Buying your tools at sears?

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no it's not. it's to cut input expense to a fraction of that of domestic production [the chinese often sell at /below/ cost], keep selling at the price of the domestically produced product, and roll around in the excess profits laughing your organs off.

well, we'll /all/ be rolling around in poverty and servitude before long. you can't run an economy on money printing, selling each other mortgages and madoff schemes for ever.

Reply to
jim beam
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In Nebraska, the small town of Dewitt used to pride itself as the home of "Vice Grip Pliers". Well, a corporate sale, bean counters run amok, and some stupidity to go and that small town that has made tools for over 1/2 century + no longer makes anything and has a big empty former factory. They used to have a big town banner "home of Vice grip". Don't know if they ever took that down or not. They should have replaced the banner with "former proud town of what the USA used to be"

If you got some older vintage vice grips, hang on to them.

So if "made in the ole USA" means ANYTHING to tool buyers, it sure did not seem to make any difference to those at Vice grip.

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bob

Reply to
bob urz

Sadly, if you really use them for e.g. removing rusted, busted studs or similar eventually Vice Grips wear out so in another couple decades you won't even be able to find them anymore.

I don't have any of the new ones... is there a currently available replacement product that works as well as the old ones?

nate

Reply to
Nate Nagel

yup, vise-grips are one of my favorite "love to hate"'s. they used to be the perfect example of how you can DOMESTICALLY produce a world class product at prices that people will gladly pay.

but that wasn't enough. newell rubbermaid sold vise-grip out to china, among many of their other brands, and have been ruthless and systematic about it.

i even wrote the company president expressing my disgust at their lack of patriotism because ultimately, our military security depends on our ability to manufacture if we are to be able to sustain and prevail in conflict, but i received no response.

none of them care or can think past their noses. they're in position for a few years, they cash out, and then they're off. i wonder where they go when they're done? i hope they're not staying here and expecting the rest of the country to protect them if there's a problem.

Reply to
jim beam

I would have nominated a different city for Home of Vice.

Vise, vice, whatever

Reply to
AMuzi

lol ;)

In another life and another wife, i had a 77 camaro. It eventually was equipped with the optional Fred Flintstones stop the car through the floor option due to rust. I did a DIY layered fiberglass floor pan on it before the Ex took it. ( i should have not done such a good job)

bob

Reply to
bob urz

Not only would a quality open-ended wrench simply round the corners of the fastener head when misused in a proportionally high-torque-to-cross-sectional-area- ratio application, only an incompetent would attempt to employ one for that load. When abused however (such as exposing it to torques exceeding the design parameters of the tool), instead of a sudden fracture, a gradual yielding is in fact the preferred method of failure for a quality wrench.

Although tubular cross section wrenches are available, they represent a small minority. The vast majority of hand wrenches feature a rectangular shank style (some with rounded edges). Mac tools have been popular and have gained an enviable reputation with tradesmen for decades.

Confronted again with the risible proposal that the cheap tool is not only the equivalent of, but superior to, professional grade.

Given his purported critical reasoning skills, no offense intended, but suffice it to say I wouldn't allow him to come within arms reach of any vehicle under my care.

Those that have daily experience working with high torque applications exposed to demanding, exterior environments do.

Unlikely. It's well known that Snap-On tools are built to among the tighest tolerances in the industry, certainly superior to Craftsman, not that the latter necessarily constitute cheap, 4th or lower order, poor quality tools.

Perhaps you're not familiar with the vapor blasted tips, shank bolsters, and the comfortable soft grip or ergonomically designed power grip handles commonly found on Snap-On screwdrivers.

Reply to
Gene

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I could see a 16 or an 18, but a 13? That's one of the most utilized, commonly found sizes. Perhaps they figured if you have even one size already, it would be the obvious choice.

Reply to
Gene

On these pages you will likely find among the highest quality locking pliers ever manufacured in the world, some of which are clearly labeled Vise-Grip.

