The big tool-making companies gave Dan Gibbs the brush off. Turned his idea right down. After all, he was a carpenter, not an inventor. Granted, he was a good carpenter, a union tradesman with years of experience, but with no background in tool design, no track record, what did he know?

He was shown the door.

Gibbs couldn’t blame them. He still doesn’t. In fact, Gibbs - a nice guy, definitely not one to bad talk - won’t even give the names of the companies that dismissed him. Actually, he still seems more surprised than let down. If they did not want in on his tool, that he felt would soon be an industry standard - an essential in every carpenter’s tool bucket - so be it.

That was five years ago. It was now a Friday afternoon in early June, and Gibbs, standing inside the garage at his Town of Summit home, was talking about his rejections with remarkable good humor. He smiled and shrugged, hands raised, palms up, in the manner of, “you can only bring a horse to water, right?”

“There is a quote I like,” Gibbs continued, “It goes something like, ‘A man who doesn’t take a chance, has no chance.’ I believe that.”

It was in this garage that Gibbs retreated and first began bending some scrap aluminum into a prototype of his idea. Bit by bit, it began taking shape. He got some more heavy-duty aluminum and welded that together. He got a little closer. In just a few months, he had successfully crafted what he imagined.

That, it turned out, was the easy part. He spent the next three years passing it through the U.S. patent office. (A brutally slowly process, he added, and one he can’t speak of, ostensibly, without lowering his head in a mournful shake).

“And it wasn’t like there was another tool like mine,” Gibbs said. “It’s the first of its kind.”

Finally, the patent was approved. (Gibbs has a plaque of the document proudly hanging in his house. At the bottom, the patent simply reads: “Daniel B. Gibbs: Inventor.” The bestowed title appears official and lofty all at once, like an occupation on a business card in a Jules Verne book).

Gibbs motioned to racks of his final product - now professionally crafted by Holland Manufacturing in Dousman - neatly hung along his garage wall. It appeared simple enough: a thin, silver cylindrical shaft, about 2-feet long, with a series of holes running down it, like an adjustable walking cane. Two flat U-shaped prongs protruded from the ends.

Gibbs held one up with both hands, not because it was heavy, but more in a ceremonious presentation, his dream made tangible. Engraved in it was the tool’s name: Framespreader.

“It sets doorframes,” he said.

Okay, that doesn’t sound too exciting for the 99.9 percent of us that will never set a doorframe in our lives. (And to describe in detail here would be even duller). But to carpenters, Gibbs swears, it makes all the difference.

Here’s his rapid-fire explanation: In construction, the door frame is installed first. Then any final studs go up, then the drywall. Lastly, the finish carpenters come in to hang the door, only to discover many times that it doesn’t fit in the opening.

What comes next isn’t surprising: a flurry of expletives. “Everything has to be torn down and the doorframe reset,” he said.

It can cost hundreds of dollars, thousands on bigger jobs, Gibbs said. But it’s more than the loss of profit and valuable time to him. “There is the loss of your company’s reputation,” he said. “There is the loss of your own reputation.”

(Gibbs’ hard emphasis on that last point makes you instantly want to apologize to him for being such a terrible hack - although you may not have built anything with your own two hands, ever).

The Framespreader removes the guesswork, he said, accurately holding the doorframe dimensions, “within 5,000th of an inch,” during installation.

Gibbs picked up a short length of 2-by-6 with triangular notches in each end. “OLD TOOL” was handwritten across it. “This is what most carpenters currently use for the job,” he said, holding it like a prop to some joke. “A piece of scrap lumber cut into a guide. How accurate is that going to be?”

Gibbs was right. Compared to the sleek Framespreader made of aircraft aluminum - “the toughest aluminum out there,” he noted - the old tool looked like what primitive man used to set doors on caves.

Carpenters are a stubborn bunch, Gibbs admitted - and he’ll lump himself in there too - but since his company G Tools began offering the tool on his Web site, www.framespreader.com, hundreds have been sold all over the United States.

For now though, Gibbs, 41, hasn’t quit his day job with John Beres Builders in New Berlin, where he has worked as a finish carpenter for 21 years. But he has more inventions percolating in the hopper. What those are, however, he won’t let on.

Gibbs then told a story about overhearing a couple carpenters using the Framespreader on a job recently. They didn’t know Gibbs or that this was his invention. “They loved it,” he said. “One guy actually said, ‘I bet the guy who thought of this is in the Bahamas right now.’ ”

Gibbs recalling this, burst into a long laughter that faded into a smile. His eyes remained lit up, still sparkling, although in the shadow of his garage.

“The Bahamas?” he said. “Not yet baby, not yet.”

Matthew Heislen, Owner
~ Heislen Designs

Mark Beres, President
~ John Beres Builders, Inc.
~ A Union Company