A funny little story. The first tool kit I ever had was a Kraeuter 3/8 ratchet and sockets, 1/4 spinner and sockets, plus a set of combination wrenches. I got the kit for Christmas or birthday when I was a kid to work on the family lawn mower and my minibike. It had some crappy screwdrivers that I replaced with Craftsmans using the money I made in my part time job after school as a janitor's assistant. I used those tools a lot to work on anything & everything I could find that needed fixing. I added some more sockets and wrenches as needed, mostly Craftsman, but some New Britain from the local NAPA store.
After I got out of school (it would have been about the mid 70s) I was working in a local factory to make money to spend on an old Austin Healey Sprite. I was spending so much of my spare time working on the car, I decided I should probably upgrade my ratchet. After all, the Kraeuter name was totally unknown around here, and everyone made fun of it because of the funky handle it had. And I needed a 1/2 drive for some of the bigger nuts & bolts.
So I bought a set of used SK Wayne ratchets that were in mint condition from one of the guys that worked in the plant's machine shop. Now I had a compelete set, 1/4, 3/8, & 1/2 drive PROFESSIONAL ratchets that had to be much better than that cheap, unknown, amatuer Kraeuter ratchet.
Well, I used all those tools a lot, both the SKs & the Kraeuter. To be honest I couldn't tell a whole lot of difference in how they worked. Even though the handle on the Kraeuter looked funky, in ways it felt just as good as the round handle on the SKs. The wide, almost flat surface on the sides of the handle actually provided a better, more comfortable grip because of the greater radius than the round SK handle. The sharp edges seldom ever actually came into play if you held onto it just right. The SKs though were knurled to give a more secure grip when really pulling hard, but the sharper radius could really hurt the knuckle joints when yanking really hard, but they weren't nearly as bad as the Craftsman breaker bar I had (and still use)!
Anyway, over the years I kept using the SK Waynes & the Kraeuter, never really finding one to be better than the other. Then along came the internet where I discovered Alloy Artifacts & this forum where I learned that the Kraeuter ratchet simply was an SK wearing hippie clothing. Internally, they were exactly the same and made by the same company. Somewhere along the line SK acquired Kraeuter (probably for their line of pliers) and used the name for a line of tools aimed more for the consumer market than for the professional market.
All along I thought I had moved up in the world when I switched to SK, but in reality all I had done is moved sideways!
I'll be back!!