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Reply to
Gene

The Chinese have no problems manufacturing aerospace, military, medical, chemical, communications, environmental ... equipment, but some dilettantes continue to either unknowingly or deceptively attempt to convince others that those Asians just can't seem to perfect that demanding, oh so difficult process of manufacturing automotive parts and related tools. If you have an issue with any manufactured product, blame those you purchased it from, not those they contracted with to build the items, for the cheapest possible price per, to their specifications and inspection method.

Reply to
Gene

But you're not bitter. Sounds like she made the smart move.

Reply to
Gene

another example of iconic sell-out is dixon ticonderoga. countless generations of american kids used them at school. countless office workers still use them.

but management sold out and any pencil still bearing that name is made in china. however, unlike newell rubbermaid who didn't just sell the vise-grip name but the machinery too, the pencil plant here in the u.s. was sold to local management and a company called megabrands. so you can still buy american pencils of the quality that d.t. used to be, but with a different name - usa gold is one, but there are others.

the supreme irony is that these domestics are now cheaper than the chinese crap with the brand name! that pretty much says it all imo.

Reply to
jim beam

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No. Big box retailers want to hold (or drop) a price point in numerical dollars. Going to these stores with a price increase is the last thing you want to do. As a manufacturer you not only have to please the end user but the customer that actually buys from you, the distributor and the retailer. In the case of a big box the distributor and retailer are often the same thing. If you can't keep the design ahead of inflation then labor has to be cut. If you have to manufacture in China to meet their expectations, that's what you do.

Products I designed and/or developed over my career have been sold in a wide variety of retail environments including big box stores. I have never been to meeting where management wanted to squeeze more profit out by going to China. Not one. Pleasing a big retailer by maintaining the retail price in numerical dollars, yep. Redesign parts? Yep. Work with new and existing vendors to bring part costs down? Yep. Sometimes a manufacturer gets some margin out of it for awhile. But it's a race against inflation.

If you want to know who benefits, see who benefits from inflation. Who gets the new money first. They got the extra. Not the manufacturer, not the retailer.

The chinese people are having their labor stolen from them as are we. If you want someone to blame start with the privately owned fed and work up.

Reply to
Brent

This of course is if the company stays in the same hands.... once the wall streeters and take over folks get involved all bets are off. They will destroy a company for a quick buck any way they can...

Reply to
Brent

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A friend found the set in a pawn shop, that's why the 13 is missing... I'm certain that it originally came with one, because, as you say, it ties for the 10mm for the one that you use the most.

I'd love to have a complete set of brand-new pro quality tools, but sadly, with the amount of tools needed/wanted, buying them all new at retail pricing doesn't seem like a good bet for a DIYer.

nate

Reply to
Nate Nagel

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the empty vessel makes the loudest sound. "i've got no money for tools" he bleats, and yet he'll spend thousands and thousands on multiple rot boxes that he can't give away. ridiculous.

Reply to
jim beam

Well , if this country ever gets in a WW2 style war again, were in big trouble. What do we make anymore? not much.

The big steel blast furnace plants that ran WW2 are mostly gone or shut down.

remember when we lead the world in computer? company's such as DEC, IBM, Wang,Univac,Western electric developed and made products here. Where are they now? mostly gone or a shadow of there former selves. IBM created the personal computer market on a mass scale. They threw in the towel and sold out to Lenovo on the PC side.

Now we have Microsoft and apple. MS just updates its already bloated products and wants us to buy the same thing ever few years. Windows 8 has gone over like a lead balloon. MS's new tablet computer is the Edsel of its time.

Apple builds all the cool products all the Yuppies must have. Gezz, my i phone is a year old, i must need the new one. We have all fell for the banana in the tail pipe from them. And for the most part, Apple is made in China and such with virtual slave labor camps (err, foxcon/ Hon Hi). Truth be know, apple stole the Mac interface from Xerox /Sparc. Now they sue the world for obvious inventions. For what apple and Samsung have paid in legal fees over the last few years you could have paid down the national debt by 1/2.. ;)

remember all the consumer electronics here? names such as RCA, Zenith, Magnavox,GE,Motorola and such made products here and were successful. where are they now? gone or just shell names on foreign products. Nipper speaks a different language now.

