On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 18:56:23 -0800, "Stu Fields" wrote:
Well..I thought I would be swimming upstream here but Roy's experience
agrees with something I saw: I have avoided buying anything that cut metal
from Harbor Freight(HF) thinking that it would be a waste of time and a
source of frustration. A friend of mine, a good mechanical engineer,
re-built a 35 Jason sailboat right along side my shop. He bought a drill
set from HF and used them drilling numerous holes thru,, of all things, SS.
My super duper made in the USA expensive drill bits couldn't keep up with
the usage that he got out of the cheap drills from HF. I'm still thinking
about that and wondering what and how? At any rate,the price differences
like $9.95 for a die grinder vs. $159 US I can throw the $9.95 unit at the
dog if it evers craps out and it still hasn't thru the building of several
projects and hard usage. I just bought a set of 1/2 - 1" Silver &
Demming drills in increments of 1/16. I paid less for the whole set than
just the 7/8" drill at the local store. Cheap? Maybe..I"ll find out. I
hope they are as long lasting as my friends..
Stu Fields

I buy a lot from HF, and other purveyors of "quality import" machines
and tooling. The quality may not be high, but the price more than makes
up for that in most cases. The grinders you mention are a case in point,
as is the famous HF bandsaw.

Import cutting tools, though, are a real crap shoot. Some are pretty
good, some are downright awful. The problem is, you can't tell which
it is going to be until one fails on you, usually in a way that does the
maximum amount of damage to your project.

I've gotten drill bits so soft that the flutes literally stripped off of them
when I tried to drill a piece of mild steel. I've also gotten bits so hard
that they shattered when attempting to drill a piece of pine. The grind
angles are often wrong. Bits are crooked. The wrong size. Etc. But
every once in a while, one is very good indeed. So the temptation to
just give them one more try can be strong.

I try to resist that urge, though. It makes more sense to me to buy
good name brand bits, taps, and blades. The cost isn't really that
much more in proportion to the cost of the projects on which they're
used, and the results are much more uniformly satisfactory.

Gary