Re: letter to irwin [newell rubbermaid], marketers of vise-grip brand locking pliers

sears is an interesting study on this point. on wall st, sears get a lot of criticism for poor margins and poor growth. yet sears management are smart enough to know that the one thing that keeps their tool business alive is the fact that it's got "made in usa" stamped on each and every item. seriously, i buy sears tools for that one reason, and i'm far from being alone in that. not all their tools are that great, but they're good enough, and i don't want my money going to a despotic hostile foreign regime that's stealing our intellectual property, bribing our politicians and hell-bent on sabotaging our economic [and thus military] strength.

Unfortunately, the Craftsman tools that I inherited from my grandfather seem to be decidedly preferable to the equivalents that you can buy at Sears today.

nate

you could say the same for snap-on, [/where/ did they lose the plot on getting rid of the magical quick release button on their ratchets????], but they're still made here, and buying them keeps your money here.

besides, anyone who has wrenched for a living and who has experienced tool failures [and the injuries they can cause] knows that "saving" money on something like a $20 ratchet vs. a $30 one can be the most expensive $10 you ever bought.

I have a lot of old Vise Grip pliers.Some of them are special Vise Grip pliers.One of them has a chain on it for pipes.Some of my vise grip pliers have a sort of top and bottom fork thingys on them for holding pieces for welding.Some of my Vise Grip pliers are clamp style pliers.I have some Vise Grip needle nose pliers too.Another one of my Vise Grip pliers have extra wide jaws on them.Don't let anybody tell you Vise Grip pliers are unbreakable, many years ago the top jaw broke out of one of my big old Vise Grip pliers. cuhulin

That they work so well for being made in a pretty crude way is a testament to it's clever design. Personally, I think there would have been a market for a vice-grip made from forged pieces.

jim beam wrote in news:sP-dncbQU7HMcWrWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@speakeasy.net:

Indeed. The injuries only start with cuts from peeling Crome plating. My personal peeve.

My father has some Bluepoint wrenches. Works of art - all curves except for the actual part the nut goes in.

You must be getting one helluva discount on Snap-On tools. I just looked at

Socket wrenches get gunked up real good.The best kind have a little lever for forward and reverse and a straight knurled handle and are easy to take apart for cleaning out the gunk.In my opinion, most low priced socket wrenches are as good as the much higher priced socket wrenches if you don't use them every day. $141.00 for a Snap On 1/2 inch? I will pass on that! cuhulin

You NEVER wanna buy Sears tools one-by-one, the prices are insane. Watch the ads and buy the cheap sets on sale, even if you don't need most of them. Same tools at a fraction of the price, and you can park the duplicates elsewhere as 'clean' tools for special jobs, kitchen tools, 'tin can on the office shelf for when going downstairs is too much trouble' tools, etc.

If you were looking at just buying a ratchet, that implies the old one crapped out. If the old one was Craftsman, most Sears still do walk-in swapouts, although some try to hand you a repair kit. Some people strongly prefer old Craftsman, and decline the swapout in favor of the repair kit.

I do, but I haven't seen a repair kit in years.

Fortunately, I don't have any really old Craftsman ratchets so this hasn't been an issue. I did get lucky once when the store didn't have any repair kits or any normal 3/4" ratchets; my buddy ended up getting a nice polished handle "professional" ratchet instead of the standard one that I took back for him. I offered to take a new equivalent ratchet off the shelf but they insisted I take the polished one. Who am I to argue?

nate

i mentioned snap-on as an example of domestic manufacture. the pricing was for sears brand. but i think you knew that.

i don't buy snap-on ratchets any more - no quick-release.

Actually, the $141 Snap-On ratchet IS a quick release:

ok, good to know they've brought back at least one in their line-up! the majority of their product, dual 80 and high strength are not though. there is no quick release in any 3/8 drive.

i think this is a serious oversight - it is a very useful when oily hands prevent being able to pull easily on smooth sided socket walls to do changes. with quick release, you simply hold the tool, press the button, and the socket drops off. great feature.

Sears had to ante up buku piaster to the guy who invented that quick release socket wrench.I call them socket wrenches. cuhulin

On the web, Lawsuit over Sears quick release cuhulin