13x40 Harbor Freight

"distracted" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

I located a used 9x36 Rockwell... I am concerned I will run out of swing, small bore (4C collet), no metric threads. Hence the pause in buying it. It is in excellent condition. I have also considered trying to find a Logan 12x36 (larger bore + 5C collets), but no success yet. Eric

Hello, Ron.

Please be more specific. For example, you might say something such as "It's made in China, and that ticks me off"! :-)

Mike Mandaville needing some _usable_ information

Where do you live?

Brampton, suburb of Toronto, Ontario Canada

I have only my anecdotal experiences, but I think that Chinese tools are being graded before shipment:

Walking through an HF store, I would not take anything in the store if it were all free, including heavy machinery.

Leafing through the Jet and Enco line, I could pick a few things I would make room for.

Hello, Clark.

Neither you nor Ron have been specific, though I asked Ron specifically to provide me with an example, Do you honestly expect the legion of

I need some information that I can use!

Anytyhing else is just rumor and innuendo. If you fellows actually did know what you were talking about, you would be able to come up with some examples. The information that you have evidently "walked through" a Harbor Freight store doesn't impress me in the least.

Mike Mandaville Austin, Texas who is getting ready to _duplicate_ his own 7x10

OK.

2) Most things that I have purchased from JET or Enco are good. Few excepions.

Let me define those terms for those from Raelinda:

My statements are anecdotal, as I said. But what else are you going to get from a forum?

That's a rather absurd statement considering that Harbor Freight sells a number of quality, brand-name tools, including: Ingersoll-Rand, DeWalt, Milwaukee, Makita, McCulloch, Bosch, Estwing, and even Mitutoyo. Not all can be found in every store, but I have bought brand-name tools at my local Harbor Freight.

As for the Chinese tooling, HF's stuff is generally no better or worse than that of the other tooling retailers. If you're a discriminating buyer, you can get some very decent tools at a good price.

- Michael

I think I have sturred up a hornets nest!

Eric

Nah..this is just R.C.M. on a quiet day! ;-).

Eric, I have yet to see anything from Harbor Freight that I would buy, let alone a product that they are selling for $2,000. They sell only cheap, Chinese, junk!

If you want a lathe, better off searching eBay for a used Logan, South Bend, or Atlas machine.

Harry C.

I have tools made by Milwaukee, Makita, McCulloch, Bosch, Estwing, and Mitutoyo. Those are very good tools. I saw nothing of that quality in the Kent WA HF store a month ago. Maybe my eyes were blinded by my disgust for what I DID see, and maybe the good stuff is locked up.

While we were there, my brother bought a $200 grinder that looks just like my $242 grinder from ENCO or J&L:

It seems that the ground is getting a bit thin for small shop sized good used lathes. Many of the ones which can be found are very worn. The shutting down of high school and community college metal shops has about run it's course, which seems to be where many of the good used machines came from.

Like it or not, good $1000 used American lathes are becoming harder and harder to find.

John

If I go this route... I am certainly not going to buy without first seeing the machine; preferably running. Eric

Sez who?

Thats odd..the pair of ChannelLock water pump pliers I bought there last week said made in USA. So did the flux core mig wire.

Gunner

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

- John Stewart Mill

Website is wrong. The story about the flightless bumblebees is not an urban legend, or a bit of science-bashing.

My Father, an aeronautical engineer, knew the story first-hand. There really was a fellow who got his PhD by "proving" that bumblebees cannot fly, using the best aeronautical theory of the day (the 1930s or 1940s).

The point of the thesis was that the "best aeronautical theory of the day" didn't work for bumblebees. Not that the bumblebees minded.

Back in the 1940s, severe approximations had to be made, to yield equations that could be solved by hand (by a room full of people using mechanical calculating machines). It worked for quite well for aeroplanes and helicopters, and reasonably well for birds, but not at all for insects. It's only recently, with the advent of computational fluid dynamics, that adequate theories of insect flight have emerged.

Joe Gwinn