It’s cutting edge technology at E&S Tool & Die in Providence, but not in the way we’ve come to think of it in the computer age. As a designer of dies used by manufacturers for castings of everything from government medals and union pins to badges, belt buckles and key tags, E&S has done a little of everything – even the casts for the coasters on Air Force One.
“There probably isn’t a president I haven’t done something for since Nixon,” said E&S owner and founder Stephen Richardson.
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Yet, despite some pretty prestigious accounts, Richardson said the loss of one major customer would put him out of business – in a trade that grows continually smaller.
“There have been three or four times when we’ve had to ask ‘What are we going to do? Are we going to go work for somebody else?'” Richardson said. “There used to be maybe two dozen die companies in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Now it’s down to six or seven. Everyone who does this type of work is in his sixties to eighties. They’re all dead, or they’re retired.”
The machines Richardson uses to do his work – built in the 1930s and 1940s – are older than he is.
Richardson, who is 46, started making dies when he was 19 years old. A neighbor owned a die shop – the Henry Evers Company – that employed 22 people.
“I was always good with working with my hands,” he said. “After high school I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”
Richardson spent a summer at the company, and subsequently went through its training program. He remained at Henry Evers until he started his own shop (with former partner Edward Black – E&S stands for Ed and Steve) in 1987.
Wife Rita is not only Richardson’s sole co-worker, she’s a fan.
“He can take something from a flat piece of artwork and turn it into a three dimensional design,” she said. “It’s amazing to me how he does it.”
Six years ago, Rita started helping out with the business by keeping the books and working with clients. Today, she cuts dies alongside her husband, keeping an intense schedule that often entails working a seven-day week. She doesn’t mind the long hours.
USING IMAGE enhancing lenses, Richardson concentrates on the cutting process.
“It’s interesting,” she said. “Every single day is different. You don’t have the same routine all the time.”
Clients give the Richardsons the piece of camera-ready artwork they would like to have made into a medal casting. The art is then enlarged and a plastic pattern is made in the reverse of the image. Then either Richardson or his wife guides the cutting tool on the pantograph machine by tracing the outlines on the plastic pattern. Three-dimensional modeling, if required, is added after this process. The final step is a heat treatment for the steel block to make the image hard enough for casting.
Projects can take anywhere from a couple of hours for a simple coin to several weeks for more detailed pieces.
Stephen Richardson said that today there are computer-run machines that can make a die from start to finish with no person necessary to monitor the process.
“It doesn’t come out as sharp or as good as what you can do by hand,” he said.
But technology is not the only threat to Richardson’s business.
“Most of the industry now is overseas,” he said.
Production abroad may be less expensive, but Richardson said he still sees a demand for products made in the U.S.A.
Business has been steady for the past year, and while Richardson would love to hire an additional worker, “I would hate to hire somebody and then not have any work,” he said.
Richardson said he would like to educate others in his dying craft, but that teaching someone on his busy production schedule would be difficult. Also, in the past, Richardson has taken apprentices only to see them turn into competitors.
“It’s a cut-throat business,” he said.
The Richardsons hope their own children – two teenaged sons – will go on to college. But despite hardships, Richardson has no regrets about the career he chose at the suggestion of a neighbor.
“After all these years, at least I picked something that I still like,” he said. “On the one hand, it’s pretty long hours, but on the other hand, I would never get to see her [Rita] if we didn’t work together.
“We like coming in here,” Rita Richardson agreed.
