TITAN visits Master Tool Maker "Tom Lie Nielsen"

Recently, I had the privilege to go to Maine, USA and speak at the National H-TEC Conference for Educators. And you know me. While I was there, I had to see who was doing it big in American manufacturing. Check this out. It is a bright, sunny day right here in Warren, Maine. And we're about to go check out Lee Nielsen Tool Works. These guys make high-end woodworking tools right here in America. They got an amazing operation. I'm excited. Let's go check these guys out. I've been in business for 35 years making high-quality woodworking hand tools. To me, making things was a very normal part of life. The boat shop that I grew up around, my father started because he loved boats and he loved sailing. There's a honesty about it, but there's also an unadorned beauty. It's not dressed up with a lot of unnecessary stuff. My tools today look a lot like that. You must be Tom. Yes. Tom, very nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. We source as much as we can from Maine, keeping it as local as we can, because I think it's the right thing to do to support people who live here in your own community. So you guys just build woodworking tools. Pretty much everything for hand tool furniture making. 35 years you've been doing this, making your products in the USA. I have been very much about not only made in America, but made in Maine. Some of the things that I've designed differently than the original tools, typically my tools are heavier. Blades are a lot thicker, which I think makes a lot of sense. They're harder and tolerances are better and so forth. I need to show you a Titan size tool. Oh, a Titan size tool. I love it. This is the big boy. It's number eight. And this is built the same as the smoothing plane, but it's very long. And that's for flattening things. So this was the first tool that we set up on the CNC. When I was able to bring this out, this was a game changer for the company, this particular tool. I hired more people and in a couple of years got another CNC. We're beginning to see that these new machines are going to be more efficient and certainly more accurate than the machines we have. And that's why you can say Lee Nielsen are some of the best tools in the entire world. Exactly. Made in Maine. Made in Maine. USA. Love it. Most of the tools that we make are based on castings. So there's a cast body on various parts that go together. Castings come from the foundry rough. The first step is to take them and machine the base and typically the sides flat and square with one another and we call that prep. So this is a rough casting as we get it. Base and sides need to be machined and we buff it all over and then we powder coat it and it's ready to be machined in the CNC. So this is the one that we were using earlier? The same one? Yep. You can see, you know, we're being careful on the edges. We're rounding the edges a little bit. You don't want sharp corners. You guys are just touching it already. It feels good. It's also ductile iron which is unbreakable. In the machine shop, we do a lot of work. Most of the work is done with CNC machinery. We'll machine the body. We'll machine the cap and the part that the blade sits on which we call a frog and any other related parts. We're checking for quality at every stage. So Titan, this is the main shop. We built this in 2004-2005. We recently added another 2,500 square feet so this is 10,000 altogether under one roof. So instead of building another building, I built an addition to the main shop. The upshot has been really nice. It's only been a few months now but we have a lot more room in the shop. There's less dust, less noise, and less confusion. How many new CNC machines have you bought in the last couple years? 12 in the last eight months. The shop has been transformed and the CNC's are a big part of that. They're all running. They're all running. That's the best part. They better be. So you must have a good foreman like who handles your manufacturing. Let me introduce you. Awesome. Titan, this is George Stevens. George, how are you man? Good, very good. How are you? Heard a lot about you. My wife and I, we watch Titan at night. It was a big part of why we purchased a lot of these houses because we saw other people out there doing things that we want to do. How long you been doing it? I've been since 1984. I went to a voc school four years. They have it in Massachusetts. I got into an apprenticeship for a tool and die. You see the precision, the perfection, right? I studied with a lot of the best old craftsmen and I came up here and Tom and I got together and he said, we're going to change this and I want you to be part of it. And I said, okay, and it has in four years. I'm really lucky to have a very experienced machinist. I wish you'd been here a long time ago. Tom is the same cutter as Gene Haas and Titan. They strive for perfection. They believe in what they do and in their product. A common comment that people made, which was, oh, they don't make them