Kobalt tools

[DCal]

I'm happy to be old in that I have all the tools that I should need. My old reliable Craftsman tools are great but the quality went away quickly once the "Champion" line started---right in line with the other crap that Sears started selling. Kobalt filled the gap for me ( I mean those sexy handled 72 tooth ratchets are smooth as silk ) but now my Lowes is inundated with the red Craftsman stuff and my mind just can't forget what they, SEARS, have done to us.

[Truckedup]

i bought a set of Craftman combo wrenches in the late 1970's 3/8-1-1/4 inch. They are rather crude and a bit loose on bolt heads...The open end of the small sizes have spread from hard use...I do have a few double box end Craftman wrenches from the same time that are good quality..
I just broke the end off a Cobalt 1/4 inch ball end allen wrench, I suppose it's not meant to be used with a long handle 3/8 rachet...The only other Cobalt tool I have is a angle grinder that has been abused and still runs fine...

[swampbuggy]

I believe Armstrong may be one of the best quality tools available. Does anybody know for sure where they are made ? I know that they are the hardest tools that i have tried to drill a hole in for hanging on a wall. Mark H.

[makin chips]

I believe Armstrong may be one of the best quality tools available. Does anybody know for sure where they are made ? I know that they are the hardest tools that i have tried to drill a hole in for hanging on a wall. Mark H.

They were made in South Carolina by Apex Tools until March 31, 2017 when they closed the plant and layed everyone off. They made tools for Craftsman Pro and currently Apex Tools, who owns Armstrong, makes Gear Wrench.

Armstrong tools were industrial tools for aerospace, military, and government use mainly. Most of this info is available at Wikipedia. They were owned by Danaher until Apex bought them and then closed them down.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_Tools

[Morgo]

That is the curse;old trustworthy manufacture mark is sold to some greedy investor.All sudden the good quality tools are crap but the company can ride on the old reputation.For a while.. Nowadays you can't know who owns what and do the tools be what they used to be.
Of course it's poor busines to make tools that last from granpa to youngster;sell set of wrenches once in 100 years..

[makin chips]

That is the curse;old trustworthy manufacture mark is sold to some greedy investor.All sudden the good quality tools are crap but the company can ride on the old reputation.For a while.. Nowadays you can't know who owns what and do the tools be what they used to be.
Of course it's poor busines to make tools that last from granpa to youngster;sell set of wrenches once in 100 years..

At least it's not as bad as the chipping technology in animals. Each company has decided to release their own proprietary chip scanner that only works with their chip. Why? So now instead of making pennies on each chip, they can sell a scanner that makes 50x the profit that a single chip does and it's required to scan their chips.

The smart thing to do would be make them all universal(all running on the same frequency or however it is they work) so any chip could be read by any scanner. Alas, that doesn't rake in the profits for the companies who think they need to get their hands in that market, too.

Luckily, for now, someone thought enough ahead to make a universal registry so anyone can add their dog in case it gets lost. That's only useful if you already have the chip info, though. It's likely your dog could be chipped, get lost, and not be identified because the place that scanned him didn't have the scanner for your chip type. Still, it's better than each company also having its own registry to look up animals. Without the universal registry, you'd have to get them scanned and once you did that, you'd then have to know where to look them up, too.

They didn't make it very simple, that's for sure.

[Krooser]

I have two Kobalt ratchet sets that are 15 years old...good quality but I'm missing a couple sockets... might be a good time to fill those holes.

I used to be anal about my tools.... All matched sockets...all ratchets were the same brand...

Having four boys who never quite grasped the idea that tools are valuable and everything has it's place has changed things... for the worse.

I still have a few of the tools I bought as a novice wrench in the 60's.....mostly Mac and Vulcan.

[Kevin Johnson]

I don't mind paying china prices for china tools. Craftsman made in china ! I did not want to pay USA prices for a china tool, so they lost my business on the ones that did not say USA, glad to here the manufacturing is coming back to the US. Kobalt ! I really liked the ratchet they came out with that had the twist handle, they sure didn't have that very long. I don't understand why no one else has something like that, its so nice for areas you can not swing a ratchet.

https://toolguyd.com/kobalt-double-drive-ratchet/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZnexzXLfIg

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-3-8 ... lsrc=aw.ds

[modok]

The first one of those I bought was a Husky, 15 years ago, it was very good, red handle.
New one with yellow handle not as smooth, maybe i look for another red one
Same old story

the one in the VID looks good tho

[novadude]

For the record, a thousand years ago, when Lowe's developed the Kobalt brand, the tools were supplied by Williams--the Industrial brand of the Snap-On company. The Williams-sourced Kobalt was good stuff. Lowe's kicked quality in the teeth, dropped Williams as a supplier, and went to Danaher.

I can vouch for this. In the 1990s, I was at a test lab in Wisconsin that was doing contract test work for the yet-to-be-released Lowes Kobalt hand tools (ratchets, wrenches, etc). When I started asking questions, they told me that Snap-On was the manufacturer, but this was not to be public knowledge. I don't think the Lowe's Kobalt / Snap-on relationship lasted very long.

[modok]

Same with them all. ALL of the brands do that. Start out underrated, earn a good reputation, then sell out.

Question is.....which tool company is NOW trying to EARN a reputation?
i don't know! I really don't. I wish there was FORUm for that!

[Schurkey]

Same with them all. ALL of the brands do that. Start out underrated, earn a good reputation, then sell out.

Question is.....which tool company is NOW trying to EARN a reputation?
i don't know! I really don't. I wish there was FORUm for that!

https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/for ... ay.php?f=4

I spent some time there, got temporarily banned, and mostly quit them. I visit occasionally, but haven't logged-in in months. If you can steer around the crying about the prices of real tools, or apologizing for Harbor Freight, there's some very useful info--particularly the Truck Tool Equivants threads. Those threads compare Mac, Matco, Snap-On, Cornwell tools to the lesser-known brands that the Big Guys are sourcing from--OTC, MasterCool, Lang, Trusty-Cook, Lisle, Mayhew, and the other hundred companies that MAKE some of the tools sold by the Truck Dudes, usually at a fraction of the Tool Truck price. SAME quality, different color handle, or different packaging with the true manufacturer's name on the box instead of the Tool Truck name.

'Course, you find some Chinese knock-offs mixed in with the actual , real-live equivalents sometimes, too. Gotta be careful!

https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/sho ... p?t=136120

Another good Tool web-site is http://alloy-artifacts.org/mfg-index.html which goes into detail about the individual histories of almost 200 tool companies (most of which went out of business, or merged and got dropped.)

[modok]

Thanks.
I don't really WANT to undercut the middle man here, but if the middle man is just IN THE WAY, then let them starve.

I saw some white box parts the other day....all wrong
They come in a white box so you use your OWN box, or at least put a sticker with the name of your company ON the blank box, but they didn't. The re-seller just left them blank.
Take the parts out of the box and the actual manufacturer logo is on the parts.

I think to myself.....they aren't even doing this right.

Then I thought, maybe they ARE doing it right.

[JoePorting]

I remember the good old days when Craftsman had quite the following. I remember going in the tool department and it was the most crowded place in the store.

Yes, I remember the same thing. Now you go there and the shelves are all half empty. Seems like they are waiting to go out of business.

[jake197000]

used to go into sears 40 years and they had a great selection.i have an old craftsman 10 mm wrench that says made in japan.im a major tool junkie and buy snap on mostly.nothing wrong with craftsman but if you do it for a living they dont cut it.