PugetDude
ALLIANCE MEMBER
The stuff they sell in the big box stores now is ****.
Older stuff was top notch.
Not sure when they rolled over, probably around 1980?
Old tool brands to avoid
- Thread starter elmwood
- Start date
The stuff they sell in the big box stores now is ****.
Older stuff was top notch.
Not sure when they rolled over, probably around 1980?
vintage nut
Well-known member
Sometime late 70s buck bros took a nosedive. Very good chisels before that, but anything with that name in the last few decades is stuff I would leave in the free box at a garage sale
you can never have too many tools
you can never have too many tools
globemaster..... i run into a set of vise grips or pliers on a weekly basis at sales. i swear those things are made out of sheet metal.
wasnt that brand the original importer or cheap tools back in the day? what i remember hearing. cant provide proof.
wasnt that brand the original importer or cheap tools back in the day? what i remember hearing. cant provide proof.
jakemac
Well-known member
I only pick up the old Peterson/Dewitt vice grips. The newer Irwin vice grips have noodles for jaws.
zakmartin
Well-known member
I have an old Thorsen 1/2" ratchet extension - probably about 8 or 9 inches long. Inherited it from my old man, who bought it in the 1960's. The thing is built like a tank and it's never given me any problems. I probably use that thing once a week.
Given that's the ONLY Thorsen tool I own, I can't really vouch for them on any higher level. That being said though, I own a couple S-K locking extensions, and they're by far the worst socket-related tools I've ever owned.
JMLangford
Well-known member
LOL....^^^^^^What he said!^^^^^^
Also, I remember Bufalo brand running a close second to Globemaster.....
Always found them in a box on the counter at the auto parts store.
Coach James
Well-known member
Handy Andy stores were owned by WR Grace. Same parent company had a chain called Handy City. I worked there during college. It was a surprisingly good store and ran neck and neck with Lowes here before Grace closed them all down.
I had a great time working there from 18 to 22 years old. I met a woman 10 years older than me and we dated for a few months. Some of the best months of my life.
Agri-Supply in Lumberton, south of here, sells Fuller screw drivers made in Canada. I have a couple and they are ok, not great, but not terrible.
Coach
MIT used to be low grade import stuff 20 or 30 years ago directly competing with Buffalo of the same times. The dollar stores and local liquidators all carried them.
Not always total dreck but enough of a **** shoot that sometimes it wasn't worth the betting, The one good thing was the 3/4" socket set that did a lot of random farm stuff and otherwise was winter weight in the cars. Never a failure despite how fast they wore. Other than that an unremarkable wrench set l used for years and never looked at the name on them.
l gave it all to friends before moving cross country decades ago. Now l still have another heap of cheaper stuff but the quality has improved a lot.
Not always total dreck but enough of a **** shoot that sometimes it wasn't worth the betting, The one good thing was the 3/4" socket set that did a lot of random farm stuff and otherwise was winter weight in the cars. Never a failure despite how fast they wore. Other than that an unremarkable wrench set l used for years and never looked at the name on them.
l gave it all to friends before moving cross country decades ago. Now l still have another heap of cheaper stuff but the quality has improved a lot.
woody 73
Well-known member
PowderKeg
Well-known member
While I won't go near that far, Thorsen sourced USA tools have - with some exceptions - long occupied the bottom of my "desirable" list. Almost always preferable to the cheaper Pacific Rim tool brands/sources, Thorsen has never really given ma a reason to intentionally search them out, or pay much if any premium over any other used USA tool.
Thorsen and Action are the two primary Thorsen trademarks, and Giller is suspected to be a .gov contract brand heavily produced by Thorsen (also by New Britain, likely when Thorsen ran into trouble meeting the .gov contract demand). Thorsen also sourced tools for several different store/house brands at one time or another, including PowrKraft, JC Penny, Bluegrass, and Dayton. Those store/house brands can be a little more desirable for collectible reasons. IMHO, a store contracting Thorsen to supply their house branded tools was a sure sign of the impending demise of the store/tool brand - cost over quality. The final contract switch to cheap imports would be the last nail in the particular brand's coffin.
KAL is another brand sometimes marked "USA" that is hit 'n miss on quality, while ProAmerica and JS have some good points depending on who produced them at the time (both also generally suspected to be .gov contract brands).
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slip knot
Well-known member
I've got an Oxwall ignition wrench set that is stamped sheet metal. I keep it as a reminder of what crappy tools look like.
Every JS I've ever handled was quite obviously an SK. You're saying there were other manufacturer(s) maybe?????
Exactly. It was around 1978. Older Buck Bros. chisels were excellent tools.
The trouble is, just saying a name doesn't always tell the whole story. A lot of brands took a nosedive in the 1970s, and a lot of brands took a nosedive when they were sold to a new owner, and a lot of brands mentioned had more than one line or quality level of tools. If all you've ever experienced is a brand's low end or homeowner level of tools, you'll give the whole name a bad rap that it may not entirely deserve.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Black & Decker yet, or if they did, I missed it. At one time, Black & Decker made industrial/commercial quality tools that rivaled any brand anywhere. But then they diluted the brand name with homeowner-grade junk, beginning in the 1960s.
Globemaster wasn't universally bad, but most of it wasn't very good. It wasn't meant to be good; it was just meant to be cheap. Globemaster tools were made in several countries. The ones made in Spain were generally better than the ones made elsewhere.
