Let's have fun--what brand of tools do you prefer?

What brand of handtools do you prefer?

  • Craftsman, from Sears

    Votes: 35 57.4%

  • Snap-On, the choice of auto mechanics

    Votes: 17 27.9%

  • Mac Tools, marine and heavy diesel mechanics

    Votes: 1 1.6%

  • Other brands--please list (we may discover some good values here)

    Votes: 12 19.7%

  • Don't use tools--they make my hands dirty and could cause me to chip a nail.

    Votes: 2 3.3%
  • Total voters
    61
  • Poll closed .
C

CowboyPilot

Guest
I just got in from a little enchilada hop, flew a few extra patterns and whatnot to get my tach-time square on the nose for my 25-hour oil & filter change. Was rolling out my toolbox and got to thinking what brand of tools do airplane folks prefer?

Not just a/c owners, but all of us? Most of us are pretty handy with a wrench, so I just got curious as to who likes what.

Thought I'd even throw a poll in for the helluva it.

'Course. . . . the way some tool discussions go could be similar to Chevy versus Ford when it comes to pickup trucks. Hope this don't end up in the Spin Zone 'cause I got it blocked. :)

I'm a Craftsman hand-tool and power-tool guy. I can order them online and I like the lifetime-guarantee for their handtools. I also like DeWalt and Hitachi power tools for my woodworking shop.

And y'all?

Regards.

-JD
 
Don't do much with tools; one of the reasons I'd never consider doing a homebuilt. Those that I have, though, tend to be Skil (my g'pa used to work for them), Craftsman, or B&D.
 
CowboyPilot said:
I'm a Craftsman hand-tool and power-tool guy.
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Almost 100% Craftsman, the store isn't far from the house. I do (and always have) all of the routine mx on all of the vehicles. I just like knowing the job was done right, and I like the time and $$$ savings.
 
I like the tools that are where I want them, when I want them, and that work well and don't break and are cheap to buy! I notice they have many names.
 
I have had good luck with Craftsman. Although I haven't really built up a supply of them. I've never used any of the SnapOn stuff but I've heard good things.

Most of what I have is cheap Walmart crap that I constantly break. But Craftman is uhh--expensive. I'm sure there will be a day when my collection tools starts to weigh more on the Craftsman side than the cheap Walmart crap.

I think you can measure someone's age based on the number of Craftsman tools that they have.
 
CowboyPilot said:
I just got in from a little enchilada hop, flew a few extra patterns and whatnot to get my tach-time square on the nose for my 25-hour oil & filter change. Was rolling out my toolbox and got to thinking what brand of tools do airplane folks prefer?

I'm a Craftsman hand-tool and power-tool guy. I can order them online and I like the lifetime-guarantee for their handtools. I also like DeWalt and Hitachi power tools for my woodworking shop.
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I'm a Snap On guy for a couple of reasons. First off, they fit. They fit in tight spaces, and with the Flank Drive design, they fit on very rounded and abused fasteners. They also fit my hand nicely. Secondly, there are many times in my life when I am making my living with my tools. When you're working flat rate, you can't afford to go down and replace a broken tool. With Snap Ons, I push the job that requires that tool over, call the Snap On man, start working on another job, the Snap On man shows up within an hour or so (I had one guy who lived nearby, and if he couldn't get to me in 15 minutes, his wife would be there) replaces the tool or brings the one I didn't have but needed, and I didn't lose any time. (It's very rare that I break a Snap On as well.) Thirdly, the Snap On man finances. I've had to start my life over on several occassions and can always rely on my mechanical skills to make a living until I can find something different (just because I am a mechanic, doesn't mean I want to make my living that way). When a prospective employer asks if I have tools, I just say "I have some, but the Snap On man comes by right?" and that person just nods and understands I know the business.

As for power tools, Delta, Dewalt, Makita & Hitachi generally.
Welding machines are Furonious.
My shipwright tools are of various brands and often 100 years old, some are even homemade by me since no one makes them anymore.
 
