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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$$er
September 2021 #13266 Page #142
The Last Word on Making the Cut Joe Kannapell, P.E.
W
hy did most of today’s saw technology come from small shops and not from large machinery companies? And how could just a handful of not well-known people, working in remote locations, make such a difference? Until recent years, they didn’t make much money. Most sold their businesses (and inventions) for unimpressive sums. Yet much of their genius lives on, in highly enhanced renditions of their original inventions. The first component saws came from outside manufacturers in the 1950s and early 1960s. Idaco came onto the scene through a logical entry point, being a sawmill equipment supplier in Northern California. Clary got involved through happenstance, as the saw business was totally unrelated to its main product line, mechanical calculators. But, besides making saws, Clary did take a (short lived) stake in the truss business, hiring Dan and Camilla Hurwitz (prior to their founding of OnLine Data), and moving them to Texas to leverage their cutting programs. The next significant cutting innovations came from inside our maturing business. Machinist Art DePauw worked with Dave Chambers’ and Don Hershey’s nearby truss plant. TPI Inspector Jerry Koskovich worked around saws at multiple plants, and then largely with Villaume Industries. Jim Urmson worked on his invention in the truss plant he operated.
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