[Nitrowing]

When you wonder why Chinese tools are so cheap...
I was tapping aluminium FFS 🤣

[tooseevee]

When you wonder why Chinese tools are so cheap...
I was tapping aluminium FFS 🤣

            Goodlord Quality, along with common sense, has successfully been done away with. And China knows eck ZACK ly what it's doing & we just get dummer & dummer.

[Karl Childers]

So many of the tools out there today are of the the use once and throw away variety, most of my tools were purchased over 40 years ago and still serve me well. It's a challenge now when I need something new to find anything decent.

[Richard230]

My daughter is the entire customer service department for a company that sells Chinese-made and American-marketed "stainless steel" lunchboxes and drinking bottles. She typically gets over 200 email complaints a day, almost all from women, (during the start of the school year, many more) about their poor quality and design. What she does is to refund their money if she can't solve their problem via email (such as complaints about the included magnets not sticking to the silicon lids) and then tells them to just keep the item as they don't want it back.  (This has been going of for the past 10 years. But they keep on selling them.  )

[Nitrowing]

So many of the tools out there today are of the the use once and throw away variety, most of my tools were purchased over 40 years ago and still serve me well. It's a challenge now when I need something new to find anything decent.

I was explaining this to a junior engineer who was looking at Snap On... my King Dick ratchet didn't come with a guarantee and it was bought before I was born!

[gizzo]

So many of the tools out there today are of the the use once and throw away variety, most of my tools were purchased over 40 years ago and still serve me well. It's a challenge now when I need something new to find anything decent.

You need to visit a tool shop, not the hardware store. Still some good tools to be had but like always, they cost money.

I've bought my share of cheap tools too though. Mostly when I need a single use spanner that need modifying for a particular job. Some of those have been terrible piles of shit.

[tooseevee]

You need to visit a tool shop, not the hardware store. Still some good tools to be had but like always, they cost money.

I've bought my share of cheap tools too though. Mostly when I need a single use spanner that need modifying for a particular job. Some of those have been terrible piles of shit.

            I have found over the past 20 years that I'm way easier on tools than the previous 64  I've given away a lot simply because I just no longer used them, lots of harley stuff went when I gave my last one to my best old best friend Roy in 2015.

            I can make cheap tools last if they're not used hard or often, but things like Vice Grips made out of beer cans are just embarrassing to have around. Or the rounded off tap another member posted a picture of. I keep my 18" breaker bar around only for the steering head on the Enfield & I'll probably never use it again. It will go to my son with the Enfield - if his present "situation" ever straightens out for a while.

[gizzo]

I bought a new 13mm socket yesterday. The original one that came in my apprentice toolkit has worn out after 30 years.

[Bilgemaster]

By and large I've been pretty lucky with "cheap tools" all through my life. For example, I still adore and regularly use the big 14-Piece 1/4" to 1 1/4" roll of undebateably craptastic SAE wrenches fished out of a huge "Your Choice $1" bin at a big Texan supermarket decades ago. Lotta 1 and 4 mojo going on there. Thing is though, they may look like they were maybe forged in some Asian dude's wok and cast in stale toast, but they really DO feel nice in the hand, and are actually more robust than I deserve. See that 3/4" one poking up from the rest of the bunch with the curve in it in the attached photo? I shit-hammered that poor thing mercilessly getting some suspension bits off my old '60 Plymouth Savoy. Sure it bent, but it didn't break. And the Savoy got its new bushings. On other cheapo fronts, even though I've got way higher quality knicknacks in inventory, I'll often just grab that merely semi-shabby 105-Piece 4-Drawer Box Kit from Harbor Freight that I've specifically recommended here before, just cause it's light and handy and oh so convenient. (By the way, it's currently in sale for $44.99 or 25% off--Sure, not those 30-something buck deals of yore, but not bad post-Covids: https://www.harborfreight.com/105-piece-tool-kit-4030.html). And really its tools ain't half bad. They were enough all on their own to swap a wiper motor in another Mopar just a while back, wacky newfangled fasteners and all, with no further sifting through the tool inventory required. If you needed a starter kit to fettle an Enfield or most any other ride, or something to toss into the trunk, you could do worse. And there is that Lifetime Guarantee redeemable right there in the store.