The Manset Boatyard, and later as the Henry R. Hinckley Company, made most of the hardware for their vessels in their own shop. Willis Ballard produced illustrations of their hardware the old fashioned way too. Working in the days before computer generated or touched up images, Ballard photographed hundreds of hardware pieces and then painstakingly isolated each item against a white background by hand, using a brush dipped in white paint. However imperfect the images seem in their original size, they were beautiful when the photographs were reduced to produce catalogue pages. Some of the hardware was used just on Hinckley boats and some was sold at the company’s Manset Marine Supply Company in the old Clark and Parker store building on Clark Point. The library has 60 Ballard negatives illustrating Hinckley hardware.
"1940 - Henry [Henry R. Hinckley (1907-1980)] starts the Manset Marine Supply Company to distribute marine supplies, engines and equipment to the many small yards springing up along the coast, as well as to his own boatyards. Dissatisfied with the quality of some commercial fittings, Hinckley designs many fittings that are still used by the company today. Among these items are fuel tanks, stanchions, deck plates, bow and stern chocks, pulpits and lead keels." - “The Hinckley Company History,” The Hinckley Company web site, 2000, Accessed online 11/20/2010; http://www.hinckleyyachts.com/employment/about_us2.html
“Hinckley Hardware Photographs Produced by Willis Ballard,” Southwest Harbor Public Library, accessed April 20, 2024, https://swhpl.digitalarchive.us/items/show/10099.Item 14107
