Made In The USA: Borroughs

As always, these are free to read for all subscribers

set the controls for the heart of the fifties

I spent my youth in the twilight of the old days, of the old ways, driving parts and body panels in a 1984 Ranger between dusty old cinderblock buildings with mechanical timeclocks and sicky overhead lightning. I stood in wooden-paneled offices to receive paper checks, made respectful requests to use rotary-dial phones so I could check in with my boss. I heard the noises of men hard at work: sighs, grunts, the occasional peal of rueful laughter at a bolt that wouldn’t unstick or a customer whose requests were derived more from fantasy than fact. I looked forward to the day when I would stop driving a parts truck, stop being a seventeen-year-old, stop being excluded from the company of men.

Ah, but the world changed before I could get there. Ross Perot’s prophecy of a “giant sucking sound” was fulfilled and then some. The factories left, the massive buildings where men made things were reduced to mere way stations for things made by better and more competitive (certainly cheaper) people overseas. Work became amorphous, hard to grasp, feminine in many senses, office-based. You could work a whole lifetime and never do anything that your son or daughter could understand, largely because you didn’t truly understand it yourself. The definition of “American company” went from “a company that makes things here” to “an office where foreign products are marketed and advertised”.

This past Tuesday, however, I went back in time. I drove my F-250 to Kalamazoo, Michigan and stood in the wood-paneled office of the Borroughs Corporation. An old-school phone with extensions printed on various backlit buttons was there to greet me, along with oil paintings of the company officers. The building smelled old, it felt timeless, I was seventeen years old again. I felt nervous, like I was waiting for someone to come yell at me for being late.

Which eventually happened, because I was late. I’d ordered a custom-colored workbench from Borroughs two weeks ago, only to be told that the custom color would be six months.

“I’ll take black, then,” was my reply. Six hours later they told me to come get it. But I couldn’t come get it until ten days later. It weighed 209 pounds and was placed in my Ford’s bed after considerable negotiation; the forklift driver was at lunch and his supervisor didn’t want to drive the machine in his absence, due to union rules. In the end they made an exception and the 6’ x 2’ cardboard box was placed in my Line-X bed with the delicacy of a master chef garnishing a plate.

Nobody is in a hurry at Borroughs. There is no kaizen that I can see. There are places where welding is happening, where stamping is happening, where loading and storing could happen. It’s all intermixed. People walk slowly, speak slowly.

My workbench cost $649. More than twice what the Chinese stuff at Lowe’s costs, and half again as much as the USA-made ULINE workbench that I suspect is actually a Borroughs workbench with a cheaper top. (More on ULINE next week). Shipping it would have cost $362, thus my decision to go get it. My time isn’t worth much at the moment.

golden ratchet not included

Once home, I had to admire the precision with which the workbench had been packed. It would be difficult to damage in any sort of shipment or abuse. The bags of small parts were clearly labeled, the directions were obviously written by a native speaker of English. This would be a breeze.

In their unconscious evocation of a bygone era, Borroughs also assumes that their customers are traditional American men. There are no tools included. You need to drill the wooden top yourself. If you mess it up… you can buy another one. Thankfully, we did not mess it up, my son and I.

lowe’s will sell you an MDF top of course

The wooden top was gorgeous, chock-full of pieces that wouldn’t disgrace the neck of a Stratocaster guitar or Fodera bass. I was thankful that I hadn’t accidentally drilled all the way through, and rueful at the drilling to come: for a bench grinder, a vise, a knife sharpener, a small jig for cutting tubes, other things. There’s a full ten inches of adjustment possible. Leveling is done with a 13mm wrench on the absurdly high-quality feet.

i… i got work to doooo. i got work to do. i got a job, baby!

The table is a nice match to my Vyper chair although I think I’ll also get a bar-height stool for detail work. It’s sturdy, with not much wobble and a clear limit to said wobble. There’s no reason to think it won’t outlast me.

In the year to come, I’ll have a lot to do on this workbench. Quite a few jobs deferred from the past six months. Parts to drill and adjust and polish and repair. The first time I scar or score the top I won’t feel good about it. Perhaps by the tenth time I’ll have come to a sort of peace with the situation.

I don’t think I have what it takes to work at Borroughs, and it’s awfully far away. But I feel good knowing that it exists. Still making things right here, making them correctly, making them to last. For all the work I have left to do in my life. None of it with the dignity or simplicity of what I saw thirty-plus years ago. Worthwhile nonetheless. If you need a workbench, storage rack, or similar stamped-steel device, you could do a lot worse than Borroughs. Think of it as a link to the past.