GearWrench SAE wrenches, China vs Taiwan

I bought two sets of Taiwan GearWrench at Sears this past weekend, something I haven't seen there in years- including when I bought my China made sets a few years ago, under the impression they were from Taiwan, until I got them home and read the BACK of the package. This time, for $15 and $16 I could hardly turn them down.

I always felt a little burned by that first transaction, so with both SAE sets in hand (Chinese set is 10 wrenches, Taiwanese 8 wrenches), I sat down Monday evening with my trusty old dial caliper and started measuring. I didn't bother to weigh, as the slightly differing lengths throws off any comparison, but the lengths are close enough that there's no functional difference.

Widths and thicknesses of wrench ends, well, that's different. Small differences means "fits" versus "lobster claw" and I thought I knew how that would turn out. I guessed wrong.

My 3 or 4 year old China wrenches are marked "PAT" and with an "o" with lines running straight up and to the right from the "o". My new closeout Taiwan wrenches are marked "L-" (Capital L Minus). These are both non-reversing non-flex wrenches with no serrated edge to mark rotation direction. My Metric China wrenches are flex, so there wasn't much point comparing non-flex to flex Metrics.

For any budding metrologists, please don't object to the number of significant digits. Round up or ignore it, but I put it there because it is useful for comparison, as opposed to QA acceptance accuracy.

Spreadsheet format:


My haul:

Hard to read whatever measurements you posted. What I found interesting during my last Sears visit. The SAE sets were still Taiwan and Metric were all China… guess metric sell better and the SAE are old stock.

Sorry, I took the time to make a bunch of spacing corrections after pasting, and the data and headers line up perfectly in my Firefox on Linux.

Short version- the Taiwan wrenches are more the Lobster-claw than the Chinese.

EDIT: On mobile that that table is a train wreck. Try a PC or Mac.
EDIT2: FF had trouble, so I reshot Chris's spreadsheet and linked that... hope it works now.

That's interesting, because the smaller metric ones (China) at Sears were loberclaw-ish… Whereas the SAE Taiwan set looked overall alright.

Are the open and box-ends of the Chinese one thicker… I was consider GW, since our old set was really nice. However all I see now are China COO and they appear to be thicker than the old ones I had.

For my 2 SAE sets, most of the China versions are trivially thinner at the box end, I'm talking .015" or less. One wrench, I think the 1/2, was a few thou thinner on the Taiwan side.

Neither set are what I would call Lobster Claws. I've seen much, much worse in the Craftsman aisle.

Since tooling wears and gets changed out, perhaps someone comparing another 2 sets will get different results.

I'm not suddenly keen on Brand China, and I have no ability to reliably test metallurgy... but I will be keeping the China made wrenches, not selling them on ebay as originally planned. The Taiwan set will go to my road box.

-HF

I did the same kind of measuring to compare and contrast metric reversible ratcheting wrenches... Craftsman(China) vs DeWalt(Taiwan). I will save you from the tedium of every measurement and just present the averages and my assessment:

Craftsman is 28% heavier than DeWalt while being 5% shorter in overall length.
Craftsman is 16% bulkier in every other dimension with the real kicker:
Craftsman is 37% thicker from the corner of the fastener to the end of the ratcheting/box end.

So DeWalt is the hands-down winner in every category, especially accessibility in hard to reach places which is the main reason for ratcheting wrenches.

bmwpowere36m3 said:

Hard to read whatever measurements you posted. What I found interesting during my last Sears visit. The SAE sets were still Taiwan and Metric were all China… guess metric sell better and the SAE are old stock.

Click to expand...

Here:



http://i.imgur.com/Ky7PNnn.jpg
____________
Chris
Product Manager

Now we need someone to cut one of each in half and figure out exactly what they're made of.

We mention "wrenches" but I'm going to assume based on the box end sizes there are ratcheting wrenches?

WhataTool said:

We mention "wrenches" but I'm going to assume based on the box end sizes there are ratcheting wrenches?

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Yes, ratcheting box end, fixed open end, non-reversing wrenches.

Astro_Pneumatic_Tools said:

Here:

Click to expand...

Thanks, Chris! I pulled that into my original post!

gdocktor3 said:

Now we need someone to cut one of each in half and figure out exactly what they're made of.

Click to expand...

How much sludge was in the metal.