dwasifar

The slotted one?

Are those for people who like the felo wood?

Well, these arrived today: I go out of my way to buy a Made-In-USA product, with high hopes, and as soon as I get them into the rack I can see the Phillips shafts are crooked. You can see it in the picture (look at the two longest Phillips). I'm not sure if they're molded that way or just bent, but either way I'm very disappointed. Someone at Channellock doesn't care if his job goes to China. These were bought from Circle C Supply in Bazine, KS. I called them and they're sending out a replacement set, but if this is a manufacturing defect, and I think it is, I have no reason to expect the replacements to be any better. Circle C didn't sound happy about it but they didn't argue. Made in USA.

I can't find any Makita Gold drill bits. There are Makita drill bits, and Makita Gold driver bits. Do you have a link?

What brand do you guys like for drill bits? Regular twist drill bits, I mean.

Today the Tekton elf arrived and filled my stocking: What you see there are (front to back) 1/4" and 3/8" flex head quick-release ratchets; 1/2" 12-pt shallow metric sockets; 1/2" 6-pt deep SAE sockets. They all look like good quality Taiwan manufacture. I have yet to try them out. I'm torturing myself buying tools I can't use for a while (surgery recovery time). In the background is the Craftsman 3/8" flex head ratchet that's being replaced. The ratchet action is sloppy, which I could fix with a rebuild kit, but also the detents on the flex head are really loose, which I don't think I can do anything about. I hate to replace USA with Taiwan, but there you go. On the plus side, it was easy to demonstrate to my wife why I needed a new ratchet handle when I already had one. I just shook them both, and when she saw the Tekton's head stay put and the Craftsman's head flop around like a Muppet, she said "Yep."

Here's the rack, all ready to accept the drivers when they arrive:

This is probably the most fiddly, fussbudget, OCD question you're likely to hear all year. Let's say you're going to put this screwdriver set into a wall rack: Five each of slotted and Phillips, three different handle sizes. Would you order them by handle size regardless of tip, or would you group the Phillips together and the slotted together? If you'd group them, would you order both groups by large-to-small, or would you make the left group small-to-large and the right group large-to-small? The advantage of the former is consistency; the advantage to the latter is symmetry, and not having to fish a small handle out of the middle. Please help me with my OCD.

I was just out in the garage making a rack to put them in when they arrive. Channellock is nice enough to give precise dimensions for every driver in the set, so I can make the rack in advance and have it ready.

I decided to give individual screwdrivers another go, based partly on what people are saying in this thread, and partly because having a real tool chest (as opposed to random tool boxes) for the first time in my life is already changing how I work. I know you guys are are gonna be disappointed that I didn't buy the Wera set, but I decided to go Made In USA instead: I considered Craftsman, because the classic clear handled ones are still USA, but for how much longer? I decided I trust Channellock more at this point. $50 shipped from Circle C. Arriving Wednesday. If I wind up switching to single drivers, then I might consider the more pricey Wera.

In my entire life I don't think I have ever looked at a prior purchase regretfully and said, "Gee, I wish I'd bought something crappier." In fact, I have kind of the opposite thing going on right now. I have a whole lot of Craftsman hand tools, bought new 20 to 30 years ago. By spending extra for Craftsman over other consumer channel brands, I thought I was buying for the future. Now the future is here, Sears is circling the drain, Craftsman is owned by Stanley, my investment is devalued, and I wish I'd spent a little more to buy actual pro tools (Matco, Snap-On, etc) instead of "prosumer." There's nothing wrong with Ryobi per se, for what it is, but it's a cheap tool and won't give you the quality or the service life of a better brand. Cheap tools are expensive in the long run because you have to keep buying them again and again. Spend money to save money. Buy the best thing you can afford from the best brand you can afford. Keep the Milwaukee. If you want something better than Ryobi for your next purchase but less expensive than Milwaukee, look at Hitachi. They're ugly as turtle dicks, but some of them are great deals.

Today this arrived: It's a work of art, isn't it? Looks like a piece of silverware: Also, this screwdriver rack "arrived" today in the sense that I made it today out of scrap wood: What holds it up? Hard drive magnets: I wasn't sure the magnets from one hard drive would be strong enough to hold up a whole screwdriver set, but I needn't have worried; they'd easily hold up twice that many, as it turns out. Might be time to take a little steel wool to those screwdrivers. Edit - There, much better now:

Those look great. Were they really in the "I'm surprised I use these that much" category, though? I can't imagine buying something so nice and thinking I wasn't going to need them much.

