George Plimpton wrote:

On 12/28/2011 10:27 AM, Doug Miller wrote:
On 12/28/2011 12:55 PM, Pete C. wrote:

Honestly, I haven't broken any Craftsman or HF hand tool that I wasn't
*seriously* abusing.

Then you've gotten damn lucky with the HF tools. IME, they're garbage.

I went into a HF once. It was next door to a skateboard shop my son
wanted to check out. I had long heard people rave about HF, so I went
in to see. I was not impressed. Most of the merchandise seemed like
cheap Asian junk, probably bought at customs auctions (same way Trader
Joe's used to buy a lot of its stuff in the early days, before they
began doing a lot of private label deals.) This was a good few years
ago, so maybe they've improved their merchandise lines since then.

There is no shortage of crap at HF, but there are some real gems as
well. The hydraulic crimper and the hydraulic KO punch sets are two
examples that work very well and are 1/10 the cost of any competitive
units.