Are Kobalt tools any good?

Why would you wonder? Would the answer have impeded your missive?

Ok,so you answered your question. Failed to impede your missive.

Why would you put words in my mouth anyway?

Of all the bluff and bluster in this thread, there was exactly ONE person who related ACTUAL EXPERIENCE with the EXACT tool I was considering. Case closed. Not bought! Thanks. Did I mention, CASE CLOSED?

Since you're the fount of all knowledge... Riddle me this... Is there any reason that Taiwan and China can't make quality stuff? They get painted with the broad crap brush. I understand that we get crap because we're only willing to pay for crap. BUT, is there any fundamental technical reason that people in one particular country can't/won't/don't make any quality stuff? Ever?

Yeah, but unrelated to the question about Kobalt.

Danaher still makes most of NAPA's stuff. I couldn't replace my 1/4" screwdriver-like socket driver (with rear 1/4" female socket) through Crapsman and they finally gave me some bucks and I found the item at NAPA.

POS without socket:

Well-built NAPA driver: (not the one I received)

I'd be willing to bet that the Taiwanese wrenches and sockets were pretty darned well made. It's the Chinese stuff you have to worry about nowadays. I think some were made with melted rebar... But HF's lifetime-warranted Pittsburgh lines have been really nice in my experience. With the exception of the small, super-cheap 1/4 and 3/8" set going for under ten bucks. (Those are likely rebar remelts.) I have no idea why HF gave them the Pittsburgh name. You can see that they're horribly made, and that's bad.

_If_ you're rich enough to afford them. $$$$

Agreed. It is intended to *sound* impressive. :-)

Well ... Cobalt alone, no. But the better drill bits (and some other tools, including lathe bits and parting tool bits) are a HSS alloy with Cobalt as a component (high Cobalt). The steel looks a little yellowish -- not as extreme as a TiN coating, but less white than plain HSS.

When I buy an index of bits I expect to use a lot (e.g. my index of number sized (wire sized) bits in screw machine length with 135 degree split points is a Cobalt steel.

As an example, go into the MSC site, and look at the "Metalworking" sales flyer:

and at the top of page 9 you will find "Hertel Drill Sets", and go down into the table where it lists "Screw Machine Drills", to the next to the last -- 60 Cobalt 135 degree split, Wire #1-60 currently on sale for $99.99. Compare that to the next one up, same size set, but "HSS-Oxide" which is currently selling for $64.99.

They just call them "Cobalt" -- but in reality, they are a different HSS alloy which has a higher percentage of Cobalt in the steel.

Down at the bottom of the same page, they have a summary of why Cobalt steel is preferred for some things.

And I like the screw-machine length bits, because they are shorter and have less flex -- as long as I don't need the full depth that a jobber length bit will give -- and I usually *don't* need it.

Enjoy, DoN.

[ ... ]

Well ... I remember when tools from Japan were cheap -- drill bits made of "butter steel", and so on. At the time, they were making excellent cameras (and cheap ones). I figured that they made good tools, but nobody was importing those, because the cost would be similar to tools made in the USA at the same period.

[ ... ]

Strongly related to the *implied* question of "What do I get if I want *good* tools -- in particular good small size torx screwdrivers or wrenches?" (Which perhaps should have been made explicit.) I keep a number of Wiha small screwdrivers in my belt pouch, including Torx, straight and Phillips blades. And larger ones at my electronics workbench.

Enjoy, DoN.

And while you were being sold the "butter steel" drills I was buying wood working tools that had blades made like the swords - a slice of almost tool grade steel sandwiched between two slices of mild steel and forge welded into one piece. You could sharpen the plane blades until you could literally shave with them and they held an edge better then anything I've seen since. Not cheap but not breathtakingly expensive either.

See, the Japs and likely the Chinese think that y'all want cheap tools so that is what they make for you, and you buy them. The growth of Harbor Freight has been phenomenal - they are now a billion dollar business. Selling cheap stuff.

Industrial customers who insist on and check for quality can get it from them. jsw

There is no magic to making good wrenches and the Chinese are certainly capable of doing so. I (we) use wrenches a lot and never had problems with Harbor Freight combination wrenches.

The germans still churn out top notch tools.