Do you have something in your collection that's unexpectedly become a go-to? For me it's a little Stanley 1/4" socket set. There's not much to it; it's just a quick-release ratchet handle, a spinner handle, a single extension, and a small collection of sockets, all contained in a little blow-molded case the size of a paperback book. There's nothing in there that's not a duplicate of something I already had a better one of when I bought it. I was out of town and needed to do a quick car repair when I bought it at a Wal-Mart about 15 years ago. I put it on a shelf when I got home, never expecting it to get much more use. But it turns out that little set is a perfect grab-and-go for small repairs around the house, and it gets used more than my USA Craftsman 1/4" sockets, even though they are arguably better. Anyone else?

Today I ordered these direct from Tekton.com: They're having a sale; coupon code GIFTS4DAD got me 20% off, and free shipping because the order was over $35. Wish I had known about that before I ordered this from Amazon: That's coming tomorrow. The other stuff won't be here until late next week. Getting it all faster from Amazon was tempting but pointless; I'm grounded from manual work for a few weeks anyway, so I might as well wait and save some coin.

Well, that puts my mind at ease a bit. I've sort of given up actively trying to avoid China-made stuff on most things, because it's getting to be impossible; but I'm still happier to have it come from somewhere else, even if it's Taiwan. They do seem like very nicely finished pieces. Heavy chroming, not cheap-looking at all.

I would have to say the one on the right. The color, the sharper inner corner of the base ring, and the depth all look closer to the one on the right. I don't think it could have been a switcharoo return. The packaging was one of those hang tags where you have to clip a retaining piece to get them off the hanger. No way to get them off without damaging the packaging.

Are you sure that's always the case? Mine came as a set of three, not blister packed, but on a hang tag that said Made in Taiwan. But the pieces themselves do not have a COO marking.

Okay, enough rambling. Back to the actual topic. Today these things arrived. First, here's a hefty 1/2" click-type torque wrench from Tekton: Well-reviewed on Amazon and stupid cheap at $52. I got this instead after returning the Kobalt due to discovering it had a short warranty. Can't wait to try it out, but it's gonna be a while; I'm not supposed to lift anything heavier than 10lb for six weeks. Next up, these are for my wife, since she's the gardener: Fiskars seems incapable of making a bad product, and these come recommended. For $15 I can make my wife happy today. Happy wife, happy life. Finally, this is not exactly a tool, but it's project-related and it did arrive today: Chamberlain comped me this control panel after their support line gave me incorrect advice about which opener to buy to be compatible with the panels I had. Isn't that nice of them? They're a class act.

So today, since I'm recovering from surgery and don't have anything better to do, I'll spend more time than it's worth comparing the new Lowe's Kobalt extension I posted about the other day to a 1990s USA Craftsman. I only have a 3" Craftsman extension so we'll compare it to the 3" Kobalt. The first thing you notice is that the Kobalt chrome is substantially bluer: The Kobalt looks blue compared to the Craftsman, or the Craftsman looks kinda yellowy or reddish compared to the Kobalt, depending on the light. I don't know if that's a coincidence or if it's because Kobalt and Lowe's brand color is blue. The second thing you notice is that the Kobalt is distinctly shorter: The Craftsman is 3" on the button. The Kobalt is about 3/32" shy of it, and you can see it not only in the length of the piece but also in the placement of the ball. The Craftsman has a hole in the base, whereas the Kobalt does not. I don't know if that's significant or not, because I've never known what the hole is for. The Kobalt has a bigger ball, and it projects out farther. You can also see here that the shoulder bevels are different; I don't know why one design would be preferable to the other. Maybe the Craftsman design is supposed to add strength. The Craftsman also has a squarer end. Here's what that looks like: Shaft diameter is identical at about 12mm: But the Kobalt has a wider base at 18mm vs the Craftsman's 17mm: Testing hold strength with a couple of Craftsman deep well sockets, I found that both held one of the sockets about equally well, but the other socket was noticeably looser on the Craftsman extension than on the Kobalt. I attribute this to the Kobalt's bigger, more pronounced ball taking up the slack. With the tighter socket, sideways deflection was about the same, but with the looser one, the Craftsman extension allowed the socket to rock side to side far more than the Kobalt. All in all I think it's probably gonna be a wash, provided the Kobalt's steel is strong enough to hold up. The Kobalt is a hair shorter than advertised, which is a little irritating; 3" should be 3" and nothing else. But it's hard to imagine a situation where that would be a problem; and although I suppose it's possible that 1mm wider diameter at the base could cause a clearance issue under some weird set of circumstances, it's equally possible that it adds strength. And the Kobalt is clearly better at compensating for socket variances and holding them securely, although it might not be fair to compare a brand-new tool to a 20-year-old one in that regard. And frankly the Kobalt doesn't have to last as long; by the time it reaches the Craftsman's age, I'll be pushing 80 and probably not using the tools much anymore.

