Marshalltown Trowel's User Friendly Handle

For a short period, Marshalltown Trowel made a plastic composite they called a User Friendly Handle, or UFH. As told by the reader from Northern Ireland who submitted these photos, he saw a trowel with one of these handles around 1996, but they were no longer available new. He found one on eBay several years ago. The User Friendly Handle was a black soft PVC sleeve over hardwood, with an attached black polymer bumper. The User Friendly Handle was replaced by the red DuraSoft handle.

User Friendly Handle brochure

Marshalltown brick trowel with User Friendly Handle

Mutzig-Framont, Alsace

Mutzig-Framont was a hardware manufacturer in Mutzig, Alsace. Mutzig was in Germany from 1871 until 1918-19, and has been in France since then. According to one history, the firm was founded in 1873 and closed in 1932.

Mutzig-Framont's products lines were divided into hardware and coffee grinders, with separate factories and catalogs for each. While more coffee grinders than tools survived, some tools can be found on eBay in France and elsewhere.

Postage stamps with Mutzig-Framont tools
Mutzig-Framont patents
Études statistiques sur l'industrie de l'Alsace, Volume 1, 1879
French trowels on display at Maison de l’Outil

Mutzig-Framont factories

1879 article

Mutzig-Framont trowel 

Cornelius Whitehouse and Sons, Ltd.

This link is to a scanned Cornelius Whitehouse and Sons, Ltd. catalogue, dated January 1952, of Cannock Edge Tool Works, Cannock, England. Cornelius Whitehouse made a full line of masonry tools, from brick hammers and bolsters to 10 styles of trowels.

Grace's Guide has a page on this firm.