Wiha for screwdrivers (if you can tolerate rubber grippy stuff, I can't though)

Knipex for pliers

Xcelite and Klein screwdrivers are still made in the US to what appears to be the same high standards as they always have been. Diamond was nice too, but they don't seem to exist anymore.

The Chinese make, and sell, perfectly good metal working machines that are common in machine shops here... a mate of mine has a Chinese made lathe built 20 years ago and I've run it as well as several other newer Chinese made machines and frankly, except for the metric dials, I can't see any difference between them and the U.S. machines I used as an apprentice boy. But, these machines are relatively expensive, not the cheap machines that Harbor Freight sells.

Given that Harbor Freight, a privately owned company, expanded from a hole in the wall, mail order shop, in 1977 to a nation wide business, with 450 stores in 46 states, employing 11,000 people, and does an estimated 1.6 billion dollars worth of business a year. (not bad for a mom and pop grocery shop :-) it appears that cheap tools are a valued commodity in the U.S.

So it is really a case of apples and apples. You want to buy quality tools then the Chinese will gladly make them and sell them to you but not as cheaply as the Harbor Freight stuff that USians apparently are used to (and happily) buying.

There is a difference in the quality, generally speaking, between products of the PRC and Nationalst China (Taiwan). The taiwanese tools seem to be MUCH better - or al least were a few years ago. More CONSISTENT anyway.

That reminds me...Xcellite has served me damned well for decades. My Spline Drive drivers (dont know what those are...look em up) and my nut drivers are all Xcellite. I started out with a Xcellite Technicians tool caddy all nicely filled (for a first born child....) and have managed to luck into a pretty fair number of tools in surplus and plant closings. Somewhere I managed to lose the Stubby NutDriver set..damnit..and its about $70 to replace it. Metric and Standard....sigh

Not as much as you might think as much of the manufacturing of Taiwanese stuff is actually done on the main land these days. It is not only the Americans that figured out that costs are just so much cheaper on the mainland.

Was the Tesseract too easy for you?

"Jim Wilkins" on Wed, 13 Nov 2013 15:52:51

-0500 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

Not a problem. Till someone put one of them in a bag of holding and , poof, nothing works now.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

"Jim Wilkins" on Wed, 13 Nov 2013 15:52:51

-0500 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

It was, till some one tipped over a Kleine bottle in it..

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

The last Craftsman screwdriver I got broke the first time I used it. A #2 philips. The piece of shit couldn't remove the screws from a computer case before bits of metal broke off the tip. The shank was full of deep pitting, covered with 'chrome'. It was a replacement for a

20 year old Craftsman screwdriver that had finally wore out. Since then, I don't even look at their offerings when I need a tool.

snipped-for-privacy@rahul.net (Edward A. Falk) fired this volley in news:l8nmdi$ohv$1 @blue-new.rahul.net:

It's actually not hard to make a good hand tool; _even_ the Chinese have figured that one out.

The ones you have to avoid are the ones in those "jumbo packs" with 108 tools for "ONLY $29.99!!!!".

Most of what the big-boxes sell _onesies_ are OK, and if you can find the same models in a combo-pak, they're OK, too.

Heck... even Xcelite and Snap-On drivers wear out eventually.

Lloyd

I love the tool sets boasting large numbers of tools. You look more closely and find out that 2/3 of them were allen wrenches, nails, and screws in little boxes. Suddenly, your 203pc toolset turns into a 36 piece set, including boxes to haul 'em, which are also guaranteed to self-destruct if the temp falls below 98F or you open it more than seven times. Love it!

ection is active.

Completely off topic, just happened to be researching the quality of kobalt . Gunner, you're an idiot. neither "liberals," or "conservatives" want you to think. They both want you to vote for them, and will say whatever they n eed to in order for that to happen. Once you've cast your vote neither coul d give a f*ck less their constituents want. You can continue living in the facade you call reality though, i'm sure my comment will have little effect in provoking any thought within that windowless room you call a mind. Inst ead of generalizing between party's; left or right, black or white, wrong o r right, how about you take the time to look at the individual. every perso n has both the potential for "good" and "evil". maybe one right after the o ther. a person is can be right about some things, and wrong about others. N o one is wrong about everything, or right about everything. Your blanket st atements betray your lack of intelligence; any intelligent person knows the world is grey, and nothing more.