Game changer

FWIW, my family bought me a Craftsman set a few years back. Don't bother even looking at Craftsman. Maybe I got the one lemon they ever produced, but it's nothing to covet, desire or long for. Doors that won't stay shut, drawers that won't slide, very shallow trays. I agree with the better HF for a value, but longevity may be an issue. I watch Craigslist every day, I 've seen Snap On, Mac, Proto and a few other tool cabinets of loftier status go for 1/10th of their cost new...some with tools in them!

Craftsman tool chests used to be excellent. Key words there are used to be. When I look at them in store for the last many years it's shocking how flimsy they are. The local farm supply place has a fairly nice line tool chests for the money and Lowes Kobalt brand seems decent if compared to Craftsman.

Craigslist around here has plenty of Snap-on chests. I just don’t need spend 2000 bucks for one.

Rick, I looked at Craftsman and walked away. Flimsy isn’t quite the word.

I used to twist a wrench for a living many years ago, still have the craftsman tool chests I bought in the early 70's.

Kobalt is good kit.

In the 80's the Craftsman 2000 was a top shelf unit .
Ball bearing drawer slides , rated for 2000# of tools .
I have one now , with a top box .

Abruptly swerving back to the original topic....... (shocking !)

This is what I use for that job.
https://www.shars.com/5c-spin-index-fixture

Slightly slower to get exactly 90 degrees, but more versatile, too.

Swerving back.....hang on. I have several old Craftsman roll arounds
from the 70s when I could barely afford them.

Bill

Ian -- Carbon duplicates......I have had to explain to a number of youngsters what "carbon paper"
is and why you would want it.
Clear from their expressions that it was considered not to dissimilar to chipping flint arrow points to
them.

Bill

Craftsman bought by Lowe's with Sears downspiral

Didn't ACE sell Craftsman tools for a while?

They still do in town. ACE has Craftsman and is now a Stihl dealer too.

All Chinese-made junk. Kobalt was actually pretty good, Mac/Stanley pro-grade wrenches and stuff, not Strap-On quality but close. Very sad to see Kobalt go, if it's indeed gone in favor of crapsman, saw the ad on Hulu last night for the first time and nearly threw something at the TV.

Pistolero said:

Ian -- Carbon duplicates......I have had to explain to a number of youngsters what "carbon paper"
is and why you would want it.
Clear from their expressions that it was considered not to dissimilar to chipping flint arrow points to
them.

Bill

Click to expand...

I get that a lot. Carbon doesn't lie or vanish into electronic never-never land. I save the carbon sheets from invoices that have little writing on them for use in transferring other things or doing rubbings. If you want to know if your rifle's forearm is contacting the barrel under recoil, make a pack with plain paper and carbon and slip it into the barrel channel.

To wander the topic further, a question. Before there were surplus bearings from the Norden bomb sight and the resulting invention of the ballpoint pen, we wrote with either fountain pens or pencils. Fountain pens are no good at imprinting carbon (still have a few bladder-type pens at home, and a bottle of India ink), so what was used for making carbon copies....pencils?

Just for the record, Brad still needs a Super Spacer......

I have 3 roll-aways. One is Dad's old late 1940s Craftsman, one a mid 1980s Craftsman that I bought, and the third roll-away started life as an electronic components storage unit in a Radio Shack store; about 2 dozen smallish drawers of varying sizes that hold taps, clamps, scribes, sockets, dental picks, batteries, bore scopes and a whole raft of miscellaneous stuff.

type writers were used for carbon copies.

I had not heard that Lowe's bought Craftsman. Our local ACE chain has a good bit of
Craftsman in stock.