like they used to. And that was certainly true. Most of the tools that we were selling that were quality tools were coming from abroad, England, Germany, Japan. And even those weren't as good as they had been in the past. I have the utmost respect for a man who in 35 years has never abandoned manufacturing in America. And that alone, that's what you call integrity. I've definitely learned from my father how important the hard work, perseverance, sort of do it yourself. He, you know, is really responsible for this huge resurgence in hand tool woodworking. When you look at Lee Nielsen's commitment to quality, respecting the tradition, but also honoring innovation and room for improvement in the tools, that that's where he's really succeeded beyond most people's imaginations. Through and through the most important thing as a core value is feeling committed to a cause and a group of people surrounding that cause and supporting education and craft with organic materials that you can just go get by going outside and shape with something that's in your hand. That's something that keeps us coming back more. We're doing a variety of small tools today. These are little spokeshaves, very small, delicate. We make two or three hundred of these at a time. Okay. We're also experimenting for the first time with some radically different ways of holding things, tool holding, pallet systems. This little, little bronze block plane, and we've just done the machining on the inside. We're experimenting with batch sizes, experimenting with work holding techniques and a whole variety of different concepts here. If we can hold things in one setup and do a number of operations to it, it's going to make a better part. We want to be able to have the customer with the best product, the best quality, and also keep the cost down. So this is actually one of the blades. Machining a blade out of A2 tool steel. Okay. We use almost exclusively A2, but we also cryogenically treat all of our blades. Okay. So after heat treatment, put in 320 degrees below zero for 12 hours. What does that do exactly to the metal? It improves the quality of the hardened steel, and we're trying to make the best blade we can to hold an edge the longest. Quality and, you know, making sure everything is tested, making sure somebody actually looks at it, it doesn't just go through the assembly line, is very important. And this is where you do all your grinding on this side? Yes, we have 25 grinders. We're grinding castings, we're grinding the plane bodies. We're grinding for fine finish, and even on this length, within a thou and a half flatness. Oh, that's awesome. We grind the sides square, within a half a thou. These tools are sometimes used on their sides to make square cuts, that's important. Most of our grinders are doing blades. We make about a thousand blades a week, all different sizes. So over in this area, we are doing some deburring around the edges to ease the edges, so they're not, you know. We have a lot of handwork that goes into our tools. The kind of shaping that you need to do, and smoothing to make things really look good, as well as, you know, to get them to a brilliant shine. We want to have the best that we can possibly get. Assembly is the final place where we do quality checks. Tools are assembled basically one by one. Making things function well, and making things beautiful to, you know, be the best tool out there is all part of the package. Now that we've looked through the whole machine shop, the CNC area, the manual area, grinding, polishing, and assembly, it's not all work. Some of it's kind of fun around here, so I have something else I really like to show, and that's axe throwing. Check this out. Now this is real metalworking. Metalworking is right. Check it out. You're gonna give this thing to me? You trust me with that? I'm gonna show you how to throw it. Okay, so hold it with your thumbs out. I'd like to take a step back over your shoulders, let me see. Where's that machine shop for me? George, calling you out. So Tom, thank you so much. I mean, I had a blast today. You guys are doing it big right here in Warren, Maine. Woodworking tools. Lee Nielsen, 35 years strong, making it all your parts right here in America. You got a great crew, got a great company. Come on, let's play, man. Let's dance, baby. Let's dance. Just don't throw it behind you. Yeah, right. All right. What kind of advice do you have to guys out there going through that grind that you and I both know is the toughest thing to ever go through? Perseverance and imagination and thinking outside of the box to solve problems in your business, that solution you may not have any idea about. Nice. That was good. Drop the mic and walk away right now, baby. My customers didn't know that they had a problem when I started because they were looking, but they didn't know what they were looking for. Thank you, Titan. Thank you, man. Awesome. American Manufacturing. Yes. Warren, Maine. Yeah. We do not throw axes in Cali, man. This is awesome.