Bill Jennings said:
Almost 100% Craftsman, the store isn't far from the house. I do (and always have) all of the routine mx on all of the vehicles. I just like knowing the job was done right, and I like the time and $$$ savings.
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Agreed. That's why I do almost all of the work on our vehicles whenever possible. Something about paying someone $65 for a Mobil 1 oild change that makes me cringe. . . and then not knowing if they even tightened the oil pan drain plug OR worse yet, if they put about sixty pounds of torque on the oil filter. :hairraise:

jesse said:
I have had good luck with Craftsman. Although I haven't really built up a supply of them. I've never used any of the SnapOn stuff but I've heard good things.

Most of what I have is cheap Walmart crap that I constantly break. But Craftman is uhh--expensive. I'm sure there will be a day when my collection tools starts to weigh more on the Craftsman side than the cheap Walmart crap.

I think you can measure someone's age based on the number of Craftsman tools that they have.
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Thanks, Jesse. Now my age has been measured to be somewhere around 165 and 240. :) How old was Noah or Moses?

The good tools do cost a bit more, but the dependability is worth it. When you end up getting your first "it's all mine, by-God, ALL MINE" airplane, you'll find yourself starting to budget for better quality tools.

They're an investment and they'll last forever.

And yep, there will become a time when your tool collection begins favoring the better tools versus the Chi-Commie stuff.

Regards.

-JD
 
Craftsman for me.

I worked as a auto mechanic for 10+ year. I have owned 3 shop also.

Snap On is by far the best lasting & best feel in your hand, but I don't feel it is worth 2-10 times the price of Craftsman tools.Kind of like Lightspeed to Bose headsets. Also if you do not work at a shop, It is very hard to get a replacement for a broken tool. With Snap On the dealer drives a truck & visits your shop once a week. If you work at a shop with a Monday stop & you break a tool on Tuesday, you are without a tool for a week. If you do not own a shop & you find the truck the franchise owner prolly wont give you the replacement on the spot because then he might not have it if one of his weekly customers if they need it. The franchise owner will tell you he doesn't have it in stock & will order it. Then you are out a tool for 2-3 weeks.

With Craftsman you can get a replacement anytime you want as long as there is a sears store nearby.

Mac is 1/2 way in-between the 2.
 
I do almost all of my own maintenance (and all of it once I get land) because hired help can't be depended on to do it right the first time.

The majority of my tools is Craftsman. The rest is mostly assorted mystery tools from my dad's box but they've been abused constantly since the 60's without breaking.
I also have assorted pieces of junk tools that come with things (motorcycle tool kits are a sick joke at best) but that stuff gets replaced with new good quality stuff real quick. I just toss the junk tools into vehicles for those rare around town moments when I'm not carrying a decent box. I figure they're possibly good for one use before they're completely trashed.

Nothing is worse than being in the middle of absolute nowhere and having the one tool break that will get you back on the road.

Pony up the $$ and buy good stuff once so you don't have to worry about it again.
 
Eamon said:
if you do not work at a shop, It is very hard to get a replacement for a broken tool. With Snap On the dealer drives a truck & visits your shop once a week. If you work at a shop with a Monday stop & you break a tool on Tuesday, you are without a tool for a week. If you do not own a shop & you find the truck the franchise owner prolly wont give you the replacement on the spot because then he might not have it if one of his weekly customers if they need it. The franchise owner will tell you he doesn't have it in stock & will order it. Then you are out a tool for 2-3 weeks.
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Interesting, that is not my experience with them. I have a phone # and when I call it, they've always come. They even come down on the dock and meet me at the boat.
 
