Craftsman Hand Tools

[Andy Dingley]

About an hour, if I phone and say it's urgent.

[wood_newbie]

Are you talking about the line of sockets and wrenches that say Craftsman on the side, and which are sold at Sears, that have the sockets routinely fall off the wrenches because the toleralances are large enough to throw a cat through? The same set where you have to hold the socket with your fingers while racheting because it takes so much goddam pressure to "disengage" the ratchet?

Is THAT the line you're talking about? Cause that's the line I have. Did I buy the wrong line of Craftsman?

You used them as a mechanic for many years. Which probably means you bought them many years ago, back when they actually were good tools.

Times change, John. Perhaps you haven't?

[W Canaday]

I worked as a die-maker and had the blue callouses to prove it. (Yes, blue. But that's another thread for another newsgroup.) Some things need a light touch (or a smaller tool with guts), some things need a 3' breaker bar and a 12 pound maul. Snap on makes 'finesse' hand tools and gutsy air wrenches. I don't recall seeing a maul in their catalog. But I had one to go with the 5# and 3# dead blow hammers in my lower drawer and the 3' crowbar hanging from my pull-around handle.

Bill

[Mark & Juanita]

Well, I'm not a tool gatherer, but more a tool user who found that Sears Craftsman power tools (mid 1980's to probably about 1995 -- don't have any experience since then, my momma didn't raise no fool) a) didn't work for their application without significant tweaking or compensating for tool shortcomings, and b) were cheap and not "cheap" as in "inexpensive", but "cheap" as in poorly constructed, throw-away tools that didn't last long or hold tolerances well.

The fact that I might from time to time warn people away from Craftsman tools in no way reflects any element of tool snobbery or other attititude

-- it simply seeks to make sure that other people don't throw money away on a tool for which they will curse the day they laid eyes on it. As someone else has said, "I'm too poor to buy cheap stuff".

Maybe Sears will turn the corner and change again for the better after exploiting the Craftsman name and making the phrase "value engineering" a term of derision. I'll let others be the guinea pigs though, I'm not going to take that risk.

That paragraph was worth about 25 points. :-) You'll fit in fine in this group.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[capnrob97]

Not commenting on this thread, but the usual Snap-On vs Craftsman threads...

I am not a 'professional'... I buy the tools I like and make enough to afford the Snap-On when I get the urge to splurge...

I have mostly Craftsman, but have everything else from HF on up...

I hate it when 'pro's tell stories how they broke a Craftsman chrome socket with an impact wrench...

If I say a 'pro' do that sh$% to my car, I would probably beat (him/her) senseless with one of my 'cheap' tools....

Calling yourself a pro and giving up examples of non-pro work is senseless...