Restoration of a Millers Falls Boring Machine - Part 1

Timber framers who prefer hand methods often use a manual boring machine for clearing the bulk of material from a mortise before refining its walls with a chisel or a slick. Figure 1 shows the author using a Millers Falls boring machine for this purpose in a Heartwood School timber framing course. This article describes the author’s experience in restoring a similar machine, which is shown in its eBay listing in Figure 2.

These machines bore holes perpendicular to a timber’s surface, while some machines can bore at other angles as well.  Some machines, such as those made by Millers Falls, have a  rack and pinion mechanism to extract the drill bit.  It is not known when the boring machine (a.k.a. beam drill, beam auger) was invented, although the first patent is by J. Beckwith in 1830.  Boring machines were made by Millers Falls, the James Swan Co., the Buckeye Manufacturing Company, and Lambert Brothers among perhaps others.  By 1886, Millers Falls claimed they had perfected the machine in the Scientific American¹, and the machines appeared in Millers Falls catalogs starting in 1887 and continuing through 1929² although people with considerable experience in rebuilding these machines have claimed in online posts that Millers Falls manufactured boring machines into the 1930s and possibly the 1940s.  The Millers Falls No.145 boring machine with a wood base was listed at a price of $9.25 (without augers) in the 1915 catalog (see Figure 3), which is equivalent with approximately $288 in 2024 dollars according to a Federal Reserve inflation calculator.  It is interesting that the demand for these vintage machines is such that any machine in good or salvageable condition sells for considerably more than the original price adjusted for inflation.

Of the timber framers who have expressed a preference for boring machines to the author, all prefer Millers Falls machines. Many in online forums also express a preference for Millers Falls machines, whereas the author has never seen a preference expressed for another make. Among the advantages of Millers Falls machines, besides the bit extraction mechanism, is that the boring frame is supported by four steel rods rather than a wooden frame that other machines rely on either entirely or in part. The Millers Falls name was cast into machines that they manufactured although some boring machines, such as the one purchased by the author, are identical to Millers Falls machines but have no markings, neither the Millers Falls name nor any other maker’s mark.

It is still possible, however, and even likely that unmarked boring machines like the author’s machine were made by Millers Falls given that the trademarks do not always indicate which company made the tool. Tool manufacturers have for a long time made tools to be sold under other companies’ tradenames, such as Sears’ Craftsman tools and Montgomery Wards’ Master Quality tools. It seems that none of the Craftsman and Master Quality tools were made by Sears and Montgomery Wards, respectively. For example, Craftsman planes are known to have been manufactured by Millers Falls, Sargent, and Stanley³,⁴,⁵,⁶,⁷,⁸,⁹. Even Stanley subcontracted the manufacture of planes to Sargent in Stanley’s early years of selling planes¹⁰. Sears and Montgomery Wards also had brand names for lesser quality tool lines; Fulton, Dunlap, and Merit for Sears and Lakeside for Montgomery Wards, which were also made by other companies.