What's In a Tool? a Case For Made In the USA (hackaday.com)

szczys writes: You have the choice of buying a wrench made in the USA and one made in China. Which one should you buy? The question is not a straightforward one. Tools are judged by their ability to do the job repeatedly and without fail. To achieve this, only the best of design and manufacturing will do. But this is a high bar when you factor in price competition which often leads to outsourcing production. Gerrit Coetzee looks at this issue, comparing two instances of the same model of Crescent brand adjustable wrench; one a legacy manufactured in the USA, another outsourced for manufacture in China.

Comments

Re:Crescent won't learn

[drinkypoo]

Some HF tools are fantastic, though they are few. Some are total garbage; surprisingly, they are few. Some require modification before use, which supposedly notably includes their machine tools which have rough edges and the like. No self-respecting machinist would let anything like that out the door, but no self-respecting machinist was involved in their manufacture.

What actually is great, though, are most of their hand tools. The wrenches, socket wrenches and so on are every bit as good as Craftman ever was, if not better — I am a vintage tool aficionado, so I do actually have basis for comparison. Their torque wrenches are not pleasant to the hand, but they are consistent and durable and practically free compared to the big names, which aren't actually any more precise.

The stuff that gets used up, like drill bits and grinding stones, are actually better purchased somewhere else, because those actually are crap.

The only hammers I've bought at HF have been rubber mallet and plastic dead blow, which have been of very high quality for their price. All my other hammers are vintage, acquired at yard sales and the like. I live in rusty crusty old boy country, so there's lots of tools around. I only have to buy stuff online if I need something metric.