Snow & Nealley moves to Brewer
Friday, April 20, 2007 - Bangor Daily News

The tools that last for generations still are being made on Wilson Street in Brewer. The headquarters for Snow & Nealley, a toolmaking company formed along the Penobscot River in 1864, and its manufacturing facility have moved into a building located behind the House of Hunan. "We never closed," Barbara Grindle, accountant for the company, said Wednesday, standing inside the manufacturing portion of the building.

It’s true that the remaining seven employees were let go in 2003, but a blacksmith was hired to continue making the company’s high quality axes and mauls, and soon after, former employee Leroy Wood was rehired to continue the 143-year toolmaking tradition.

During the cutback, the company stopped producing its line of garden tools, "and now we do the axes and mauls," Grindle said. "That’s all we do."

The top-of-the-line garden tools were "very expensive and people weren’t willing to pay the price," she said.

Snow & Nealley makes 10 different types of axes and mauls that still are available locally and through catalog sales under several company names, Grindle said. Maine Military Supply on Wilson Street and Van Raymond Outfitters on South Main Street are two Brewer businesses that carry the line.

Charles Snow and Edward Nealley started the company back in the mid-1800s when they sold tools directly to farmers and lumbermen out of its former Exchange Street headquarters. From there, the company moved to a building on the Main Road in Hampden, then back to Bangor in 1997 where the company began making and showcasing its line of garden tools.

The company was owned and operated by four generations of the Nealley family until it was purchased by local businessman Christopher Hutchins in October 1998.

"He feels strongly" about keeping the Maine tradition alive, Grindle said. "He loves his ax and he’s proud of his axes."

Wood, a blacksmith, and Sean Sevigny, who handles shipping, production and engineering for the three-employee company, work together to make and package the approximately 8,000 to 9,000 axes and mauls created on a yearly basis.

The walls of the offices are up but still need to be painted before Grindle moves into the new space.

"A lot of local people will like to see that we’re" still making tools, she said.

Friday, April 20, 2007 - A copyright story from the Bangor Daily News.