On Wednesday, October 28, 2015 at 4:10:11 PM UTC-5, Mike Marlow wrote:

I have experienced this with the squeeze clamps but not at all with the bar
clamps or the pipe clamps. Neither of those have failed over more than 10
years of use. I put them to use for things far more than just woodworking.

Always important when talking about the quality if HF that it can vary wildly. Each batch is a lot number, and according to one of the store managers I talked to (take that for what it is worth) different lots can vary in quality. However, to reinforce his comments go to the net and check their website and you can easily see that the same exact product will have a different lot number and get different reviews. My personal (YMMV) experience bears this out as well. So it is quite likely that at least more than one of us here have had different experiences with their Pacific Rim offerings, especially if we consider that we are now comparing product manufacturing timelines of more than a decade.
I
have Pony pipe clamps that have to be 50 years old that were given to
me by a retired contractor that used them for everything you could
imagine, and they work just fine.

My HF knock offs of the Pony pipe clamp continue to work as good as day one,
some 20 years later. Not sure that you're really making a point here
Robert.

Note I simply said that I had Pony clamps and was commenting on their longevity. I didn't comment on the HF quality. But... if a point is to be made, my HF knock offs went in the trash. I had one roll off the saw horses on the job and the cast iron cracked, then broke when I used it to clamp. I dropped one and it landed on the crank and it broke off. With there being little difference in the price of a real Pony and an HF, for me, personally, I don't have time to screw with that type of tool.


With their short, **** poor track record, HF turned I will never buy
another HF clamp unless I figure some way it might be a one time use.
Clamps are tools I expect to work, period.

The squeeze clamps they sell have proven to be unreliable for me. That
said, the bar clamps and the Pony style clamps just continue to perform.
Can't understand the difference in experience...

See above. If every single product was made to the same exact tolerances from the same exact material for its entire production run, we could simply go to some convenient website and read one review from a competent reviewer and hundreds of thousands of folks would be served.

But since manufacturers constantly change their manufacturing techniques, materials, place of manufacture, and in come cases simply re-engineer a lower end product like a clamp without notice or fanfare I think it logical to gather personal experiences of tools that reflect a track record of real world use.

To put that in perspective, almost everything I bought about from HF seemed to be junk about 20 years ago. It was ONLY at your suggestion that I try one of their spray guns. If you recall, I loved it. I used it until it spit more than sprayed, and bought another exactly like it from HF to use for general spraying. Even though they looked the same, they weren't. I took it back and traded it for another, and had the same exact experience. So I took it apart and while it was the same model number, the fit and finish of the internals weren't anything like the one I bought at your suggestion. Same brand, same model, same appearance, but different.

Just sayin'...

You doing OK up there? IIRC, this should be about the time you are stocking up your firewood readying for winter. Still in the upper/mid 80s here...

Robert