Outa here for awhile

I was at Lowes recently, it was sad to see that Porter Cable is now positioned below Dewalt as an economy line of tools. Reportedly they still have a professional line.

That saying predates Chinese imports.

I bought four 21" Fiskars pruning saw replacement blades at HD and the first one I installed twisted sideways and jammed, because the teeth were about half a millimeter shorter on one side. I had to joint, set and file it to make it cut right. At least the flame-hardened teeth are soft enough to file. Two of the blades look nearly OK. jsw

What craftsman has never made a mistake in purchasing? Ya buys yer tools and ya takes yer chances. The crappy tools become backups once you come to your senses. Or not.

I have a Makita impact driver but my old Ryobi drill motor is the second one I've owned because they work so damned well for so little money.

Ofttimes, the Ryobi will be used to drill pilots and the impact does the work.

OTOH, there are Sears tools and Sears horsepower ratings...

I keep the good tools in the house and bought cheap ones for the vehicles and the shed out back. Many of the shed tools have bright orange handles to make them easier to round up after building something out in the woods.

I took the $5 orange-handled claw hammer to a neighbor's deck-building party where the pro carpenters snickered at it, but soon were borrowing it. I had reground the striking face to the shape and angle I learned from the old Swedish cabinetmaker who taught high-school shop class. jsw

Sounds like the voice of management.

I prefer "a workman is only as good as his tools". I've worked for a few places that expected quality work from worn out or just plain poor quality tooling. Garbage in, garbage out.

David

"Michael A. Terrell" on Sat, 06 Oct 2012

either "cheap" craftsmen, or crafty guys, who need something to loam out, which they don't mind not getting back.

My dad once went to fix something at his mother in laws. She still had her husbands tools. Lots of screw drivers. All "founds" from by the side of the road. (Fred 'd been a road worker for a while.) And Dad found out why they were all "finds" - nobody cared to make sure they had been packed up when they left.

So yeah, sometimes you have crappy tools, so you can afford to forget them.

tschus pyotr

OTOH, it doesn't take many forgotten $1 yard sale knives or flashlights to equal the one good one you would keep track of.

-- pyotr Go not to the Net for answers, for it will tell you Yes and no. And you are a bloody fool, only an ignorant cretin would even ask the question, forty two, 47, the second door, and how many blonde lawyers does it take to change a lightbulb.

I *was* -- converting my old Bridgeport BOSS-3 to newer DC servo motors and LinuxCNC (was EMC2) control -- until the BiJur lubricator started a fire. Now I'm waiting for the insurance company to pull everything out and evaluate it -- and rip out the drywall and replace it after checking the wiring. Burning a liter of Vactra No. 2 in a closed

Enjoy, DoN.

So they can keep doing crappy work? :(

A "Sears Craftsman" these days? :-)

They *used* to be a lot better. (E.g back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Enjoy, DoN.

I have some crap tools, but I didn't buy them. They were in the bottom of free boxes of junk electronics I picked up for parts. Early Japanese imports that make everything at HF look like they are made for top notch machinists. One of these days I'll dig them out & take photos. :)

I've pretty much given up on HD. There are plenty of real tool dealers around here, and one that repairs almost any brand of professional power tool.

That's a personal choice. I've left companies like that and found work where they gave a damn about quality. :)

They weren't inferior for thier time, or the application, or the buildings would have never been finished. If those chisels weren't properly heat treated, they couldn't cut stone, or shape wood beams. Who says a wood square can't be accurate? They weren't working to a mil. 1/4" was probably closer than they needed.

I've seen cheap Chinese POS pipe wrenches strip the teeth out of the jaws on first use.

No one knows everything, but a true craftsman will always be on the lookout for a better way to do a job.

Sorry about that, but I can use every tool I have. Not that I have access to all trhe machine tools I used to use.

I gave up on Sears tools 20 years ago. I can't bring myself to call them by the 'C' word.

I heard about it, did not know that it was you, very sorry to hear that, I hope that everything recovers.

Thanks. It will be probably a couple of months before I know what the status of everything is.

If you want to see just how much of a mess burning a liter of Vactra No. 2 makes, take a look here:

I can't really spend much time in there with my asthma and all the burnt oil and plastic fumes. (Including whatever the leftover from burning Teflon insulation may happen to be.)

Thanks, DoN.

I remember those days. Drill bits made of "butter steel" and the like.

But the Japanese (who probably already had really good tools for use in their own industries) were making really nice precision cameras and such back then.

So -- there may be hope for the Chinese and even the Indian tools over time.

Enjoy, DoN.

Some of their hardware is already fairly good. The rest has a ways to go, but they seem to be making progress.

No, true craftsmen don't need all those silly, overpriced green- colored tools to create works of art. They can do it with HF tools if that's what's handy. Leave 'em be, will ya, guys?