate, sturdy, and easy to use, but lacking in refinement and usually in need of some finetuning to get the best out of them.
What’s all this have to do with Porter-Cable? Well, at some point before 1931, Porter-Cable started offering the Hutchinson line in their catalogs to supplement the portable saws and sanders, having no other stationary machines in the lineup than the Syracuse Sander based designs for sanders and a band saw. Hutchinson had no sanding machines ( although there was a sanding disc that could be mounted to the “Beaver”), though there were a few different configurations of band saw, and the lines dovetailed fairly well. The exact nature of the arrangement appears to have been the purchase outright of Hutchinson by Porter-Cable, even if there’s not much to confirm it; it would be odd if they didn’t, because they referred to the resulting firm as the Porter-Cable- Hutchinson Corporation.
No light has been shed on the length of this team-up, but it’s known that a newer pattern of jointer was offered as late as 1949. I have seen one of these machines, and it bears little resemblance to the earlier offerings, being a thoroughly modern design.
All things considered, Mackintosh Hutchinson was a clever inventor, having offered a fairly comprehensive line of machines from table saws to lathes in any number of permutations; a person could go mad trying to collect one of everything. Hutchinson machines crop up from time to time, drawing little notice due to the obscurity of the brand, but they are solid machines, capable of good work and not without a certain roughhewn charm, and they deserve a place in the history of Porter-Cable for that reason alone.
