Future tools to replace Craftsman

[MarvinBerry]

Not sure. I used to get all mine at Sears. Then I started getting them on Amazon/ebay until Lowe's started selling them. Got some at Lowes.

It's not something I paid attention to - isn't that why we have brand names in the first place - so you know what you're getting?

In theory sure. In practice sometimes brands have a change of ownership...

Thought most people in this corner of the internet knew that there are 2 versions of Cman. One is Sears sourced from whoever will still sell to them... and the other is Stanley who bought the name a couple 3 years ago.

Anything from Lowes is Stanley sourced, they own the name now.

I got a small 3/8 metric travel kit from them last year for ... the one in the clear & red plastic case. Looks exactly the same as the dewalt stuff who are also owned by stanley. Its been good but ya know, I'm not a pro mechanic and its just a travel set.

I'll say the Lowes Cman pliers are disappointing, totally stanley quality. They work for the travel kit but its real easy to do better on those.

If I needed a bunch of sockets & single wrenches I'd probably buy a set of something rather then singles... that's the expensive way to go but it'd depend on what holes need stuffing & how many. At a certain point singles pieces are just too expensive.

Just my own experience, few weeks ago I bought a few socket trays with the intention of taking all my random & mis matched sockets and getting 'em organized and working. Clean up the clutter. All mixed brands, don't care about matching just usable ****.

I've grabbed a socket or three to fill in, like a missing 17mm but in a few places I'm missing enough that its cheaper to just buy a new rail of import whatevers. Get a 10-12 piece rail for $25-35 vs $4 a socket.

Actually the best deal going right now is probably the Husky 200 piece all socket set for $99 - I was really tempted to get that because of the price vs quantity but it'd give me a ton of duplicates I'd never use... a bunch of clutter, which is the whole reason I started organizing in the first place... putting the unused stuff to use.

Truck brands aren't an option for me either. I don't use 'em often or hard enough to justify the cost over things I can walk into a store and get. And I've almost never broken a tool of any kind so warranty isn't a big whoop as long as things function.