I was adding Lee Valley Tools’, a modern day tool manufacturer, patents to datamp.org when I came across a patentee who is a member of my tool club! The first name was different but the middle name, the name I know him by, and last name were the same as was the small town in Georgia. I checked with him and it was indeed his patent! I assume he’s the only member of my tool club to have a tool patent. [Charles Paul Hamler 5,694,696] Stanley Rule & Level Co. had patented, but did not commercially sell, a similar insert 837,978, issued ninety-one years earlier.
I purchased the tool from Lee Valley and I asked Paul to autograph it. I’m guessing I’m the only one on my block whose hand plane can be turned into a scraper plane! It will be a future chair moment if I come across another club member’s tool patent.