"I should be buying my Stahlwille's from your dealer"

My Stahlwille guy drops through once a month, more or less, and I will get his name and number at that time. I do not buy a great deal from him as he basically offers no warranty, although he will initially tell you different. If you wear something out, it is you, if a socket cracks, then you used it improperly, you can see where I am going with this clown. The only thing that I could nail him down on was, "say you buy these pliers and go use them once and the jaw cracks, well then they were over hardened and that is the fault of the tool and I will warantee them, now if they work and continue to do so and then break later down the road well then you must've used them in the wrong application and it is your baby" I'll get you his contact info but please consider yourself forwarned. I do buy from him but only with the caveat that "you bought it you got it".


"I think the Japanese products are an exception to everything else Asian"

I do like my Jap stuff like the Koken and Mitutoyo stuff. There are these "fresh off the boat" Jap guys that come through my center maybe 4-5 times a year and they carry the "King Tony" brand of tools, Jap made. They are on the lower end but they are nice tools, no worse than Crapsman by any means. But, I buy them because I like the guys who sell them, nice enough fellows, and they are pretty darn nice starter tools for my teenage son.


"Germman mfr's. are starting to outsource to China "

Well, if what you are telling me about Snappy tools is true I may have to do some serious re-evaluation on Snap-On Tools. The loop holes that exist are funny and pathetic all in one. I like to collect firearms as well as tools and the same thing exists there. The ATF made a ruling that for a firearm to be declared "made in America" it had to have no more than 10 foreign parts and seeing how all firearms are not made from exactly the same pieces they came up with a list of exactly which pieces count. So in effect they created a cottage industry of people who make U.S. made parts so that you can assemble your rifle and have it be American Made. Certain rifles are not allowed to be imported, but you can manufacture them here and then they are ok. So if you buy a rifle kit (all the parts but the receiver) and put it together with a new receiver, adhere to all other rules like no machine guns or sawed off shotguns etc, and put enough U.S. parts into it then it becomes legal. Silly stuff but that is what you have to do. Sounds similar to the whole "made in America" tool angle they are trying to work.


"I really hate it when a tool mfr puts down another company"

You rarely get anywhere by bashing another outfit. You will find that to be the truth in automotive as well. Amongst ourselves we may very well cuss a blue streak like no tommorrow over some other shop but when a customer asks us for our opinion we are pretty reserved and extremely hesitant to bash them. Now if they have screwed us or our customer base in the past, well then that is a different story. But you are right, you will not make yourself look like the better man by trying to bring the next guy down. You usually end up looking like a grade A a$$.

"Are you saying that Snap-on owns Grey and the stuff is China made?"

No, the Grey stuff looks like a direct Snap-On knock off and it is made in the knock off capitol of the world, Taiwan. But, Wright is supposed to be Snap-On owned but I have no idea of where they are made.


"I have a welding book but I haven't read it yet,"

Sounds to me like you might want to start with a decent mig welder. You obvioulsy need torches to braze, but you will not be welding any hinges and things back on with a torch. The torch is nice in it's application but it just puts too much heat into a given area to do tight work with. You could weld exhaust systems with it no problem and they are the cat's meow for heating rusty stuff up to get it apart like your exhaust. If you want to weld hinges and things together though you want a wire feed welder. You can get half way decent ones from Home Depot and the like but if you have a decent welding supply shop near you I would go there first. For a little more money you can get a better welder, one that is made for the industry not the weekend warrior consumer stuff. If you really want to persue the welding thing I highly recommend looking into the local community college or vacational training facilities in your area and see if you can't enroll yourself. They have an ROP program here (basically a vocational training deal) and they take you from oxy-actelyne, to arc, then mig, and finally tig welding. I did not make it to the tig part but if you can master the oy-actelyne welding the rest will come pretty easy. The one piece of advice I got that made the most sense about the difference between mig (wire feed) and arc or stick welding was that with the mig you can make a pretty good looking weld that is not worth a crap and that with the arc that if it you can get it to where it looks good then chance are it is good and if it looks crappy then it is.

Any one of those brands I sure will serve you well, whether they are only used occassionally or whether they get main line where and tear like my stuff.


Mark