Thoughts On Tools

TheCypressTimes.com ^ | 08/27/2009 | Griff Martin

[Califreak]

>I couldn’t either, but the other half of the country can without a second thought.<

Zero voters

[ColdWater]

My .02 here, if you buy any hand tools ESPECIALLY automotive hand tools always buy the best, and from my 30+ years as a mechanic I can say that this usually excludes Sears hand tools, buy American made such as Snapon, Mac or Proto. When a single wrench sets you back over $20 and a 3/8’s ratchet over $75 you tend to have a better appreciation of getting the best performance from that tool. Basically I have found over the years over and over that a cheap tool will break, wear out and become unsafe or loses its value if the time arose that you need to sell it and as painful as it has to be the high dollar tools like Snapons will always be worth the initial investment, I have a complete massive tool set of almost all Snapons bought between 1981-83, 95% of those tools are still in my toolbox in near perfect state of usefulness, some naturally wear down like screwdriver tips but Snapon will replace it free of charge, and thats forever. Sears does the same but with them I had to replace broken tools on a weekly basis, with a Snapon wrench its measured not in years but over a decade of daily use.

In decades of use of Craftsman wrenches/tools, I have only had to replace one. It was a 3/4" socket that we cracked. My father and I had used it several times and when we took it back to Sears to guy only said "Please tell me how you cracked it and we will give you a new one."

We then told him that we put an eight foot piece of pipe on the handle and I jumped up and down on the end of the pipe. We had been doing this for years before the socket cracked.

[investigateworld]

I think it translates as ‘reverse engineer’, or ‘take without compensation’.

[jaydee770]

ColdWater wrote: "In decades of use of Craftsman wrenches/tools, I have only had to replace one..."

Amen! Snap-on and the like are very good tools, but waaaaaaay over-priced and generally used as "social plumage". Sears Craftsman tools have served me far better over the years.

I can take a cracked socket back to Sears and the teenager working the hardware dept will simply replace it with a smile. The Snap-on man seems to automatically presume you used an impact wrench on it until you can produce a witness that can testify otherwise. You'd think with the over-priced tools they hawk, that they would be more forgiving and just replace a failed socket. Just my $.02 based on past experiences with my buddies...