- Local time
- 6:22 PM
- Joined
- May 14, 2011
- Messages
- 17,237
- Reaction score
- 32,431
- Location
- On the Ridge, TN
I'm no tool snob by any stretch, but most all of my hand tools anyways have been Craftsman; I just like the way they fit my mitts (at 250+, you might imagine my hands are sorta large).
That said, the Craftsman stuff I have I've had for a couple decades now, too, so I have no idea what they're like now.
Sort of sad to see what's happened to Sears in general and Craftsman being bought and sold left and right.
We learn a lot of our mechanical habits from our dads oftentimes and I was no exception - except maybe not like you think in my case.
Pop (God rest his soul) always bought the tee-totally cheapest crap tools he could find, a result of growing up dirt poor.
He'd take great joy out of finding one of those $2.99 socket sets at a sale or some such.
Me, I'd wind up the one using one of his cheap assed tools on something, have it slip and skin hell out of a knuckle.
His logic was that if he lost a cheap tool, so what? Got nothing in it anyways...
When I started collecting my own stuff later on, I specifically went in the other direction as a result of those lessons.
Not that Craftsman was ever elite stuff, but I've never had one slip on me and the odd broken ratchet over the years was, quite honestly, broken because I used it "in a manner not inherent to the design".
Last time I walked into a Sears store, about a decade ago, with a broken 1/2 drive ratchet, the fella behind the counter said "man, that thing is OLD! They haven't made that one in years."
I looked at him like "hey, lifetime means lifetime, hoss" and he waves over towards the ratchet display and says "grab whatever one you want."
Damn straight I grabbed the $90 one.
That said, the Craftsman stuff I have I've had for a couple decades now, too, so I have no idea what they're like now.
Sort of sad to see what's happened to Sears in general and Craftsman being bought and sold left and right.
We learn a lot of our mechanical habits from our dads oftentimes and I was no exception - except maybe not like you think in my case.
Pop (God rest his soul) always bought the tee-totally cheapest crap tools he could find, a result of growing up dirt poor.
He'd take great joy out of finding one of those $2.99 socket sets at a sale or some such.
Me, I'd wind up the one using one of his cheap assed tools on something, have it slip and skin hell out of a knuckle.
His logic was that if he lost a cheap tool, so what? Got nothing in it anyways...
When I started collecting my own stuff later on, I specifically went in the other direction as a result of those lessons.
Not that Craftsman was ever elite stuff, but I've never had one slip on me and the odd broken ratchet over the years was, quite honestly, broken because I used it "in a manner not inherent to the design".
Last time I walked into a Sears store, about a decade ago, with a broken 1/2 drive ratchet, the fella behind the counter said "man, that thing is OLD! They haven't made that one in years."
I looked at him like "hey, lifetime means lifetime, hoss" and he waves over towards the ratchet display and says "grab whatever one you want."
Damn straight I grabbed the $90 one.