Skil

Brand name of power tools

SKIL Power Tools is a brand of electric power tools and accessories located in Naperville, Illinois, United States. It is a subsidiary of Chervon, a company based in Nanjing, China. In an example of a genericized trademark, portable circular saws are often still called Skilsaws or Skil saws. Skil products include circular saws, cordless drill/drivers, cordless screw drivers, cordless tackers, cordless sealant guns, belt sanders, random orbital sanders, multi sanders, angle grinders, hammers, drills, mixers, jig saws, lasers and measuring tools, reciprocating saws, routers, and planers.

In the early 1920s, Edmond Michel, a French immigrant in New Orleans with a penchant for tinkering and inventing, watched a group of farmers hack away at sugar cane with large machetes. After observing the painstaking labor the workers went through, Michel began experimenting with how to mechanize the Machete. In 1923, Michel created a motorized machete, which had a saw blade mounted on carved wooden frame and powered with a motor taken from a malted milk mixer – the first electric handsaw. After reading about Michel’s new invention, Joseph Sullivan, a Minneapolis land developer, set out to find the New Orleans inventor. After deciding to go into business together, Michel and Sullivan moved to Chicago and opened the Michel Electric Handsaw Co. in 1924. After forming the company, six production models were made at $1000 each. Michel went to the new Atlantic City's Million Dollar Boardwalk to demonstrate the new tools, where the first portable electric saw was purchased for $160 by the Piers’ developer. In 1926, the Skil brand name was born after Michel left the company to pursue other ventures, and Sullivan changed the company name to Skilsaw, Inc.

After the Great Depression, In 1928, Skil released the Model E Skilsaw, the first generation saw with a worm drive. In 1937, Edward Sterba built the first Model 77 with a blade, considered the "workhorse on building sites". The 75th anniversary of the Model 77 was in 2012.

During World War II, Skil developed the PS 12 circular saw for military applications by mounting an air driven Thor motor on a worm driven saw for use in several types of construction. Manufactured in camouflage colors, with saw blade painted black and the body a greenish color, the saw worked just about everywhere, including underwater to cut piles or timbers. The Navy had Skil put this tool into a special camouflage box coated and sealed with plastic. When they were unable to get into a landing area, the unit would be dumped overboard and floated or dragged in for use on aircraft landing areas. In 1985, Skil's heavy duty and super duty tool lines were renamed "Skil/ Skilsaw Professional". By 1988, the company had achieved its goal. In 1991, the Emerson Electric Company and Robert Bosch GmbH entered into a joint venture by combining their power tool subsidiaries. In 1992, the new venture came to fruition as S B Power Tool Co. In 1996, after four years of the partnership, Robert Bosch GmbH took over complete ownership of Skil. On August 23, 2016, Chervon (HK) Ltd., a power tool manufacturer based in Nanjing, China, agreed to acquire the SKIL brand from the Bosch Power Tools division, which gave them control over the SKIL businesses in both North America and the European market.