Hand-finished in Ohio since 1978
ABC Widgets
We have made widgets in the same Ohio workshop since 1978 — in batches of forty, each one finished and inspected by hand before it leaves us.
Our standards
These are the decisions that shape how a widget is made here, and the reasons we've kept them.
Machining gets a widget close. The final shaping, finishing and checking are done by a person at a bench, because that stage is where the differences in feel and durability actually appear.
A run of forty is small enough that one maker can stay with it from start to finish. It keeps quality consistent within a batch and makes any variation easy to trace.
American black walnut, solid brass, oiled ash and waxed linen. We choose materials that wear in rather than wear out, and that can be refinished instead of replaced.
Each widget ships with a card naming the maker who finished it and the date it was completed. If anything isn't right, we can trace it back to the bench it came from.
Craftsmanship
Four stages, spread across roughly eleven days. Most of that time is spent waiting for finishes to cure properly.
Stage one
Boards are milled, rested for a week, then milled again. Timber moves as it settles, and we would rather it did so before we start.
Stage two
Components are cut, fitted and adjusted by hand. Tolerances are held to 0.02mm, checked against a reference sample kept at each bench.
Stage three
Sanded through four grits, then two coats of oil with a full cure between them. The second coat is what gives the surface its depth and its resistance to marking.
Stage four
Every widget is measured, handled and checked under daylight-balanced light. The maker signs the card, and only then does it go into its sleeve.
We will service or refinish any widget we have made, whenever you need it. Some of the ones that come back to us were made before the people who repair them were born.
In use
Many of our customers have bought from us for more than a decade. These are their words, used with permission.
We compared eleven suppliers before choosing ABC. Six years on we haven't replaced a single unit, and the finish has held up better than anything else we've bought.
Marguerite OkonjoThe build quality was clear as soon as we unpacked them. What we didn't expect was the service — we sent one back for refinishing after four years and it came home looking new.
Devin Ashcroft-BellWe order a small number each year. The weight and the finish are consistent from batch to batch, which matters more to us than the price does.
Priya RaghunathanJournal
Notes on materials, process, and the reasoning behind how we make things.
Materials
We buy from a small mill four hours from the workshop and have done for thirty years. This is what we check before a board is accepted — grain direction, moisture content, how it has been stacked — and why those three things decide most of what follows.
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Inside ABC
340 feet from door to door. Rough milling happens at the front, assembly and shaping in the middle, and hand-finishing at the back under the north windows. Here is what takes place at each stage, and why the order matters.
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Process
One coat is faster and, for most purposes, adequate. We have applied two since 1991. This explains what the second coat contributes to durability and surface feel, and why we think it justifies the extra day of curing time.
Read moreAbout us
ABC Widgets was founded in 1978 by Arthur B. Calloway, in a small workshop in Ohio that we still use today. The name is simply his initials. He began with one bench and a straightforward standard: make each widget properly, and do not send it out until it is right.
We have grown since then. There are now four hundred and six of us across eleven buildings, and we make more widgets in a year than Arthur made in a decade. We still work in batches of forty, still finish every widget by hand, and still put the maker's name in the box.
We are not the largest widget manufacturer in Ohio and have never set out to be. What matters to us is that a widget bought here in 1985 can still be serviced, refinished and used today. A good number of them are.
Arthur B. Calloway, founder, 1978–2009
