What To Know Before Buying Stanley Power Tools

Sometimes, companies fail to innovate and are eventually lost to history and nostalgia, or worse, become part of a package of brands and patents sold to the highest bidder. Innovation rarely makes tools disappear, though, and companies like Stanley can continue to make world-class hand tools after being subsumed into a toolmaking mega-brand. In the case of Stanley, the mega-parent company is Stanley Black & Decker, owner of brands like DeWalt, Craftsman, Irwin, and Cub Cadet. 

So when you start looking around for Stanley power tools, you won't find a lot: mostly middling workshop and portable vacuums, a smattering of job site infrastructure items you might not consider power tools (like work lights and heaters), along with a much-unloved power station, car battery charger, garage door opener, or tire inflator. The hand tools that made the Stanley brand are still in evidence. Stanley hand planes, despite once being ubiquitous, are still shockingly collectible. These days, Stanley touts its perennial favorite tape measure lineup, which features the much-loved PowerLock and FatMax models. It would be fair to call the hand planes and tape measures legendary, but what about the handful of power tools?