Matco, Mac, or Craftsman. Snap-on are the most over-rated, over-priced
tools out there. One of my guys just paid $500 for a stinking cordless drill, what a dummy.
30 years of getting my hands dirty
 
Craftsman for handtools; Crescent for adjustable wrench (but pretty much only from my powerline days); Milwaulkee electric drills (passed down from my dad - don't know if today's Milwaulkee products are any good); DeWalt and Makita for other power tools; Lincoln welder (old 220 arc welder - thinking about shopping for one of them there newfangled MIG/TIG gizmos)
 
Henning said:
What are your knuckles worth?:rolleyes: I HATE working with cheap tools.
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Me too. But considering how little I need them combined with how I'd rather just spend that money on flying it works out. Like I said I have some decent tools but not a whole lot. The ones I do have are usually metric in the 10mm to 18mm range as my entire motorcycle is pretty much built of those.
 
I still have a bunch of Snap-on tools from when I was an Auto Mechcanic 25 years ago. They're by far the best tools I have but they're expensive and not easy to buy if you're not working in a repair shop where the salesman stops in. Now when I by tools its craftsman.
 
I have a mixed bag err.... box of tools.

Snap-On from my mechanicing as a day job days of yore.
Lots of Craftsman. I don't like them as much, but I can get one replaced on a Sunday afternoon if need be. I swear the screwdrivers have been, well screwing in the drawers, they are multiplying so fast I've had to give some to my wife for her own tool set.
I have a few Kobalt sockets, and Ilike the feel of them.
The best deal I have ever got was a year or so ago I ran into a box of "junk" leftover from a Defense Reorganization Marketing Office auction at Robins AFB. My A/P had bought 100's of pounds of stuff for $500 because the lot contained two pricey rivet head cutters (he claimed together they were worth over a thousand dollars). He let his mechanics pick over thet stuff then let me rummage too. I got 5 pair of safety wiring pliers in two or three sizes, a 6" Starrett dial caliper, two 1/4" drive Blue Point (Snap-On) air ratchets, two 1/4" right angle air powered grinders, micrometer set (about 4) going from 0" to 6" capacity and 110 Pounds of sockets. Most of the sockets were Bonney and Snap-On. I got 64 1/4" drive universal joints alone. there was an entire set of those nice Snap-On 3/8" drive universals with the 12 point socket made on permanently. If I'd have been a lot greedier, I could have gotten more than my car could have carried home.
I've given away complete socket sets to almost everybody I know, and still have 20 or 30 pounds of the stuff left. It was some kind of avionics shop that was shut down, and I guess the government, in their infinite wisdom, just "gave it all away" as it was cheaper to purchase new than to redistribute to active shops on the base. All the sockets have an inventory number laser engraved on them somewhere. There ya go, taxpayer.
 
i am usually just happy to find some tools laying around that i can adapt for the job.
 
Henning said:
Interesting, that is not my experience with them. I have a phone # and when I call it, they've always come. They even come down on the dock and meet me at the boat.
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Here on Long Island, I guess the Snap On guys have a full route. I have called the guy on an off day & he would say "I'll be in Wantagh & Sam's Auto @ 3" but I have also seen them give plenty of guys the cold shoulder if they are not frequent buyers.
 
Eamon said:
Here on Long Island, I guess the Snap On guys have a full route. I have called the guy on an off day & he would say "I'll be in Wantagh & Sam's Auto @ 3" but I have also seen them give plenty of guys the cold shoulder if they are not frequent buyers.
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Hmmm... Must be a NY thing.:D In St Louis, if our driver couldn't get there, he'd send his wife. Since they lived down the street, never waited more than 15 minutes. My guy in SoCA, sometimes I had to wait until he finished his normal route and he'd stop by. If it was early I'd take his lunch order and he come by then.
 
gkainz said:
Milwaulkee electric drills (passed down from my dad - don't know if today's Milwaulkee products are any good)
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I dunno about "Milwaulkee" but Milwaukee electric tools are great. When you're in destruction mode, it's hard to beat a Sawzall, and they make a damn fine hammer drill too. :yes:

Oh, and for those who like to fix their things rather than toss & replace... They have full parts lists and wiring instructions for all of their tools available for download from their web site.
 
