Rededa

[Tomdhu]

First post -here goes!

I have acquired a Rededa No3 in remarkably good condition and have started to renovate it completely. I am most interested to learn about the history of the brand, the manufacturer and where they were made.

Have tried Google and various other forums but so far have been unable to turn up anything. Can anyone assist?

[Job and Knock]

"Rededa" was the trade name of Charles Neil & Co. of Sheffield. They were certainly in business making G-cramps, sash cramps, woodworkers vices, etc from the late 1920s until the mid 1960s because I have documents showing that some of their products were offered by Wadkin (the machinery manufacturer) between at least 1928 and until at least 1950 and I've recently seen a 1965 photo of the it Bridge Street works. I think I can recall them advertising in The Woodworker in the late 1960s a well, but that might just be a bit of brain fade setting in! Two things I can say for certain is that they used to paint their products bright red (sort of logical given their name) and that having owned a few of their products their quality wasn't quite up to the standards of the three leading manufacturers of the day (1950s/60s) namely Record (C & J Hampton), Paramo (Fred Paramore & Co) and Woden (The Steel Nut & Joseph Hampton Ltd and later on Woden Tools Ltd). The castings were noticeably rougher and the machining coarser. During WWII (1942 to 1946) they would have switched to war works because the Ministry of Supply gave the sole contract for vice making to Hampton's until major bombing of Sheffield caused a rethink and Paramore's, who owned a foundry elsewhere in the city, at Chappeltown (actually a cast iron grate and rain goods founder at the time, having set up in about 1905), were awarded a shadow contract. Paramo subsequently turned into a tool manufacturer and acquired other makers including W H Clay (screwdrivers and small tools) in the 1970s

After WWII there was a major regeneration in the British tool making industry with heavy demand for many products. There were also a lot of educationsl supply contracts with crafts training being an important part of the secondary modern and technical high schools corriculums at the time, not to mention a major adult education programme aimed at reskilling ex-forces personnel It was a boom time for manufacturers. In the 1960s, though, the market diminished considerably. There was a general contraction in the building trades (the post war public sector boom having diminished as well as the war damage replacement programmes having come to an end), so many smaller works found it harder and harder to compete. The loss of captive markets in th Empire combined with growing competition from the Far East (Japan and Taiwan) put the smaller tool makers in particular under pressure and many of them simply couldn't survive and were either taken over or simply failed. Which in part explains the demise of Sheffield as a tool making centre. In that context the demise of Neil's was almost inevitable. Even Paramore, a much larger firm, finally closed their foundry in 1981 (but kept making tools) and eventually succumbed in 2001 or so whilst Record, who'd bought Woden Tools in 1961 and merged or bought out through the 1960s te firms of William Ridgway, Joseph Marples and Gilbows subsequently became part of Bahco and after a number of changes of ownership are now an operating division of Rubbermaid (American) and no longer manufacture in the UK

A little bitty, I know, but I had to scratch my head a bit to try and recall what little I knew of Rededa, so apologies if myt recollections are a little inaccurate in places. If you want more info you might want to try the Sheffield Forum or possibly contact the industrial museum at Kelham Island in Sheffield

[Tomdhu]

Much obliged to you J&K. That is a very useful response and now opens up the path for further research.
Regards Tom

[Job and Knock]

The photograph I referred to is here. As you can see from the pemises they weren't a large firm