BRM Flex-Hone® Tools: Made in the USA Surface Finishing Solutions

What does the Fourth of July mean to American manufacturers? Independence Day is about more than parades and fireworks, of course, but many shops are closed so that their employees can enjoy the summer holiday. Brush Research Manufacturing (BRM) is no exception here, but we’d like to use this important occasion to remind readers that Made in America craftsmanship is truly exceptional.

Over a half-century ago, a Canadian immigrant named Steve Rands came to Los Angeles, California to build a better life. As the founder of BRM, he invented a flexible honing tool for surface finishing and deburring cylinder walls. Today, some 55 years later, the Flex-Hone® is well-known worldwide. Available for any type or size cylinder, BRM ball hones have a long history of solving surface finishing challenges.

Flex-Hone® Technology

Self-centering, self-aligning to the bore, and self-compensating for wear, BRM cylinder hones feature abrasive globules that are permanently laminated to the ends of flexible nylon filaments. The surface finishing and deburring tool’s soft cutting action and low-temperature, low-pressure abrading process imparts a substantially flat or plateau finish with oil-retaining grooves for optimum lubrication.

Available in a wide variety of abrasive types, grit sizes, and diameters, flexible honing tools are trusted by manufacturers, machinists, metalworkers, engine mechanics, gunsmiths, and hobbyists. Built with a stiff, double-wire metal stem, Flex-Hone® tools mount in handheld electric drills, as well as production machinery such as transfer lines, robotic cells, and CNC machine centers.   

At manufacturing facilities across the United States and around the world, flexible cylinder honing tools are also used for edge blending and deburring, the process of removing cut, torn, folded, and jagged metal that’s produced during machining. Flex-Hone® applications include chamfering, which removes stress risers and micro-burrs that can interfere with machined components.  

Supply Chain Strength

Flexible honing tools are used in a range of industries, and by large manufacturers with names that many Americans would recognize.  Brush Research has grown since its founding in 1958, but is still a privately-owned company that builds and maintains strong relationships with its customers. Because BRM can react quickly to meet your needs, we do more than ship tools. We build supply chain strength. 

Today, all the tools we manufacture are Made in the USA, and we proudly employ 95 workers here in California. Through their hard work and commitment to quality, BRM also supplies hundreds of distributors across the United States and exports surface finishing solutions to more than 50 countries worldwide. From our consolidated headquarters in Los Angeles, BRM provides quick turnaround times on orders.

Our proximity to the Port of Los Angeles helps us to meet the needs of international partners, and our expertise in export shipping means that that we know how to deliver the brush tools you need – and when you need them. For more about our company and products, please visit the BRM website and watch this short YouTube video.

Enjoy July Fourth, everyone, and let’s celebrate Made in the USA manufacturing.