I've got mostly Craftsman hand tools, Milwaukee Drills, Porter Cable Sawsall, and Dewalt Circular saw.
Around here, people will pay an almost new price for broken Craftsman tools at auctions. Then, they take them down and get them replaced on the warranty.

Barb
 
I'm waiting for the next sale at Sears to get another Craftsman socket set to fill in what I've lost over the years. I need a decent set for use in the new home.

My old metal Craftsman tool box has this locking hasp that keeps flipping down to get in the way whenever I open the cover. It only recently occurred to me that I could hold the hasp with duct tape to stay open. I've only had the thing drving me nuts for 30 years or more and BTW, as I write this I still haven't put on the duct tape.
 
When I worked for Fiat-Allis I had mostly Snap-on, when I stopped turning wrenches and started chasing bad guys, I sold them. I pretty much have craftsman now, with a few off brands.
 
Well being a Auto/truckmechanic/tow truck operater-service. I use all the above tool company's and some others not so known, SK,AP,etc. I usually shop around for the best deal,and then buy that brand. I wiil tell you that most tools company's have the same warranty and i'm a price shoper,but i'm also a impulse buyer so if i see something New that i think i would need sometime i'll buy it.Most of my stuff is Mac,and Matco. I am very pleased with the tools i have bought and should probably tell you they come to something around 56 K in value, And No i do not own my own business just like to have the tools i need when i need them.

Dave G :blueplane:
 
Craftsman for hand tools and almost exclusively DeWalt for power tools... the only exception to that is when I can't justify spending $600 for a DeWalt Table saw and can get a Craftsman for about $150.

But of course the Table saw just went TU.... so I guess you do get what you pay for..
 
I have Craftsman for routine hand tools, with a few of those Kobalt tools thrown in (Lowe's store brand, IIRC), also made in USA.

For electronics tools, I have Xcelite, left over from my Bell & Howell toolbag days.

And for pliers, side cutters, that sort of thing, you simply cannot get better, anything *close* to better, than Klein tools.
 
SCCutler said:
And for pliers, side cutters, that sort of thing, you simply cannot get better, anything *close* to better, than Klein tools.
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Oh yeah, I forgot about my Klein lineman pliers!!! They cut, they twist, they grip, they hammer, they pry and they make a good thump on the grunt's hardhat when dropped from the top of a pole!
 
Craftsman tools ain't what they used to be. My dad bought a screwdriver and the point broke off the first time he tried to use it. I bought some sockets and one of them wouldn't fit in the holder. They seem to break a lot more than they used to as well.
 
When I was a wrench some 20+ years ago, I stocked up on Craftsmen hand tools. Still have most all of them (some do get left in an engine compartment or two).
That said, I'd be remiss if I didn't say I have a set of S&K deep well impact sockets. Also have some miscellanious Snap-On, Cornhole :) and Mac tools as well.
Air tools are all CP (Chicago Pneumatic?). Still have the same ones for over 20 years without a problem.
For battery power, all are Dewalt.
I'm a firm believer in buying the best I can without getting bent over the tool truck.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I dunno about "Milwaulkee" but Milwaukee electric tools are great.
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Dang, sorry! Didn't mean to offend any cheeseheads out there ... :D Minnesota native and never did learn to spell that ... other than power tools, the only other reference I have to Milwaukee was the old joke ..."That's the beer than made Mill Famy walk us" ... :D
 
I'm always surprised at how well DeWalt has done in the market. I lived in Baltimore, and interviewed for a job at B&D right around the time they introduced the line. I didn't get the job -- and THANK GOODNESS for that -- but DeWalt tools have done well. I thought, well, anyone is just going to see right through them camouflaging Black & Decker tools with fancy yellow covers and laugh. Seems like they actually made 'em tough. All the builders/construction guys I know swear by them.

I usually buy Craftsman, because they always have what I want, they never seem to break (I have some from my grandfather, my grandfather-in-law, and my father), and the price is right.
 
