Buying your tools at sears?

potentially, yes. but temperature control will be very crude.

yup, it's a great idea. much more usually used on a larger scale for things like crucible heating and surface treatments, but as you're seeing, adaptable to smaller scales. thanks for bringing it up!

I bought a multi-tool there, that's about it. Cheap, and did the job. Most of my tools have been Craftsman. I was a packaging machine mechanic for a while, and had a pretty full set of Craftsman. Packaging machines don't put much strain on tools, but they held up for wrenching my personal cars/trucks for many years. Think I had one box end crack and one ratchet failure in all the time I used them. My son is a pro truck suspension mechanic. He uses mostly Craftsman wrenches - some are mine and over 40 years old. He's broken one Craftsman wrench, and a variety of others. Besides Snap-On, Mac and Matco, he has a lot of HF wrenches. He says they fit fine and work fine, and don't spread. He's had a 13mm and 1 7/8" Mac spread like they were made of lead. Also says the Mac wrenches are square shank and dig into your hands. Even the cheap HF Pittsburgh wrenches have rounded shanks and feel good. Says the Snap-On flank drives are real good - for rounding nuts and bolts. That's what he says. I've used a variety of "name" hand tools, and don't see much difference. Seem to recall a Snap-On 9/16" fit tighter than the Craftsman I normally used, but that might be pure imagination. I always preferred Craftsman screwdrivers, especially the flat-blade. Seem to fit tighter and hold better in common screws. But I've only had a few other sets that weren't Craftsman.

sorry, but that's simply not true. if he's experiencing a problem either he has worn tools or he's using the wrong size.

normal flat sided drives contact at the hex point where there is the least metal. that's why they start to yield sooner, and thus round. driving from the flank has to yield as least 33% more material and is thus stronger.

Geebish H... You want a laser scan and full 1st article report complete with Cp/CpK data too?

Here's a hint for you, a lot of US manufacturers of things don't have great quality systems either. I've experienced them first hand.

Let me know when you can get these internal quality documents to demonstrate your argument.

You weren't inquiring, you were accusing in an insulting tone.

When I work on show cars where I have to be concerned of tiny scratches on bolt heads I'll upgrade tools. Until then that's all I've noticed and even my name brand-USA tools can leave scratches. Heads aren't rounded or anything of the sort. Then again when I have a bolt where the head might get rounded I use made-in-the-USA 6 point impact sockets. Rust does far more damage. You should see the bolts that rusted from 10mm to

3/8".

Nice way to change the subject there. Find where I suggest anything of the sort. You won't because I didn't.

Yeah it would be difficult. Although if you grabbed some tempilac and watched it you could probably do OK.

Hey, those holes are a benefit. The rust probably ate the E-brakes so you need some way to stop when the main lines break...;-)

Yes, I'm thinking judging work temperature by color, which is actually not all that bad once you get the hang of it.

--scott

>

I know... it's dead, and so is the reply email address. However due to the massive volume of spam that I've been receiving on another one of my throwaway accounts, I've sadly decided that even a munged valid email address for Usenet is not a good idea.

I still try to buy quality when I can, because I appreciate that my grandfather did years ago (and benefit from that whenever I use any of his tools.)

Difficulty - I don't have any kids, so at this point it's somewhere between a preference and an affectation, rather than a logical choice.

nate

On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 20:00:26 -0800, jim beam wrote:

I pressed him on this and he retracted it. Said he's grabbed a workmate's flank drive a couple time, felt the loose fit, and got his own normal wrench. He never rounded anything with a flank drive. Also said he never rounded anything with the right size normal wrench. Unless it was a rusted up nut, in which case he cuts it out, because both nut and bolt need to be replaced. And he's never rounded a bolt head. Some Peterbuilts have a troublesome bolt which doesn't round, but the bolt head snaps off. Has to be drilled out and replaced with nut and bolt. So he doesn't care about flank drive. I can't remember ever rounding a nut or bolt either, except on exhaust donuts, or something really rusted. Not sure if flank drive would have helped in those cases. So I guess it depends on your work, and if you run across rounding issues. From what I've read, I'd say that flank drives can prevent rounding and I would have them if I needed them. If the same Snap-On guy I read about coming to one garage and selling everybody there Flank Drive Plus came to my son's place he might get convinced, but maybe not. This Snap-On guy carried hex bar stock with him. 9/16" I think. He would lock it in a shop vise, and invite the mechs to round it with their wrenches. Which they would do with varying difficulty. Then he'd hand them the Snap-On Plus wrench, and they could stand on it without rounding the bar stock. Good salesman. Don't know if that's an entirely true story, but it sounds like a good test.

>>

Friend of mine got a basic Kobalt (Lowe's) "mechanic's set" for xmas last year...

I obviously can't judge the quality of the metal/heat treatment unless/until something fails... but I will say this, the *feel* of the ratchets and wrenches is closer to my old S-K stuff than it is to any of the Craftsman tools in my collection save for one polished-handle "professional" ratchet that I got when my local Sears was out of the standard ones to exchange (and they apparently stopped selling the ratchet rebuild kits years ago)

I liked them enough that when I needed a set of large 6-point metric sockets and I saw a set on sale at Lowe's packaged with a 1/2" ratchet I bought them, I figure an extra ratchet is a good thing to have, and the cost was less than just the sockets at Sears. I find myself using that ratchet more than the Craftsman one because it feels better. (the only S-K sockets/ratchets I have are old, and 3/8" drive SAE. I also managed to pick up a set of S-K metric combo wrenches, but damn if it isn't missing the 13mm... almost want to buy one just so that one Craftsman wrench doesn't piss me off.)

nate

>>>

Not surprising. The early (pre 2003 Kobalt tools were made by J.H. Williams Corporation, Who are now owned by Snap-On. The 2003 and up tools are made by the Danaher group, who also make Matco and Armstrong tools (Kobalt is actually house branded Armstrong for the most part)

>>>>

are they not made in china now? all the "husky" stuff sold by home despot used to be made in usa, but is now china. [for the same price, naturally.]

ok, so loose fit is worn. if it's worn, you will indeed have a problem, just like with point drive.

if you've never rounded anything, you've proabaly been using flank drive without using it. snap-on's patent ran out ages ago and practically everybody's been using it since then. with the exception of some of the high end usa manufacturers, but all the low end stuff has had it.

it's not exclusive to snap-on any more.

not seen it, but it's entirely feasible, is the hex is of a similar strength to the tools. soft steel will round regardless.

correction: "without realizing it."

>>>>>

In numerical dollars. In constant dollars it's cheaper. The goal is to hold price point in numerical dollars as the dollar declines in real value.

>>>>>

Taiwan mainly. Some of the pliers are mainland China

>>>>>>

there are many chinese tools i point blank refuse to use. pliers are one. hammers are another.

suffering a momentary lapse of judgment, i buy a set of cheap stanley junkyard dykes thinking that they should be at least halfway usable and that stanley would have done some q.c. first time i ask them to do some real work, about 1/8" of one jaw tip breaks clean off. i'm lucky it didn't fly off and get me in the eye.

now my "cheapo" junkyard pliers are channellock.

[continue with rant about de-industrialization being the death of america and how the chinese, despite the fact that we're giving them all our tooling and i.p. don't seem to learn.]