Building a basic toolkit

AFAIK being a Snap-On franchisee is a very lucrative occupation. Which is not surprising, given their prices. IMO their is a lot of snobbery attached to owning Snap-On tools. A vehicle mechanic with a nice set of Snap-On tools, will get far more respect, than one with an equally comprehensive 'no-name' toolkit. Like designer clothes, you pay more for the name than the actual quality of the product. I don't deny that most of their tools are of good quality, but no way does that justify their exorbitant cost.

No doubt that was many years ago. There is a far wider range of good cheap tools now, especially from China and other far eastern countries. I'd hazard a guess that many of my good cheap tools come from China.

I recently baught an angle and radius dresser for a surface grinder. £129.99 in a nicely made wooden case, with fitments for all the accesories. Made in China. Hardened and ground and excellent quality. A similar tool would normally cost £300 upwards. Mike.

Well, I've no doubt that if you're really determined you could break any tool. Regardless of quality. :-) Mike.

It isn't just me being crap at using adjustable spanners, then?

Mind you, I've never owned one that I could trust to move when I wanted it to and not when I didn't.

It was longer ago than that, that Snap-On refused to replace my screwdriver. Their refusal to honour guarantees is nothing new. For someone working in a garage, where they get regular sales, I've no doubt the guarantee is honoured without question. It's simply not worth their while to antagonise a good customer, but they usually couldn't care less about the occasional buyer. Mike.

That was in the good old days of BSF and BSW. :-) I still think it was a better system than metric. BSW for ally, and BSF for steel and steel castings etc. Mike.

Thanks Lin chung makes an interesting read.

and fixing a bicycle

The message from Ian Dalziel contains these words:

No, they're the work of the devil. Rarely of any use and prone to cause more trouble than they save.

Really? Who from, I'm pretty sure any employer worth his salt would see past a shiny toolbox, and the customers rarely get to see the tools.

No - Unified was around by then. I'm not *that* old. ;-)

Of course Morris used to use cycle threads on some stuff, but the heads were BSF.

I was thinking more of fellow employees, than employers or customers. Mike.

You're right. I was forgetting those. UNF and UNC being more or less the yank equivalent of our Whiworth threads.

Yup, and I still think it was a nice touch to use extended brass nuts on the manifold of early 'A' series engines. Mike.

If you don't mind paying the extra, wall or flank drive sockets and spanners are definitely the way to go. Better on already damaged nuts or bolts, with less chance of rounding corners than using bi-hex or conventional hex spanners, and sockets. Mike.

IIRC, it was a unification of BSF, BSW, American Fine and Course mainly for the car industry. Some thread sizes were interchangeable pitch wise although the profile was different. And spanner sizes became AF - across flats - to prevent the silly different name for the same spanner when BSF or BSW.

Possibly, if they are that shallow!! There's no snap-on snobbishness at our garage, in fact the van doesn't even bother calling anymore, as no one buys anything from him!

Used properly a decent adjustable spanner can be very useful.

Some tools are fine to skimp on. I find the Draper budget pretty good. I don't recommend skimping on ratchets as they really do break in no time at all, often causing injury if you get cheap ones. Get the cheap socket set and a decent ratchet to replace the cheapo one.

The message from "SimonJ" contains these words:

To hammer the next smaller sized socket down over the nut you've rounded off with the adjustable?

The message from "a.n.other" contains these words:

I've split the sides on several sockets recently.