If Lowe's will spec the quality that Sears USED TO spec, their stuff will be as good as when
Craftsman was really good stuff. At the end Craftsman stuff was somewhat off the peak of what
they made in the 60s and still well into the 80s, even early 90s. Sure, Snap-On is a bit better, but
20% better for 3X or 5X the money??? I never could afford much of it. I have a few specialized
tools that are so superior that I had to get them. A particular 1/4" drive Snap-On socket-integrated
with the universal is thin enough and will bend enough to get the intake manifold 3/8" nuts off
of a Continental O-470 and it's brethren with four studs per individual manifold elbow to each
cylinder. Absolutely NOTHING else on this planet will get two of them off, I have tried all possible
other tools, believe me. Extremely close side clearance and very bad angles. ANY socket with a
separate universal is too long, most sockets are too thick, all box ends are too thick, no open will work.
Crows foot ALMOST will work but just won't. So, I sprung for a set of Snap-On 1/4 drive integral
socket/universal about 5 for $100 or $120, IIRC. Either that or give up. I got a Snap-On 1/4" flex
handle ratchet (marvelous tool) as a Christmas gift from my father, he had a good friend, a HS
chum of mine, who became The Snap-On Guy. Probably got a deal on it. Thanks, Dad, thanks Larry.

The procurement officer controls exactly what comes off of the production line, just that simple.
If the same guy that was specing the Kobalt stuff is specing the Craftsman stuff, the quality will
be there. Boxes will be red instead of blue, probably the same exact suppliers as the Kobalt stuff.
Different roll marking, a bit of styling change to stop the culture shock of "this doesn't LOOK like
my old Craftsman wrench!", different paint, and on it goes.

I probably turned in about 6 or 8 tools to Sears since 1966 when I started working on cars, tractors, motorcycles,
and aircraft and my Dad and Mom got my my first Craftsman tool box, filled with wrenches. I had to
buy a metric socket set, got S-K Wayne because, IIRC, Craftsman didn't yet have much metric in the late
60s, at least in our little city in Fla. Still have the S-K Wayne, although the ratchet handle, set aside in
favor of a Craftsman, got misplaced somewhere in the last 10 or 12 moves, not much missed. It was quality,
but not a fan of the crossbar selector, I prefer the small lever like Snap-On or Craftsman.

Too many folks think fondly about Craftsman for the brand name to die. They will have to murder it with
poor quality, which could happen. We will see what they do.

Bill

I had heard that Hughes tool company owned by Howard Hughes the billionaire used to make Craftsman hand tools. Should probably check online, the history is out there somewhere, but don't have time right now.

fiver said:

type writers were used for carbon copies.

Click to expand...

Doh! Yes, of course. Typewriters were everywhere like cell phones now. The go-to memo-machine of yesteryear.

I haven't seen an actual typewriter in a few decades. I may have an old electric somewhere in an
attic or store room. Use it in college in the late 60s thru middle 70s, even a bit after that.
They went the way of the dodo bird about early 90s at work, had been kept around to fill out
a few forms that were not available on line, and address envelopes via stickers until that all
was perfected with printers.

Pretty dead technology now days. Not that they don't do exactly what they did 100 years or
25 years ago, it is just that we no longer can live with the inconvenience and slowness. Like
CAD vs manual drafting. The real differences are in editing and revisions, not so much in the
original work creation process.

Bill

Accoreding to Wikipedia (the ultimate source, RIGHT?) (ha!, but often accurate on non-political
things):
"The hardline mechanic's tools (wrenches, ratchets, and sockets) that make up the core of the brand have been made by a variety of manufacturers over the years, including New Britain,[17] Moore Drop Forging,[2] Stanley,[18] Easco Hand Tools,[19] Danaher Corporation, and most recently Apex Tool Group. Screwdrivers have been manufactured by Pratt-Read and Western Forge, but are now supplied mostly exclusively by Western Forge, who also supply pliers and adjustable wrenches.[20] "

Western Forge was recently bought by Ideal Industries and they supply tools to Lowe's .....

So, expect the screwdrivers, at least, from Lowe's Craftsman to be exactly like the old, good ones.

Bill