Indianapolis, IN -- (SBWIRE) -- 06/24/2013 -- The Cole-Bar Hammer, a patented multi-tool created by an Indianapolis inventor and his late son, has attracted over $131,000 in manufacturing support via the crowd-funding site Kickstarter.com, making it the most funded hand tool ever via the site. Over 1,800 individual donors have backed the project on Kickstarter since it launched on April 24, 2013. Donors who have pledged at least $65 will receive a Cole-Bar of their own from among the first few thousand manufactured. The Cole-Bar combines a hammer, a crow bar, a demolition tool, angle measurement tool, ruler, a socket wrench and nail pliers.

“The Cole-Bar Hammer has been in development since 1997,” says Brandon Hyde, the inventor’s spokesperson. “We were fortunate enough to make it all the way to the finals of the DIY Network Cool Tools inventor’s challenge in 2009. But it’s funding via the Kickstarter campaign that is finally making this tool a reality. We thank God that almost two thousand do-it-yourselfers, contractors and tool fans have caught our vision for this project.”

Brandon Hyde continues, “Our original goal was $100,000. We met that goal in just 30 days, so we added a stretch goal of $125,000 to add a set of metric measurement guides to the Cole-Bar Hammer. We met our stretch goal over the weekend. It’s amazing, because $65 is a very generous pledge on Kickstarter. We expected a lot more supporters to come in below that amount, but it turns out that the vast majority of our backers want a Cole-Bar of their own. So in a way, the Kickstarter campaign has also served as a kind of market research for us.”

“Some of this funding will help finalize the design and fund the materials testing,” says Brandon. "We have some engineering issues to work out, and we want to investigate making a later version of the Cole-Bar Hammer in a high-end material like titanium. We’ve received a lot of requests for that. If everything goes as planned, we hope to take delivery of the first production run in late summer.”

The Cole-Bar Hammer was the brainstorm of Brandon’s father, Lance Hyde and Brandon’s brother, Cole, in 1997. Lance and Cole (who was eleven years old at the time) were putting an assortment of tools away at the end of a long day spent constructing a pole-barn. Wishing they had fewer tools to wrangle, the pair had a simultaneous brainstorm to combine a hammer with a crowbar. They even constructed a crude prototype.

Cole died in a tragic accident on their property just a few months later. Distraught over his loss, Lance Hyde shelved the multi-tool idea for several years. He later decided to move forward with the development of the tool in Cole’s memory, recruiting Cole’s older brother Brandon and his sister Heather to help with the development and take it to market. Lance Hyde was awarded a U.S. Patent for the multi-tool in 2011.

About the Cole-Bar Hammer
The Cole-Bar Hammer is a patented multi-tool that combines a hammer, crow bar, a demolition tool, angle measurement tool, ruler, a socket wrench and nail pliers. It is the first hand tool invention successfully funded via Kickstarter.com, raising over $131,000 from over 1,800 donors. Since its Kickstarter campaign launched, the Cole-Bar Hammer has been featured on several national home improvement shows and tool blogs, including “Popular Science Radio,” the “DIY Live” radio show with Karl Champley, and the “On The House” radio show with the Carey Brothers. Dan Maxey of the Tools in Action blog called it the “Optimus Prime of Hammers.”