For the anti-Craftsman crowd... :)

Great! Now you can spend the money you saved not having to buy a new pair on grammer, english and punctuation lessons ;)

Craftsman still sucks...

That would be "grammar"...

Hand tools and power tools are completely different in quality. Even the hand tools have slipped. I have a set of wrenches that are 40 years old and they are superior to the ones made in the past ten or so years.

Grammer retard to the cos bout 15 yars go.

Thus afer werkin mosa her lif at teh poses office .

Apparently I need a speelchecker ;)

The Hand Tool Group is growing substantially faster than the industry growth rate, driving growth through geographic expansion and share gains, as well as innovative new products that improve safety, strength, speed and access. Danaher is committed to deliver customer-driven new product innovation through user-preferred brands such as, Armstrong®, Matco®, Sears Craftsman®, AllenTM, KD-Tools®, Holo-Krome®, NAPA®, and SATA.

Only time and use will tell for sure w/ these, of course, but initially, the "fit 'n finish" appears to be nearly up to the old pair. I was mostly pleased w/ the (unasked for, specifically) mail delivery not requiring another trip and more than a little surprised there was no included invoive for shipping or, assuming they knew at the time they were to be shipped direct, no authorization for shipping requested from the catalog store.

I agree wholeheartedly w/ power tools, however and have none since 70's vintage at latest...

Virtually all hand tools are of roughly that time period or earlier, as well so I can't really judge whether there's any real difference in an open end wrench set, say...

Try the phone book. You can also find him on reruns of Cheers and Frasier.

How about lessons on capitalization? The word 'English' is supposed to be capitalized.

My not liking Shears is their policy of making off-spec parts. So you can't get parts through the usual suppliers.

How 'bout this FlotoMan...

So you expect to get JD parts from New Holland?

You can get an awful lot of the bearing, seals, fasteners, etc from any good supply house. Not always so easy from Sears branded equipment.

Perhaps, perhaps not...I don't have anything Craftsman of recent vintage but I replaced bearings in an old 6" Craftsman jointer once and in a couple of hand drills and the lower bearing in the drill press just that way...

I've also had a lot of difficulty in finding bearings for other things such as P-C sander w/o going back to P-C, so I don't think it's a Sears "policy" at all.

IMO, ymmv, $0.02, etc., ...

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 02:13:00 GMT, "Edwin Pawlowski" scribbled this interesting note:

We have a Sears concrete mixer. A while back the electrical switch failed on it. Having a factory Sears repair center not more than a mile from our house, I went up there to see if they could replace it. The switch was in a rubber housing (water resistant). They could find the part, and if it had still been available (listed as NLA) it would have been about $150.00. So I cut open the rubber housing to see what the actual switch looked like. I took it out, went to the local mom & pop hardware store (yes, we a fortunate enough to have a few of those still around) and found an exact replacement switch for under $5.00. Just had to fit it back into the rubber housing and seal it back up with a urethane sealer (NP-1 in this case.)

I spent far less than $145.00 worth of time fixing the problem. Sears will hold you up on some repairs. Local hardware stores can be your friend if you know what to look for!:~)

-- John Willis (Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)

Sears is not the only one. I wont buy Ryobi either for the same reason (they make a lot of Craftsman tools too) No matter what the brand, spare parts are a big markup. If you can find the same pat through industrial supply houses, they are going to be far cheaper than the same item with the "genuine XXX brand" sticker on them.

I needed a hydraulic pump for a machine at work. I called the manufacturer and they wanted $5400, but would give us a 10% discount. Found the same pump from a hydraulics supply house for $1200. Very common practice.

I have no argument that distributor parts are less expensive in general than OEM, nor do I have any lack of experience in using same. The point is, Ryobi/Craftsman/whoever aren't making these bearings, etc., themsleves, they're buying from the same manufacturers as are JD/Case-IH/Delta. Whether a particular bearing is available open stock has more to do w/ sheer volume than any planned obsolescence or attempt at controlling spare patrs availability.

I had a heck of a time getting a replacement rear wheel bearing for the old '59 38-series Chevy truck a few years ago when needed replacement owing to some water having collected in rear end and pitted them severely. The OEM were Timken, but the particular style is no longer used in new vehicles and numbers aren't there to continue to produce it. Finally found some "new old stock", but it took a couple of months looking.

Small bearings, for example, of the type in many hand tools just are not "common enough" to make for good markets for replacement--

Many years ago I had snow blower that used an internal toothed gear as a speed reducer. When I went to B-S for the replacement I was bent out of shape over the price. I bitched about it to my neighbor who worked for an appliance manufacturer. He told to figure repair parts sold for about ten times the cost of manufacture. The high cost is related (at least in part) to the mfgr having to hold the part in inventory, tying up the money in the hope that someday someone would want it. And eventually it got sold or discarded and then became NLA.

Of course if you are looking for an industry standard part such as a bearing, switch, belt etc. you have better choices.

Charlie