20 September 2005

Cheap Crap


Out with the old.

I got this a few years ago at costco for probably about 30 bucks. When I showed it to my neighbor he said, Yeah, my wife bought me that same pussy set for christmas last year.
Well...some parts of it are cool...the hole saw, for example, has worked quite well over the years.But mostly it really sucks. Almost every time I have used one of the smaller drill bits I have broken it (probably why they give you ten of each) and unless I’m drilling into soft wood they break before they even make the hole. Don’t even think about drilling into metal with them.The screw tips (screwdriver bits for screwguns) have all broken the first time out of the box as well.

So...this was a good lesson on you get what you pay for when it comes to tools and stuff. Yes it was cheap...but for the most part, it’s cheap crap. I’m sure that an a few more years the case will be in the trash and the few surviving bits and stuff will just be in my toolbox.In my defense...I bought this when I was a rookie carpenter having just recently started working for Dan and at that time when I bought stuff like this or circular saw blades or whatever I was working with the idea that I would buy the cheaper stuff in more varieties as I learned what I like I would replace those tools with the good stuff. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Like, for example my ten dollar pack of circular saw blades that I bought back then too. It has about half a dozen high speed steel blades in various tooth patterns for different purposes. “Great” I thought...”I’ll use these and decide which one I like and then buy that one in a good carbide tipped blade.” Well...I tried a couple of them out. The cheap crap blades tended to get hot and the teeth dulled making the blade hotter and so on. I don’t even think I got 5 or 10 cuts out of them before they were so dull I was afraid they would set the wood on fire rather than cut it. So I finally switched (on this project actually) to the multi-purpose carbide tipped blade that game with the darn saw in the first place and I haven’t looked back since. It’ll probably be years before I even have to get that blade sharpened...or just get a new one for ten bucks.

So what’s the lesson here?
Avoid cheap tools.
They break.
They wear out.
And they make the job harder to do before they go.

That’s why my tools now tend to be Yellow and Black :o)

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