The Shepherd Tool Company, a Canadian-based maker of hand tools and hand plane kits, stopped taking orders for its products and has gone out of business.

After weeks of speculation about the status of the company, its owners this week posted a statement on its Web site (www.shepherdtool.com) blaming its financial woes on rising production costs, high prices for materials, and under capitalization. Calls to the company’s offices were not returned and an email was sent back as undeliverable.  

Based in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, The Shepherd Tool Company was a boutique tool manufacturer best know for its reproduction infill hand planes based on the famous Norris-style and Spiers-style planes from the 19th-century.

The owner-operated company was launched around 2000 by Doug Evans and Ben Knebel, who shared the responsibilities of engineering Shepherd’s tools and plane kits, marketing their products, and managing the business operations. They also taught dozens of plane-making workshops at woodworking clubs and schools around the United States and Canada.

“I built the very first plane kit they ever came out with,” said Ernie Conover, a woodworking instructor who hosted one plane-making workshop at his school in Ohio. After students complained of problems with their orders and the products, Conover said he decided not to host their workshops again.

In 2004, roughly three years after releasing its first plane kit, Evans and Knebel visited the Fine Woodworking office to promote their products. After the magazine published an article on how to make one of its smoothing plane kits, we received similar complaints from customers who had not receive their orders for months despite having their credit cards charged. 

Evans and Knebel responded to those complaints noting that they had experienced “two major manufacturing problems” that put the company severely behind in its deliveries. (read more in the Knots forum) At the time, those problems were said to have been resolved. However, the latest statement on its Web site now suggest that the company continued to be plagued by production problems till the end.

Shepherd Tools said it will not reimburse customers who placed orders for products that were never fulfilled. “An apology is all we can offer those customers that (sic) may not have received their products,” the company said in its statement. “There are simply no funds — business or personal — available to do anything else at this time.”

The company ceased operations with about 25 orders unfulfilled, according to the statement. Its finished planes and hand plane kits sold for between US$300 and US$500.

The remaining company assets are being sold off, and interested buyers are being directed to Rick Whittacker, the general manager of the Wellington Waterloo community Futures development corporation, online at www.wwcfdc.com.

Updated on April 11, 2006
Originally Published March 27, 2006

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