So the past few weeks I've been doing a fair amount of work on my car, and last weekend as I was finishing up a project, I managed to break a ratchet from a cheap socket set. It was a $4.00 socket set from Harbor Freight, so no big deal, right?
Now, a rational person would have simply replaced the ratchet and maybe even upgraded from the cheapest Chinese crap Harbor Freight had to offer, but not me, not by a long shot. This was an excuse for an all-out shopping spree!
It started innocently enough with a quick check of eBay to see what a used Craftsman 3/8-inch drive ratchet could be had for. I ended up getting one for $6 plus shipping. Not bad and definitely better than what it was replacing. Mission accomplished? Nah, my watch list was filled with too many other good deals like that 37-piece socket set with two ratchets in different sizes for a mere $5 plus shipping. Had to have it. You can never have too many sockets, right?
With that in mind, I turned around and bought a 1/4-inch drive Craftsman ratchet and a set of 10 deep wall sockets to go with the 3/8 ratchet I'd already gotten. And then there was that little trip to Lowe's that turned up a 42-piece Kobalt socket set on sale for $24.98. That was too good to pass up when the whole set was the same price as the ratchet alone. I'm still trying to figure that one out. I think it comes down to high markup on the ratchet.
A note on Kobalt tools: Lowe's introduced the Kobalt brand in 1998 to compete with Craftsman. Initially produced by J.H. Williams, maker of Snap-On tools, Production was shifted to Danaher, which also produced Craftsman, in 2005. Today's Kobalt tools, while still of good quality, are sourced from a Taiwanese manufacturer.
So by the end of the week, my eBay tool purchases started rolling in. The 37-piece socket set was great. It was an older, no-name set that would be name-brand quality by today's standards. Quite serviceable and a good value for what I had paid. If this was the only thing I had gotten, my needs would have been satisfied.
That Craftsman ratchet that started this whole buying spree off was another story. The mechanism was frozen up. Useless. Fortunately, Sears guarantees their hand tools for life, so a quick exchange netted me a rebuilt ratchet that was better than brand new. I say better because Craftsman has recently begun sourcing most of their hand tools from China and the quality is visibly less than the older models. The handles are thinner, the steel is likely weaker, and the little directional switch is made of plastic. My refurbished ratchet was made in the USA and had a metal directional switch. Better than new. The other Craftsman tools I bought, being 'new old stock' were also made in USA.
So all told, the loss of a ratchet from a $4.00 socket set prompted me to spend about $90.00 on five ratchets, three nut driver handles, more than 100 sockets and accessories, and a tool box to put it all in. Is it overkill or an overdue upgrade? Do you think I may need a 12-step program or a project on which to put these tools to use?
