Spent the weekend testing my own 'don't buy this at HF' list

My list starts with the router bits. I bought one of their assorted bit sets years back for some cabinet door work and the bearing seized on me halfway through a profile, which left a lovely burn scar across a slab of oak I'd already spent a weekend flattening. The replacements I picked up from a proper woodworking supplier have done dozens of doors since and still cut clean. I use the cheap ones now strictly for paint-grade pine, where a scorch mark doesn't matter much. Second for me is the reciprocating saw blades. They'd cut one branch of a hedge and the teeth would smear over, and I was going through them so fast the bulk pack wasn't saving me anything. Once I bought a ten pack of Diablo blades and realized I was finishing whole jobs with two blades instead of ten, the math changed completely. Where I part ways with a lot of folks is the cheap angle grinders themselves. I've got two of the little 4.5 inch ones and I treat them like disposable lighters. One lives in the truck for cutting rusted bolts off old fence posts, the other hangs on a nail in the shed. When one dies I buy another without thinking about it. For tools I use a few times a year, cheap has been the right call, it's the consumables that burn me every time.

My rule after fifteen years of shopping there is simple: anything with a cutting edge or that spins fast under load, buy it somewhere else. The circular saw blades are my personal example. Got a multi-pack for building a chicken coop and the carbide tips started chipping on the second sheet of ply. The blade also wandered so badly I was fighting to hold my line even on the straightest cuts. A single decent 24 tooth from the hardware store ended up costing about what that whole pack did, and it is still my go-to years later. Same story with the sanding discs for the random orbital. The hook and loop backing would let go mid-project and the grit glazed over fast, even on soft pine. Where I differ from a lot of folks though is that I think their cheap power tools themselves are underrated for occasional use. My angle grinder has limped through three fence builds and breaking up an old patio, and the Pittsburgh clamps have outlasted a set of the name brand ones I bought around the same time. My thinking is that if I use something twice a year, the budget version is fine. If it cuts wood or metal every weekend, that is where the money should go.

Agree hard on the consumables point. I'd add wire wheels to the list. Bought a couple of the cheap ones for cleaning up some rusted trailer brackets and they were shedding little wire bristles across the garage floor within ten minutes, ended up picking them out of my tire tread before driving anywhere. The decent brand one I bought after has been on the same bench grinder for years and hasn't lost a bristle yet. That disposable grinder take is dead on though, I run mine the same way for lawn mower blade swaps.

The oscillating tool blades belong on this list too. Ripped up some old flooring last spring and the cheap blades went dull so fast I was swapping them out every couple of boards, and half of them quit holding in the clamp before they even got dull. Ended up grabbing a couple of decent ones and the same blade chewed through the rest of the job plus a door jamb later. Cost me more up front but I still have them. Funny thing is the oscillating tool itself was one of thier cheap ones and it's still running fine, so same deal as the grinder guy above, skip the blades not the tool.

Not sold on the disposable grinder approach myself. My cheap one from a few years back developed side play in the spindle, so the disc wobbled and every cut chattered. Tried a second cheap one thinking it was a fluke and got the same thing within a season. That wobble also wears discs unevenly, which eats into whatever you saved buying it. The budget name brand I use now was only a bit more and it's still spinning true after years of fence posts and rusted bolts. For a truck tool that gets yanked out twice a year, sure, but mine earns its keep too often to gamble on it.

Update: followed up on the wire wheel tip after my last one flung a bristle into the shop wall, and yeah, that was the wake-up call I needed. Between that and the spinning-fast-under-load rule from earlier, I tossed the rest of the cheap consumables in a box for the scrap metal run. Swapped in decent hole saws and blades and the difference is night and day. Hand tools stay, everything with teeth or wires goes.