I have a upright two cabinet box that houses about 60% Snap On and 35% Craftsman. The other 5% is specialty stuff for UK made cars. The Snap and the crafts have built a many of street rod and Mopar Muscle restorations. Both of my hands are in reasonable shape because I used good tools....and because I restored MG's, TR-6's none of my tools are lacking a nice protective oil finish!


Why didn't British Leland make a computer?


They couldn't figure out how to make it leak oil!
 
JustinPinnix said:
Craftsman tools ain't what they used to be. My dad bought a screwdriver and the point broke off the first time he tried to use it. I bought some sockets and one of them wouldn't fit in the holder. They seem to break a lot more than they used to as well.
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Aren't they made in China now?
 
When I was 18 or so , I spent a little out of each check for a box full of Mac tools. I'm 44 now & I still have everything except the pocket knife the salesman gave me when I made the last payment. My dad told gave me crap for it, until he realized I wasn't replacing stuff every year or so. Worth every penny.
 
wsuffa said:
Aren't they made in China now?
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There are some of the Craftsman-branded specialty items made elsewhere, but the main Craftsman hand tools (sockets, screwdrivers, wrenches, etc.) are all-American.
 
SCCutler said:
There are some of the Craftsman-branded specialty items made elsewhere, but the main Craftsman hand tools (sockets, screwdrivers, wrenches, etc.) are all-American.
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In the mid-80's, the labor unions and the cost of steel had Sears experiementing with casting their Craftsman tools in Taiwan, but under the same specs and QC measures as their "Made in the USA" stamped tools.

The tools were superb, but when the pro mechanics and serious DIYers saw "made in Taiwan," the mental image they got was "cheap, crappy tools that will break."

Sears honored the lifetime warranty on those tools same as MitUSA tools, but the targeted audience/consumer group never went along.

I've got a couple of carry-along socket/all-purpose tool sets that are the Craftsman "Made in Taiwan" era. One toolset goes in the Cardinal for XC trips, the other stays in the Sea Ray. I've only had one tool out the two sets fail, and Sears replaced it with no questions asked.

I've yet to have a problem with Craftsman tools other than an occasional breakage, which Sears replaced with zero hassles.

Regards.

-JD
 
When I turned 16 and started driving, my dad got me a Craftsman "100-something piece mechanics tool set" for my birthday. I kept track of all of those tools and added a few along the way - mostly Craftsman and stuff I 'inherited' from the farm. I was working on a friend's car in our apartment complex parking lot a few years ago and, after finishing the project, put the toolbox back in my truck toolbox. A week or so later when I went to get the tools again, someone had decided they deserved them more than I and they were gone. :( I was NOT a happy camper - not only because of the 100's of $$ that I had invested, but the fact that a lot of the tools were left over from my dad and grandad's days of farming.

Since then, I did a mass purchase of Northern sockets/wrenches to get me through until I can rebuild my Craftsman sets. Personally, though, I've had as many 'failures' with Craftsman tools as with Northern & Harbor Freight tools and all companies have the same 'lifetime warranty', so I'm reluctant to invest the extra $$ in Craftsman when I can get the same "quality" with cheaper initial purchase.
 
I use primarily Craftsman tools, although I have a good screwdriver set from Snap-On and a few smaller, specialty wrenches from both Snap-On and Mac. I just don't wrench enough to justify spending the extra money on Snap-On tools. If I did it for a living I'd be more inclined.

A few years ago a friend of mine gave me a metric socket set from Stanley. I left it in the box for about a year because I knew it was cheap crap. When I got the Extra and needed metric tools I opened the Stanley set. Low and behold, not bad at all. In fact, I like the socket from the stanley set better than any of the Craftsman sockets I have.
 
You guys want a great value? Check out Great Neck tools from Autozone. They all carry a lifetime warranty and are MUCH cheaper than Craftsman (I heard a rumor that they come from the same mill).

Great tools!
 
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