We are Spoiled by Cheap Tools

[Briar Lee]

My father farmed 300 acres of his own and rented 270 acres more and owned three tractors and various pieces of farm machinery and he had exactly one tool box.

When he died suddenly in 1971 by mistake his tool box was sold at the auction and that left me with only the household tools he had in a drawer and I still have those.

My mother cried and promised to replace the tools but I’ve always had just a pinch of pride and over the last 52 years I’ve replaced those tools and tool boxes myself many, many times over.

We are spoiled by cheap tools. Tools are so cheap in comparison with inflation we can buy tools we don’t really need and then buy spare tools of the same kind to have tools we don’t need handy if we can’t find the first set.

I had to remove a toilet tank and needed a pair of water pump pliers earlier this week and I know I have water pump pliers without number, but wound up substituting one of my pipe wrenches I own without number. I ordered a couple pair of water pump pliers.




The pliers arrived today and I’m impressed. My wife and I spend more than $17 going through the fast food drive through and these pliers look as good as the one pair of Channel Lock pliers my father had he used to actually change water pumps and compress metal clips.

But I guarantee he paid more for those pliers at the Western Auto store than he did for supper at the Shady Nook Cafe.

I’m sitting here ruminating what will ever become of the millions upon countless millions of extra tools we buy in another fifty years, and fifty more years after that.

No homeowner ever throws away or wears out or breaks a pair of water pump pliers.

They’ll be like flint arrowheads, in a couple of thousand years, I suppose.

Tools are so cheap we take them for granted.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

Used to sharpen one of my Grandpa’s hoes in the barn every morning before heading out to continue on the 160 acres of beans I walked. Let’s just say it was old but worked. He had plenty of tools at the farm but they got rode hard and put away wet as they say - other than sentimental, they stayed at the farm after he passed but as time went by got replaced by newer and frankly better versions. I’ll happily spend a little more on quality and take care of them, but I’m not sure quality tools are relatively cheaper these days vs. 1940s - 1960s but that’s just surmise. Guessing true artisans have all sorts of well kept tools that are still going strong from decades past.

 

[Briar Lee]

There was a Western Auto hardware store in Humansville that carried Western Auto brand (mostly made by Husky) and other name brand tools and general merchandise where my father bought his tools.

They also sold ammunition, and while my father raised and sold high dollar quail dogs and hunted quail every day in season he’d buy two boxes of 16 gauge at a time.

My father was not poor. He was a Scotsman, but almost all the old sons of the pioneers were.

I do have a question. My pliers are a copy of the original Channel Lock brand.

Why are there little half moon indentations above the jaws?

They were die forged pieces of chrome moly steel, then they were powder coated and the jaws machined and joined with a rivet.

Why are those indentations there?

 

[yanoJL]

I find that, sometimes, cheap tools are just that, cheap. They feel different. The Channel Locks I own have been with me for decades. They may cost a few dollars more than generic pliers, but I do notice a difference.

 

[yanoJL]

...
I do have a question. My pliers are a copy of the original Channel Lock brand.

Why are there little half moon indentations above the jaws?

It is my understanding that the undercut "groove and tongue" keep the pliers from slipping.

 

[JackOrion]

I’m a woodworker by profession. I only buy tools as I need them. Some of the tools I need can be quite expensive. There is usually a price tier for most of them as well. I almost always try to buy the highest quality tool I can afford which in my trade is usually a blade of some sort, clamp or measuring device. The machines can be expensive so the resale market is strong for quality tools.

I just bought a tricked out 90’s Delta unisaw from the owner of my areas top supply store. It was his personal saw and he put every add on available to it. An equivalent new table saw with the extras today would cost 5 grand. I bought it for twelve hundred. It’s ridiculous how solid and well made it is. With a table saw you ‘feel’ it in the blade deflection and vibration as well as the flatness of the top to fence. They are minute things but very noticeable if you have used various table saws. In my 30 years of woodworking I’ve put a respectable amount of time on 11 different table saws. The really good ones are unmistakable.

