It would seem an unusual brand to counterfeit as files are not a high volume product. Tome Feteira are a respected brand these days as the old familiar brands have disappeared. If I was going to counterfeit files I think I would be stamping them with Vallorbe which is probably a more widely recognised brand. It may be worth an email to Tome Feteira with a picture to see if they recognise the branding as theirs from days gone by. If you could write it in Portuguese they may be impressed.

Mike

I don't know whether it's the same seller, but this example appears to show the same maker mark as yours, i.e. the logo with "Portugal" below it. I wouldn't have much reason to think it is counterfeit.

With some makers there is wide variation over time in the marks they use.

As Dave says, how do your files cut?

50 years ago Portugal was essentially a third world country; until the 1974 revolution it was controlled by a brutal and regressive dictatorship. Industrial processes (such as there were) relied on cheap labour with much hand work so I can well believe that the file shown is the genuine article.

Hi Mick,

I am guessing that they are probably genuine. I came to learn about them back in July 2016 from Dias Costa – a member of this forum from Portugal.

You will probably get a reply from Tomé Fèteira in due coarse once they are back from holiday. Out of curiosity, I too asked them when I saw your post. Perhaps Dias Costa also knows as he has their old files, I believe which were handed down to him over time.

As a result of discussion with Dias Costa, the late John S and I visited Tomé Fèteira in Portugal in 2016. Here is a link with pictures and some factory footage of our day trip to Lisbon.

A bit of recent history: the factory was purchased by Blu-Dan from Austria in 2005 and you can read about them here.

Ketan at ARC.

Edited By Ketan Swali on 30/04/2023 14:06:59

Hello Mick H and others following this thread,

Had an interesting response from André Santos- Tomé Fèteira this afternoon, which I would like to share:

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Nice to see that people still like to discuss about files. Let me see if I can help :

1. Logo – Our logo, as strange as it may seem, is a shirt collar. In the past Tomé Feteira had many different brands & logos, depending on the quality and the country of the buyer: Crown, Lion, 20, and of course the most famous and top quality Collar brand. Our files were known in many countries mostly by Collar brand ( English countries), Limas Cuello (Spanish countries) Limas Colarinho ( Portuguese speaking countries), Col ( French countries) etc. But beneath the logo was always written Tomé Fetéira, and Portugal. For the last 30 years, , as the logo does no longer resemble so much a shirt collar, we are known worldwide as Tomé Feteira Brand. The story is that during a board meeting, and after many hours of trying to find the right logo for the best quality files, one of the owners was fiddling with his fingers on his shirt collar, and Eureka !! …. he decided that the shirt collar would be the new logo….
2. Attached (edit – I will post tomorrow after converting the pdf images to jpg) are brand registrations from different countries and from different periods. Also advertisements and the guarantee certificate that was put in each box. All of them have the logo and Tomé Feteira Portugal written underneath. The new logo starts in the late 80´s.
3. New old stock is possible. We have over 500 thousand files branded with the old logo. Mostly files of odd sizes: 5”, 7”, 9”, 11” etc. or sizes over 16 “, or special files. These sizes production was stopped as an agreement between all manufacturers over 40 years ago. New old stock , would however now be delivered in new boxes. If sold in the past, the boxes should be like the ones in the attachment.
4. Is the file in the OP picture from us? Black rough tang is consistent with the period. Scratches from grinding the steel before the cutting, look less smooth than normal, but can be. Logo without Tomé Feteira written underneath is not normal, but sometimes happened. Below is a picture of a small rasp with a strange tang I found the other day and kept on my desk among with my pens. It shows only the logo and Portugal.

5. But mostly, what makes me question the origin is that the logo is badly stamped / stamped twice, causing a visually unpleasant result. At the time, and until the late 80´s all files were literally tested one by one, for hardness, for cutting and for visual imperfections. A file with such a bad logo normally would not have passed inspection and would not have been sold / exported. It would have been redirected for the local market of second quality files. But who knows? Does the file have a shiny finishing? Like a varnish? From that period files were protected against rust with a kind of coating/varnish made from pine tree resin.
6. Brand copying – Yes our brand has been copied since the beginning until today. People forget that outside Europe, files are still sold in volumes of hundreds of millions. 2 months ago I had a person writing from South Korea asking to buy directly from us a special diamond coated file. He sent the picture with our logo and name on the file. Well, we did not ever produce such a file. Somebody just put our name on it. Last year the same happened in China with our Silver Bullet Horse rasps. So it is also a possibility. But a recent copy for sure would exhibit the new logo.

Ketan, no definitive answer but I think this could help your friends at the forum

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Ketan at ARC.

André Santos- Tomé Fèteira referred to brand registration documents in his point 2. I have converted the pdfs to Jpeg and paste below. If you are unable to enlarge them from below links, they are also in album 'Tome Feteira' if you select photos under my name:

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Ketan at ARC.