Detroit used to own the world auto market. Now we have to bail out auto company's before they sink into oblivion

Go into Wallmart and imagine how much stuff would be there if there were no far eat imports. Wallmart would be the size of a convenience mart. There was just a big factory fire in Bangladesh in a plant that made clothing for wallmart and such. Illegal and unsafe as hell. But no one shut it down until people had to die making clothes for wallmart

Our military used to make thousands of aircraft to defend our country. Now, we cannot afford our own toys. What did we make, 22 B2 bombers? how many B52's did we make? Hell, even scrapping most of them, there are still more B52's than B2's. F22's, a few hundred at best. By the time we actually make F35's, we will be lucky to have a few hundred of those too. Then we do something stupid like cut up and destroy all of our F14's. Go figure

Agriculture is still one of the bright spots in the country. but even its in trouble. the cost of land and taxes are so high that its virtually impossible to start a farm from scratch unless you inherit it, or win the power ball. Buying a John deere is like buying a high end sports car. Hundreds of thousand of dollars for the big boys. Even Deere is starting to build more in India and other parts of the world

Someday you will being buying you snap-on, SK, and such from the names you know and trust. But those names will be names only, like RCA used to be. Names sold to foreign company's that don't really care.

Obama made big loans to start up energy company's like Solendra and A123.

A123 was suppose to put the US in the lead in manufacturing hybrid car battery's in the future. So what happened? A123 is now being sold in bankruptcy to the Chinese. We pay, they play. We all better get used to it.

Hell, even Warren Buffet had bought into the Chinese car industry. go figure...

Reply to
bob urz

Kobalt seems to be made by whoever Lowe's contracts with this week. Some of them seem to be decent, some of them seem to be awful. Some of it, you may never know until it breaks.

My tendency if I buy from folks like that is to buy the stuff made in Taiwan and not the stuff made in China, but that's really no guarantee of anything although it might improve your chances marginally.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

That's what nukes are for.

IBM was never a big player except for businesses which is partly* why it's chosen framework took over, but the mass market was created by apple, atari, and commodore. *mostly because it could be copied.

big american companies ended up being run like big american government. Still goes on today. However in ages past they would have been replaced by new names in the USA, but government has made starting and growing manufacturing companies so difficult there haven't been replacements.

They only had briefly because everyone else had been bombed. Go bomb germany and japan again and the big three could sell a lot more cars. (although the big three did have the japanese market long before WW2 until the government there interfered.)

The stores would still exist. Big box stores work on using logistics and sales volume. This works where-ever stuff is made. The problem is that inflation has to go somewhere and where it has been going is largely overseas. These foreign made goods are what supports the american lifestyle now, because inflation has destroyed the real value of wages. When the US dollar finally breaks after these decades of abuse and mismanagement since the ties to silver and gold were broken we may get some manufacturing back provided some other things happen as well.

Hardware sales wise the military is just a welfare program for the connected suppliers and has been for decades.

"Get Big or Get Out" was the quote from some government mucky-muck ages ago. Basically the regulations are set up for giant agrabusiness in mind, not the family farmer. Small new farmers have been trying to carve out a niche with organic food and such, but it is difficult with all the regulation. Some have been raided with fully armed and body armored government empolyees. Farmers are arrested, product is destroyed, property taken, etc and so forth. Their products did not make anyone sick, the customers knew what they were getting, it just didn't follow the procedures coded into law for the benefit of industrial farming.

That's what happens when people use politics instead of markets.

Reply to
Brent

Back in the sixties, IBM was the computer industry, along with the Seven Dwarves. It's strange too, since IBM was never a hardware company, they were a services company that sold hardware as part of their services.

Lots of companies made IBM-compatible machines.... National Advanced Systems and Amdahl were probably the most popular. But, they never really made much inroads into IBM's customer base, because people were buying IBM service and getting IBM hardware in the bargain rather than the other way around.

But IBM has always, always stayed away from commodity systems. It's a nasty business there, and these days the microcomputer industry revolves around cheap commodity hardware.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

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