On a smaller scale I recently bought a Knipex 5.5” diagonal cutter for $30. I could have bought a Chinese harbor freight pair for six bucks but I just can’t bring myself to go that way. You can feel the quality with the Knipex.

Finally I took up Fly Fishing a couple years ago. That’s a spider’s web of tools for fly tying and gear. Same thing applies, I can buy a $150 rod or a $1,100. rod. A $100 tying vice or a $850 vice. A $9 thread bobbin or a $120 bobbin. It’s crazy and discretionary.

 

[Briar Lee]

After the toilet tank wax removed and the job done I found my high dollar Knipex Cobra pliers in a drawer.

The German set is a much higher grade and classier set of water pump pliers, which sell retail at about ten times what Horunsdy brand sell for. But to tighten a PVC fitting on plumping and other such light household, they are the same, no difference, except bragging rights if company is around to watch.




What’s always fascinated me about the price difference between tools is this.

In the USA, in Germany or China or anyplace on earth, to make a set of water pump pliers requires:

1. These aren’t hand made. There has to be a huge, expensive, complex die forging machine with red hot molten steel being die struck.

2. The cost of the raw steel used per set has to be cheap. In bulk a ton of steel is less than a thousand dollars, always. Knipex or Harbor Frieght, there’s not dime’s difference in raw material cost.

3. Years ago there were differences in skilled labor costs. But today it’s a 20 year old German kid or 20 year old Chinese kid watching machines make and finish tools,,,.lots and lots and lots of tools.

It’s kind of like a beer factory.

There’s not much difference in ingredients and labor and they have to be huge factories to do it at all.

But the expensive one is better, maybe not much, but always better.

 

[warren]

I try to buy only quality (expensive?) tools. The idea is for my grandchildren, should they develop the interest, to be able to use them, even as I use my grandfather's hand saws today. I want tools that hold an edge, stay tight in their fitting, are well balanced and so forth.

 

[RustiePyles CPG]

As someone who makes their living with tools, I would say we are plagued by cheap tools. Not spoiled by them.

 

[btp79]

For the ignorant masses (myself included), I grew up calling these "channel locks" I never knew that was just a brand name and the type of plier is actually water pump. Now I'm on the same page and agree, there's a $#it ton of them scattering the continent. I probable have a half dozen various sizes myself.

 

[Briar Lee]

There’s a spot in the East yard of my home place where a redwood picnic table sat fifty years ago that I look at today and still in my mind I see my mother and Red Mauzey reaching a deal for $2 an hour to Red to build fence, and Red asked her if he could hire me as his helper.

I was fifteen and would have worked for a dollar a day. Instead offered me half what he made, a dollar an hour.

But I’d have to supply my own tools.

I’ve never drawn a breath in my 65 years where I was really, desperately poor, or hungry, or thirsty, or actually in want.

My mother had saved every dime of the $60 a month social security survivor’s benefits I’d drawn for a year and a half and I had money enough to buy good tools.

But instead I went to Western Auto and bought a canvas carpenter’s belt, a $2 Taiwan hammer, and a cheap pair of slip joint pliers.

And Mama paid for it, to my surprise.

The second day that cheap hammer chipped and put a sliver of steel in my neck that Red and I had to do a minor operation to remove and we made up the story I got cut on barbed wire to tell Mama at noon when she fed us all that good, steaming hot food out on the picnic table.

And that Friday when I got paid forty dollars by Red I’d watched him all week and what tools he used, and Mama drove me to Montgomery Wards in Springfield where I bought my good $14 Power Kraft 20 ounce hammer, my $8 Diamond brand fencing pliers, and $3 set of White Mule leather gloves, and a $5 set of Cresent brand slip joint pliers.

Then she went over to Katz drug store and I blew most of the rest on tobacco.

Here’s what changed about tools.

Those $5 pliers and $3 gloves are still $5 and $3, the same quality, only made in China.

Diamond has vastly improved their now Chinese made fencing plier set, I don’t use my old ones.



My tubular steel handle Ward’s hammer is as good today as it was the summer of 1973 but I use this Craftsman I bought in 1986 instead. The new ones are made in China.




Cheap hand tools are way, way better than cheap tools were fifty years ago.


