June 3, 2021
What about Harbor-Freight?
This is an interesting topic. Despite the silly names on some of the obviously
Chinese or Indian made tools, this place makes no bones about selling cheap tools made offshore.
You will rarely find a better deal, and many things they sell are perfectly adequate.
Some things are excellent. A few things are junk. For a person who is not a tradesman using
tools every day, many of their products are just fine. I am most skeptical of their power tools,
but I have found that their angle grinders are holding up fine for me. I keep expecting them to
burn out and then I plan to go buy a high end replacement -- but the first one just kept going and
going -- so I bought another to avoid changing from a blade to a wire brush.
The only tool I bought from them that was a total disappointment was their saws-all clone,
but it was cheap and I suppose worth the gamble. I have a bunch of their C-clamps that I use
all of the time. I avoid the fancy new ones with a quick adjust mechanism.
At least you know right up front you are buying cheap Chinese tools (or you should).
To push this game up a notch, take a look at Grizzly tool.
They sell some pretty good stuff, made in Taiwan, which can be excellent quite frankly,
and better than most of what comes from mainland China.
Have any comments? Questions?
Drop me a line!
Tom's Welding pages / tom@mmto.org