The Artist From Iowa Who Built One Of America's Most Trusted Machine Tool Companies.

In 1931, at the lowest point of the Great Depression, a commercial artist named Paul Clausing and his wife Hilda bought a tiny manufacturing building in Ottumwa, Iowa, with money from Hilda's family. Paul had no engineering degree. He had a South Bend lathe in his basement and the conviction that he could build a better one. Five years of contract manufacturing passed before the Clausing company shipped its first metal-turning lathe on June 8, 1936. What followed was a decade of steady growth fueled by precision engineering and wartime demand, interrupted by the worst flood in Ottumwa's recorded history and a sharp post-war recession that nearly bankrupted the operation. In 1950, the Atlas Press Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan, bought the Clausing business. Atlas was a national brand, the manufacturer behind much of the Sears Craftsman tool catalog. But Atlas had a reputation problem. Professional machinists considered its products hobbyist-grade. When Atlas tried to put its own name on the Clausing lathes, the machining community pushed back. They wanted Clausing iron. Within two decades, Atlas erased its own corporate identity entirely and renamed itself the Clausing Corporation. This documentary traces the full arc of Clausing Industrial, from the 1880s patent disputes that formed the Atlas Press Company, through the labor conflicts of the 1940s, the founding years in Depression-era Iowa, and the devastating 1947 flood. It covers the corporate acquisitions by the British 600 Group and the near-fatal £201 million pension crisis that threatened to bury the brand, and the 2022 sale to TJM Capital Partners that returned Clausing to American ownership. It also examines the specific machines that earned Clausing its reputation: the 5900 Series twelve-inch lathe with its Timken taper-roller bearings and Burnerd Multisize collets, the 8520 vertical knee mill with its two ten-thousandths spindle-taper run-out, the Colchester Student centre lathes that trained generations of machinists worldwide, and the Kalamazoo bandsaws and Metal Muncher ironworkers that anchored heavy fabrication shops. Today, the Clausing Service Center in Kalamazoo, Michigan, stocks over 73,000 distinct components and ships 95% of parts orders within 24 hours, including replacement parts for machines built more than 50 years ago. Paul Clausing died in Ottumwa on March 15, 1973. His brother Otto died in Warsaw, Indiana, on June 14, 1960. The machines they built are still running. Subscribe to Trade Archive for more stories about the companies, inventors, and machines that shaped the industrial world. Sources: Clausing, Don. "Clausing Lathes - A Personal History." Lathes.co.uk. Accessed 2026. https://www.lathes.co.uk/clausing/pag.... Kalamazoo Public Library. "Atlas Press Co." Local History Collections. Accessed 2026. https://www.kpl.gov/local-history/kal.... VintageMachinery.org. "Atlas Press Co. - History." Manufacturer Index. Accessed 2026. http://vintagemachinery.org/mfgindex/.... Pratt Burnerd America. "Atlas Workholding History." Accessed 2026. https://www.prattburnerd.com/atlas-wo.... The 600 Group PLC. Annual Report and Accounts for the Year Ended 30 March 2019. London: The 600 Group PLC, 2019. Reinsurance News. "PIC Agrees Buyout of The 600 Group's UK Pension Scheme Liabilities." July 2018. https://www.reinsurancene.ws/pic-agre.... PES Media. "600 Group Machine Tool Division Acquired by Private Equity Firm." April 2022. https://www.pesmedia.com/600-group-tj.... Clausing Industrial, Inc. Official Website. Accessed 2026. https://clausing-industrial.com/. Old Woodworking Machines. "Atlas Press Company - History of Woodworking Machines, Tools & Legacy." Accessed 2026. https://www.old-woodworking-machines.....