But the music over the same Tru Tone Sears table radio that still works, cannot compare with the summer before I knew I’d get my own car.

 

[warren]

High quality? Low quality? Such is entirely dependent on two things' the moneys a manufacturer puts into QC and the people doing the QC. Moneys are often poorly spent in giving quality control a low priority in the budget. This is often true when looking at Chinese/Indian/Taiwan/etc manufactured products for companies which, at one time, had a stellar reputation for quality products.

 

[ssjones]

As someone who makes their living with tools, I would say we are plagued by cheap tools. Not spoiled by them.

That is my experience. I blame Harbor Freight.

When my father in law-died,he left me his big Snap-On box filled with mostly SAE Snap-on and Mac tools (He was a big truck mechanic). I sold the hand tools for about $1500. No new mechanic wanted worn,old tools. I kept a few and the box, as I already had everything I need (I need SAE or my MGB and metric for everything else).

I gave my slightly smaller Craftsman box to my son-in-law and some of the older tools. I re-
furbed the box/sliders and lined the drawers with good stuff, this is all I'll ever need for a box.

 

[ssjones]

One thing he had, that I kept, was this 1/2 breaker bar ratcheting adaptor. I never new they existed, now could't do without it!

 

[carlomarx]

I try to buy only quality (expensive?) tools. The idea is for my grandchildren, should they develop the interest, to be able to use them, even as I use my grandfather's hand saws today. I want tools that hold an edge, stay tight in their fitting, are well balanced and so forth.

Same here.

 

[username]

Id rather have a nice tool that will last a while buy once cry once.

 

[AcesAndEights]

Honestly, I often remind myself that we’re spoiled in this country (US) in general.

 

[Briar Lee]

Honestly, I often remind myself that we’re spoiled in this country (US) in general.

Sometime in the middle seventies I bought a Black and Decker corded electric drill and a corded Black and Decker electric circular saw. They are still good as new and in my father’s Grade A milk barn. I was so proud to own those the original boxes may be up in the attic of the barn with the original papers.



Those were modern, light duty consumer products that in the seventies might have cost $15 for the drill and $25 for the saw. They’ll last centuries if kept out of the weather.

Those are the only two tools like that I’ve ever really needed, for a half century.

Today if I was a teenager on a fence crew they’d have to pay me $12 an hour and look what kids today can buy for a day’s pay.



Nobody knows yet how long the standard 20 volt lithium shop took battery will last because they’ve not been cheap except the last ten years.

But once you get the Porter Cable or Black and Decker 20 volt charger and tools to take the battery the best lithium heavy duty 7 amp hour battery is cheaper than feeding two at Burger King. All the smaller batteries are cheaper.



Why America is the land of the free and the home of dirt cheap high quality tools is a little complexicated, as the little boy said.

For all the whining, moaning, groaning and complaining you hear in the barber shop otherwise America is very capitalistic. Even with a tariff those cheap tools are cheaper for Black and Decker to have made in China than Baltimore and every fast food joint in Baltimore is crying for teenagers to flip burgers at $15 an hour.

My mother hemmed up the legs on my father’s last pair of bib overalls and I managed to actually wear them ragged over the summer of 1973.

That fall we were at the local Palmer’s clothing store in Humansville and brand new bib overalls were almost $20 and Nick Palmer apologized and blamed the gubbermint.

Still today on sale Walmart sells $20 bib overalls, but Mexican made.

When the grass has grown over me in Plum Grove for a hundred years my hand tools will still be as good then as today.

And kids will still have to build the barbed wire fences, and they will, if they pay enough.

 

[huntertrw]

John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) succinctly summed-up my opinion on cheap tools when he wrote, "There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey."

 

[captpat]

There's a difference between cheap and inexpensive, I try to avoid buying cheap. Though some cheap tools are in the toolbox on the tractor. I've also stopped buying cordless hand tools, and when the few I have wear out they'll be replaced with electric, manual, or pneumatic. In my usage batteries age out before they wear out, the cost of a battery frequently exceeds the cost of the toll. I now have enough time to put up with dragging an extension cord or pneumatic line to the job site.