Irwin Asian Vise Grips

[matthew]

what's so sad about the china mfg Vise Grips is the price stayed the same as the US ones.

I think Irwin would argue that they weren't making sustainable profits beforehand. To me the tragedy is that they owned the market - everyone knew not to mess around with cheap knockoffs, and would pay a couple of bucks more for genuine Vise Grips. They could have passed on a reasonable price increase, and kept the plant going. Instead they decided to follow the way of the cheap knockoffs for 'competitiveness.'

I suppose that if they had a different brand manager, they would have had split it into a premium line made in the US for the fussy buyers, and a value line made overseas for the crowd. I'm not sure whether would have been better or not, since one way or another I think Vise Grips are meant to be born in DeWitt.

 

[dede2897234]

I have USA, global components, and one Taiwan Vise-Grip. The only difference I could see was the Taiwan has a rivet instead of a roll pin for the quick release. The Taiwan also has the hex adjustment, but so did the global components.

Tool Pants,

I purchased 2 NOS Irwin Vise-Grip straight jaw locking pliers (model 7R) this weekend. They were made in the USA (not USA with global components). There was a 2005 copyright year on the back of the packaging.

Like you mentioned above, there was a roll pin for the quick release. To my surprise, there was the hex adjustment built into the pressure adjustment screw.


Dave

 

[Tool Pants]

I was at Home Depot yesterday. I saw one with a roll pin but much to my suprise it said China.

 

[harvero]

Looked in my local HD today and all they had was made in china vise grips, so I just ordered some made here ones from Harry J. Epstein Co.