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The Stanley Rule & Level Company purchased the well known and well established business of the John S. Fray Co. of Bridgeport, Connecticut, in April 1909. With that acquisition, Stanley added bit braces, hand drills, and breast drills to its product line. Fray's primary business was bit braces, and the hand and breast drills were a complimentary product.
When Stanley purchased it, the J. S. Fray Company was offering a combined total of nine hand and breast drills. They were numbered 1 through 9. Seven of these drills were breast drills and the remaining two were hand drills. (Fray's no. 3 and no. 4 model hand drills were discussed in my article on "Stanley Hand Drills - The Beginning, " The Chronicle 60, no. 3 [2007]: 129132). The two hand drills (nos. 3 and 4) and two of the seven breast drills (nos. 5 and 6) used Herbert Lanfair's August 13, 1895, patent which included a three-jaw chuck (Figure 1).
The Fray line was immediately offered by Stanley and consisted of breast drills nos. 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Model nos. 3 and 4 were the hand drills. At first, Stanley sold these drills that were in the inventory of the Fray factory. There was one important change, however; these early Fray/Stanley breast drills were stamped with the "Stanley...