Spalding & Day Tool & Die in Louisville, KY

OUR COMPANY HISTORY

HIGH QUALITY PRODUCTS + YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

Spalding Tool & die was founded in 1947 by Joe Spalding. Joe fought in WWII and when he came back he started the shop. Before the war, he was a toolmaker at the Reynold’s Company. Joe ran the shop until his death in 1968. My uncle, William Spalding, Joe’s brother, had started working for Joe sometime in the late ’50s and had hired my father, Jay Day, in 1960. Bill and Jay purchased the company from Joe’s estate in 1968. That is when the & Day was added to the name. I started working at an early age sweeping, then driving the truck, etc. when out of school. Starting full-time in 1979, I went through the apprenticeship program at S&D and became a toolmaker.

In 1984 I purchased my Uncle’s half of the company and partnered with my father. Sales were approx.. 450,000 in 1984. My father had a heart attack in 1985 and could not come back to work due to his health. The company continued to pay his salary until 1991 when I started the purchase of his half of the company. From the beginning, Spalding Tool & Die made tools for appliances, furniture hardware, and misc. other industries. In 1968 the company was approximately an 8-person shop. Joe never had more than 10 employees. My uncle and father got up to 26 employees in the early ’70s, however, by 1979 the company had 15 employees.

Right before my father had a heart attack, we hired James Geary. (Jim). Jim had worked at GE for 29 years, in tooling most of those years, and worked for us for 18 years. Jim was my mentor and is the person I credit for teaching me the basics of business and the principles of tool & die. From 1947-1967 the company was housed in two different locations on Preston Hwy. close to Eastern Parkway.

In 1968 the company was moved to Oaklawn drive, (an offshoot of Preston Hwy., and only approx. 5 miles south of its previous location. The Oaklawn location originally had 7200sq. ft, then an addition brought the total up to 12,000 sq. ft. In 2000 the company was moved to Aiken road in Middletown KY. The facility is approximately 26,000 sq. ft.

Starting in 1975 S&D dabbled in production. Production consisted of approximately 3-4 different parts. One for GE and the others for various industries. Ultimately the Oaklawn location had three presses used for production, 2-150 ton presses and 1-60 ton press. However, the main focus was on building new tooling. 1988 – First CNC machine In 2001 we were ask to run production for a customer. We started running seating component parts for the new Thunderbird that Ford re-introduced. This started us running additional production parts for various industries. We then took over an operation for the Muller Corporation from a plant they were closing down. this added to the production. When Porcelain Metals corp. closed down we took over what they were running for BSH. In 2015 the Illinois Ave. plant was purchased and production operations were sent there. AMC Manufacturing was founded and the production was split out of S&D to AMC in 2015.