Larry Jaques wrote:

On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:08:43 -0500, the infamous Wes
scrawled the following:

Larry Jaques wrote:

I bought some rolling head pry bars. Each lasted less than one use.

The 4-piece set? I still have mine 30 years later but only use it for
alignment and as a jack handle. I think I've used one or another of
them for prying two pieces of wood apart, too. Nothing rough.

I bought 2 4 piece sets while attending NAMES last year. I've killed four of them in
matching pairs.

Are they breaking from being too brittle, or bending due to lack of
hardening?


Snapped like peanut brittle.

My Sears pry and a coupe of Mc Master Carr pry's are going strong still.

Bueno. My HF digging bar is just peachy. The medium pry bar with a
round and a flat chisel end is softer than hell on the round end.

Variable quality. We had a local place that sold chineese tools until it folded. Their
tools tended to be a-ok, never had to return any.


Same for some metal stamps. One hit on 1018 and my O stamp is now in BOLD FONT.

Oops! I haven't tried mine yet.

Might as well test them. Rc50 is what a good stamp should be able to mark iirc.
Obviously, the harder the target you stamp, the shorter the stamp life.

Try all the characters, I suspect they HT one character at a time in a large batch with
typical varying results.

That would tend to suck. I'd have to go to HF and say "Hi, Mr.
Manager. I'm going to need all your sets of alphanumeric stamps, a
hammer, and a place to sit and try them. Here are the bad characters
from the set I bought. I brought my own metal to sample 'em."

Might as well.

Hmm, I wonder if it's just not worth it? g

I'm thinking I need a lead to a source of quality stamps and just go with it. Expecting
China at a low price point to get things right 36-40 times in a row is not realistic.

Wes