Larry Jaques wrote in message . ..
On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 05:49:34 GMT, "AL" calmly ranted:

I remember in the late 80's when Craftsman in Canada was quality made with
pride in Japan, while Crapsman in the US was US made. I sure wish I had
bought some, but I was a poor college student.

I understand that the Craftsman stuff sold here in Canada is Chinese
stuff, while in the US it's American-made. I can't find any decent
Craftsman stuff in any Sears store here, but friends visiting the
States have brought back Craftsman that's obviously much better
quality.

Around the time of the quality problems, I saw lots of sockets
in the Searz stores with INDIA cast into them. I thought the
Craftsman stuff was all US-made and the crap Chi/Tai/Indian
imports. Some were Japanese? Japanese tools imported here were
real crap in the 60's but back to high quality in the 80's.

In the '70s I sold heavy truck wheels and brakes. There were two
major US manufacturers of big brake drums, one really expensive (iron
centrifugally cast into a steel shell) and the other reasonable
(straight cast iron). The reasonable outfit had a strike that lasted a
long time, and the other outfit couldn't keep up, so somebody had a
foundry in India make some cast-iron drums.
They came packaged two to a crate, the crate made of teak, and
wrapped in plastic inside and protected with dessicant bags (the
American drums came complete with rust, from being stored outside the
factory, in the rain). The truckers kept coming back for more of those
Indian drums, since they were really hard and lasted a long time,
about twice as long as the American drums. I read once somewhere that
the Indians and Chinese were masters of iron casting long before the
Europeans, and they had a white cast (as opposed to our gray cast)that
was super hard.
Another American outfit started making drums during that strike,
and by the time I left the business thay had a huge chunk of the
market. Plain gray cast iron, and the truckers were disappointed. Just
like us tool buyers, lamenting the lost quality of yesterday's
manufacturing.

Dan