I wouldn't use a chainsaw for that unless I was planning to throw away the chain afterward. And I'd be damn sure to be wearing a full complement of safety gear in case of kickback.

Update: I called Husky, who referred me back to the local HD store with instructions to ask for the tool manager. I did that, and apparently there is a new 3/8" torque wrench waiting for me at the service desk now. So they've redeemed themselves somewhat, but the two separate HD stores I contacted both sent me to Husky, so it looks like the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing over there. As for the Kobalt, I regretfully returned it. Apparently they have an exception to their usual lifetime hand tool warranty just for torque wrenches. No other brand seems to have this restriction, viz. the Husky story above, so although it looks like a very nice tool I decided to find something with a better warranty. Trying out a Tekton from Amazon.

Well, two new developments. First, HD sent me away to take care of the Husky torque wrench warranty on my own, rather than doing the expected in-store exchange. That was not the original deal, and they just lost me. I know from this thread it looks like I do more business with Lowe's, but I've been buying from both places and HD just gave me a shove. Second, the fine print on the Kobalt torque wrench says one year warranty, not lifetime. I have to assume this is because of the electronics. So now I'm considering returning it.

Today, as mentioned in another thread, I got a Stanley FatMax set of three aviation snips, and a Lenox offset snip, at Lowe's: This is the result of setting up my new rolling tool chest: Technically I got this for Xmas, but I just unboxed it this weekend, so I think it counts. In the process I took a good look at my tool collection and dumped some duplicates at Goodwill. In the process I realized I had been meaning to replace my cheap-ass snips for literally decades, so I finally did it. Some months ago I torqued off a short 3/8" extension, and when I looked closely at it, I realized it wasn't part of my USA Craftsman set at all; it was some el-cheapo thing from one of those crappy $10 socket sets that had mysteriously found its way into my tools. Anyway, fast-forward to yesterday and me going through the sockets, and I realized my 8" extension was probably from the same set; soft crappy steel with scant chroming, just asking for a sudden failure. Nothing can ruin your day quite like breaking a tool in the middle of a project, particularly if it's your own car you're working on and you don't want to walk to the tool store. So into the Goodwill box it went, and I picked these up instead: These are Taiwan-made, not China, which I guess is the best ordinary mortals can do now. I don't have access to a tool-truck guy, so I have to depend on store warranty, and Lowe's doesn't seem like they're going anywhere (as opposed to Sears). They seem nice, actually. The chroming is good and the fit is nice, and they have knurling (unlike my one remaining actual USA Craftsman extension). I don't know if anything else in the retail channel is substantially better, and at least if they fail Lowe's is close by. When I torqued off that cheapie extension I was tightening some lug nuts with a Husky 3/8" torque wrench set to 80ft/lb, and it never clicked. I knew I had to be putting more than 80 on it, but I stupidly kept pushing until the extension broke. So the Husky has to go back to HD, but in the meantime I ran across this on clearance at Lowe's for $79 less my discount: Sorry it's a little blurry. Didn't have my glasses on at the time. That's a 1/2" digital-readout torque wrench, or in other words the correct tool for what I was doing when I broke that extension. Digital-readout for the same price as regular click-type, that's a no-brainer and I grabbed it. Not a bad haul for the weekend.

I appreciate the recommendations for other brands, but I was pretty set on buying something today from Lowe's; I get a discount because my wife works there. Stanley and Lenox were the brands they have in stock. I decided to get the FatMax set and a pair of Lenox offset straight snips: So now I get a chance to compare them on my own. I've never had offset snips before, but I'm hoping they make long cuts easier.