American tool and automotive makers

A map of the shelves below, each with its own page. What this page adds is why a claim about a tool usually names a material rather than a step, and what TEKTON published about its own range.

Steel has a provenance and a tool is mostly steel

A tool is a simple object made of a material with a paper trail. Mills certify heats of steel, and a company that buys American steel can say which mill. That is a harder thing to be vague about than cloth, and it shows: 10 of the 33 tool records here carry a qualifier or say outright that it varies by product.

Those qualifiers are more often about where the steel came from than about where the grinding happened, which is the reverse of apparel, where the sewing gets named and the fabric does not.

The company that published its own percentages

TEKTON sells hand tools and does something no badge can do. It states what share of its product line is made in each country, by name, and then defines the term it is using.

Most of its range is not American. It says so, in numbers, on its own site, and then tells you to check the specification section of each product page to find out about the one in your hand. A company with a minority of its production in the United States publishing the majority that is not is being more useful to a careful shopper than a company with a flag in its footer.

It is recorded here as mixed, which is the label this directory uses when a company's own answer is that it depends on the item. All three of its statements, with the page and the date, are on where TEKTON tools are made.

Why automotive sits here

A garage is a workshop. The parts and the tools are bought by the same person for the same bench, and the claims behave the same way: a component is metal with a provenance, and the company either names it or does not.