On Nov 23, 1:53 am, "DGDevin" wrote:
"John Horner" wrote in message

news:d_s1j.5981$XT.5534@trnddc01...

Where to the rest of you sit with this question?

I try to buy U.S., Canadian, British, German etc. because the quality is
better, and I try to buy domestic because I see no reason to export jobs to
China. I suppose some cheap tools are acceptable, a garden rake or
something like that, but for jobs I care about I prefer tools that do the
job properly and will still be doing it ten or twenty years down the road,
and from what I've seen most of the tools coming out of China are still
distinctly lower quality.

That works exceptionally well when you can FIND tools manufactured in
those countries. Today, a very large percentage of woodworking tools
is manufactured in China. Some of the comments I read today are
similar to those that used to crop up about Taiwanese tools 20-25
years ago, and about Japanese products of all kinds 25 or 30 years
before that. Today, Japan leads the world in quality in several areas--
autos, cameras, among others. Taiwan isn't far behind. Today, with
very minior exceptions, tool manufacture has moved out of the U.S.
German tools retain their excellence, but also have an excellent
price, so are not for a lot of people (check both quality and price of
Festool for an example: their tools are wonderful; the prices can be
staggering).

China's tool quality is much better now than it was a few years ago. I
wonder more than a little, though, about a system of goverment that
tends to blame poor quality manufacturing on the people buying the
product for resale, as in the toy flap with Mattel which had to
apologize to the Chinese because Chinese manufacturers used lead in
children's toys. Absolutely weird by my standards, but, more than
that, it limits the incentive for manufacturers to improve products
while maintaining price.