Workers at Manchester Tool Co. said Wednesday they never anticipated the small manufacturer's new owner would want to shut the place down.

Orders were strong for steel and carbide products made at the metal-cutting toolmaking company, they said. About 67 members of the United Steelworkers have been working an extra hour two days a week, a half-day on Saturdays and sometimes Sunday work, too.

Plant management hired two supervisors in the past seven weeks. The union said plans were being made to hire eight more workers for a third shift at the New Franklin facility.

And then executives from parent company Kennametal came in Monday and told union leaders they needed to close the 100-employee company on Manchester Road to save $3.4 million annually, say two USW local officials who are also longtime employees at Manchester Tool. Plans are to shift steel products to a Kennametal factory in Virginia and carbine products to one in Tennessee, they said.

When Kennametal of Latrobe, Pa., bought Manchester Tool early this year, ''we
thought that was great,'' said John DeVaughn, a 29-year Manchester Tool worker and president of USW Local 1761 Amalgamated.

The local represents Steelworkers at Manchester Tool and other companies. Kennametal, a $2.5 billion-a-year company with about 14,000 employees, had been a customer of Manchester Tool before becoming its owner.

Kennametal, a tooling, engineered-product and materials maker, said it needs to close Manchester Tool because it has too much overall production capacity.

''Kennametal has strong roots in Ohio and is home to six facilities, employing more than 1,000 people,'' said company spokeswoman Christina Reitano. ''Our plan deals directly with the need to address excess capacity, which will generate nearly $3.4 million in annual savings, and is not a reflection on the hard-working individuals of the Manchester Tool work force.''

Unexpected news

A lot of people at Manchester Tool appear to be in shock this week, DeVaughn said.

''We didn't see this coming at all,'' said DeVaughn, 53, who starts work at 3:30 p.m. for the second shift at the plant. ''We've never been a militant union. Management and union worked together. We all survived. Until now. . . . Whatever they asked of us, we did. Management has never been unreasonable to us.''

Gary Rhoades, the USW unit chairman at Manchester Tool and a 15-year employee, said the union was told Kennametal tentatively wants to have the plant shut down by the end of March.

''There are a lot of people here who have worked many years and they're taking it hard,'' he said.

Rhoades said he went into Monday's meeting with Kennametal thinking executives wanted early discussions over the local's contract, which expires in May.

Many of the Steelworkers are men age 50 and up who will now have to go out and start over, he said. The company's operations date to 1951, union officials said.

''Hopefully, we can pull together some kind of severance package,'' Rhoades said.

If there is a chance to keep Manchester Tool open, ''we want to keep that chance,'' he said.

The Steelworkers will try to keep the plant open, said Craig Hemsley, the United Steelworkers staff representative helping the local.

''We just got a problem with this. We're not done yet,'' he said. ''(We) never had an inkling — an inkling — that this plant would be shut down. They just told me it was over capacity.''

Things were going well

After Kennametal bought Manchester Tool, there appeared to be nothing but good news happening at the Akron-area plant, Rhoades said. For one, productivity went up, he said.

''We were doing better than we've ever done,'' Rhoades said. ''We were on board. We wanted to make it work. We weren't fighting them. As workers, we were very flexible. It's been a good company, and a good union company.''

Manchester Tool has been an excellent place to work, providing good wages and benefits, Rhoades said.

''It would have been a decent place to retire from,'' he said.

Instead, Rhoades, who is 43, said he has prepared a resume and will look for a new job.

''I've got bills to pay,'' he said. ''I'm going to put myself out there and see what I can come up with. . . . We're still on overtime. It's hard to believe we're shutting down.''