Comments on: Tool Branding and You

By: Eli

Eli — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 04:15:36 +0000

I’ll also weigh in as guilty to using brand names as coverall tags (sawzall, et al) and agree with all points made by M’self, especially about inter-brand batteries, although it’ll never happen. I guess if there enough china battery knockoffs the OEM wouldn’t make the big boys any money, and hence they’d kowtow to standardization. I also subscribe to the ‘replace the one that breaks’ school of thought. I don’t work in a mocheen shop anymore where I’ll be busting down a hundred welds a day, I only use my grinder occasionally, so a harbor freight tool ($19.99) is going to fill my need as well as the best grinder at four or five times the price. But certain tools are expendables as well, getting lost or broken through hard use so often that to buy the best every time would be painful (. My pocket knife is a great example. It’s 26 bucks, and a wonderful value (Gerber EZ-out). I left two in central america and lost a third here in eight years. I’d have paid the same for one really nice one, but someone in nicaragua would have an awesome knife right now and I wouldn’t. It’s even cheap enough for me to keep a spare in the wardrobe, so I can replace it immediately if lost. It has a great blade and is light. Why would I spend more?
As for the cordless tools, that’s developed along different criteria. I had Makita when that seemed like the best choice, and it was great until I had to buy so many batteries. Dewalt hit me right in the price point when I tooled up to redo my house a few years ago. I was also gifted some dewalt from work, so the choice was really made for me. If money was no object I’d probably go for mostly festool stuff now or something really light. The hitachi stuff is great, the panasonic hammer drills are pretty light and have the interchangeable chuck, but the batteries feel chintzy to hand. Haven’t looked in a while, but when the dewalt stuff gives out soon I’ll likely get a package deal from whomever seems to fit the bill for my specific needs…. For the record Steve, I was burned by craftsman as well, shelling out the extra spondool for their stainless contractor vacuum that was the biggest piece of crap ever. My first had been a ridgid and I assumed spending more for the craftsman would give me an even better vacuuming experience. It did suck more, for sure

By: Steve Thompson

Steve Thompson — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:24:01 +0000

The house I grew up in was nothing but Craftsman. And I happily followed in those footsteps for many years…until I actually had to take back a torque wrench. Read the fine print. I had always assumed that Craftsman mecahnics tools were all lifetime warranty. I had learned long ago that power tools weren’t necessarily similarly covered, but in trying to return a torque wrench that failed after a week or so of light use I learned to check carefully at the terms of the warranty. The people at Sears were nice enough, and since I hadn’t purchased it that long ago, they looked up the transaction and replaced it as defective. But be aware.

Since then my fancy for mechanics hand tools still lies with Craftsman, but for power tools I usually look at what my contractor friends have: Bosch, PC, etc.

By: Myself

Myself — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 20:04:32 +0000

In most cases, I tend to carry whatever my employer hands me. But after a while with a work-issued Ryobi drill, I’m looking for something with a better charger and more on-tool bit storage. The tool’s ergonomics are great except for the worthless bit holder. On a positive note, I’ve been superbly happy with the 3M electronics vacuum, and am looking at picking up a used one for myself. (Hooray, antistatic vacuum hoses!) Klein electrical tools carry a certain amount of “street cred” with old telecom guys, but nobody’s going to laugh at you for carrying Ideal or Fiskars snips, as long as they have the serrated edge and the stripping notches. A lot of the brand preferences in my industry are simply because the specialized tools aren’t made by a lot of different names.

As for Craftsman and their reputation, I’ve been burned already by that one. I picked up a Craftsman-branded Dremel knockoff and used it here and there for a few months before a friend asked me when I was going to replace those failed bearings. “You mean it’s not supposed to make that noise?” Of course, the return period was up and I was stuck with a tool that’d been bad from day one. Same thing happened when my dad bought a laser level, he didn’t discover the scraping noise it’d been making was abnormal until the unit failed completely, 38 days after purchase. The manager was *no* help in either case. No more power tools from Sears!

Hand tools are another story. I generally start with whatever cheapies are sitting around, be they the Harbor Freight junk, or garage-sale screwdrivers, or whatever. When I break or mangle one, I replace it with a Craftsman. My logic says that the tools I use enough to destroy are the ones worth paying for the lifetime warranty on.

I’ve never owned a MAC or Snap-On tool, though I know guys who swear by them. It’s a damn shame they don’t have retail stores, because I don’t like the dealer’s truck sales environment. Ditto with Cutco knives. What’s with the MLM scheme, guys? Let the product stand on its own, in a store, and I’ll buy what I need, when I want it, with no pressure from a commissioned salesleech.

As to the pop/coke phenomenon, I’ll confess to using “sawzall” and “hole hawg” as generic terms, just like “kleenex” and “rollerblade”. Note that all these terms are shorter than “reciprocating saw”, “right-angle drill”, “facial tissue”, and “in-line skate”. Such terms are also specific, whereas the generic terms are frequently broader: A jigsaw, sawzall, scroll saw, and power carving knife are all techincally reciprocating saws.

I could care less about brand dilution and trademarks — intellectual property law makes me reach for a bottle of aspirin. (That’s generic acetysalycylic acid in 325mg tablets, folks. Not the Bayer brand name.)

Back to power tools for a moment: I’m considering a serious investment in cordless tools here, establishing myself with a “system” built around one common battery pack. I’m considering 3 main criteria:

1: What tools are available? The DeWalt cordless vacuums are head and shoulders above the competition. But Ryobi’s jobsite fan makes so much sense! If I’m going to settle on one standard, I’d like to have the option of a hedge trimmer and weed-whacker (another brand name turned generic!), even if I don’t buy them at the outset. What would be really killer is an inter-brand battery standard, so I could pick and choose tools across the different product lines. Then you’d know that someone using a particular tool was using it because it truly *was* the right tool for the job, not because they were locked in to a particular brand’s infrastructure. As it sits, no single brand seems to offer the full spectrum of tools I’m interested in. (Although I could probably decapitate a spare flashlight and build a jobsite fan for whatever standard I end up with!)

2: Will the product line be around in 5 years? I’d say 10 but I know that’s too much to ask. I don’t use my tools heavily, so my replacement life cycle is very long. I will pay for quality if I think it means they’ll be around for my (yet imaginary) kids to use, like some of my father’s first power tools are still going today. The limited lifespan of rechargeable batteries makes this *heavily* dependent on manufacturer support. Ever more so with the growing popularity, and limited rebuildability, of lithium-ion packs.

3: Reviews. I enjoy Toolmonger very much, but the long-term reviews in the Journal of Light Construction are definitely worth checking out too. They recently had an expansive piece focusing just on the job-site radio/charger units from various manufacturers. (My kingdom for the first one to integrate a bluetooth “someone’s on the phone so I’ll mute the music now” sensor!)

I guess what it comes down to is that I’m a form-follows-function fellow; any brand is fine if it offers the features I need. Interoperability is a big feature, when will the industry realize that?