Indestro and Durochrome (same ownership) made some excellent tools at one time. They also made some cheap ****, especially under the Indestro name.
Stanley, including Stanley Handyman, also made good tools along with the bad. Stanley power tools made from the 1930s to 1980 were among the best anywhere. Same for Stanley hand tools made from the 1860s to the 1960s.
Millers Falls was once a very respectable American brand. Now it's just a name used on nothing but import junk. They also made a very respectable line of portable power tools until 1980.
The current Rockwell-branded tools are import junk, and have absolutely nothing to do with the Rockwell brand of power tools made from 1960 to 1981 and machine tools made from 1946 to 1984. But even then, the original Rockwell diluted their own industrial brand name with homeowner-grade low-priced junk.
Fuller is another brand that has mostly been low-end and low-priced, but some of their older tools were marginally OK.
Thorsen tools made before the late-60s were very good tools.
Giller was under the same ownership as Thorsen, and a lot of Giller tools were just Thorsen re-brands.
S-K tools made during the era when they were owned by Facom were nothing compared to earlier S-K and current S-K. Facom nearly killed the brand.
Skil made some of the best industrial-grade tools before the 1990s, but they also used the name on cheap tools.
Happy Home was a dime-store brand (Woolworth's) along the same lines as Globemaster. Not universally bad, but not very good either. Anybody younger than 40 has probably never seen a Happy Home tool and probably never will.
Older Penncraft (J.C. Penney) tools were very decent, mainly prior to the 1970s.
Barcalo-Buffalo were once decent tools too, a very long time ago. There was a Buffalo brand of machine tools that was also very good.
Great Neck was never meant to be a quality brand; it was always a low-priced homeowner brand. Now it's even worse, because the name is owned by the same Chinese company that owns the Millers Falls name.
Other names to avoid, Chicago Electric, Pittsburgh....
HubbaBubba
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+ 1. Garbage!
redmondjp
Well-known member
Since I was born in 1980, I don't have the pleasure of recounting when good brands went bad, except for the SnapOn hand me downs that must be factory seconds. But I do enjoy reading about how Brand X went to **** in the 90's, then another will say the 80's, then another will say the 70's, then another will say the 60's. It reminds me of all the Craftsman threads. I have a couple Buck Brothers chisels I bought for doing my own trim work on my house. They are more for utility as I've never made a dovetail, but hitting the blunt end while directing the sharp end towards wood seems to work for me. So maybe there is hope for the Brothers!
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twertsy
Well-known member
No-one's mentioned WEN.
They made B&D and Skil seem like premium brands.
I disagree about Thorsen, The old Thorsen R.H./exposed gear ratchets were excellent and could get into some very tight spots. However the rebirth of the Thorsen brand by Great Neck was Chinese ****.
They made B&D and Skil seem like premium brands.
I disagree about Thorsen, The old Thorsen R.H./exposed gear ratchets were excellent and could get into some very tight spots. However the rebirth of the Thorsen brand by Great Neck was Chinese ****.
vintage nut
Well-known member
I actually got one of those thorsen exposed gear ratchets, 1/2" drive
My dad's first ratchet. His grandfather owned one of those old time hardware stores, and he carried thorsen. When someone brought something in for warranty, thorsen just asked him to grind their name off, and toss them out. Well he let my dad dig through the boxes of broken thorsen, and my dad actually pieced together a ratchet from a couple broken ones. Gotta have over 40 years of use on it, and it still works fine!
I'll dig it out and grab a picture later
you can never have too many tools
My dad's first ratchet. His grandfather owned one of those old time hardware stores, and he carried thorsen. When someone brought something in for warranty, thorsen just asked him to grind their name off, and toss them out. Well he let my dad dig through the boxes of broken thorsen, and my dad actually pieced together a ratchet from a couple broken ones. Gotta have over 40 years of use on it, and it still works fine!
I'll dig it out and grab a picture later
you can never have too many tools
vintage nut
Well-known member
Anyone remember pennens corp? My understanding is it fits in with proto somewhere. Got a couple pennens combination wrenches, larger ones, and they are imo quite comparable to the old American made blue point, in terms of finish and overall quality
you can never have too many tools
you can never have too many tools
Pennens was owned by Plomb Tool Co., now Stanley-Proto.
Major Ramifications
Well-known member
This guy summed it up back on page 1.
Brand doesn't matter much when I look at old tools. You can tell what is junk by looking at it, and I've seen some USA made junk for sure.
Wen made lousy tools, but great hair products (if you believe current late-night infomercials).
McGraw-Edison, Toastmaster and Oster (famous for their blenders) all made portable power tools at one time. Most of them are forgettable. McGraw-Edison made some of the J.C. Penney, Montgomery Ward and K-Mart branded power tools.
Gilbert (model electric trains and Erector Sets) made electric drills and children's tool sets (similar to Handy Andy).
Fairchild, famous and well-respected in the aviation and electronics industry, made consumer-grade bench grinders and portable electric drills.
General Electric made a line of multi-purpose tools similar to Shopsmith (long before Shopsmith).
There was a time when Black & Decker and Skil were premium industrial brands, as recently as the early 1990s. As good as any other brand then or now. Trouble is, at the same time, the names were also used on lines of cheap consumer-grade tools, and those are the only things the names are used on today.
The current DeWalt power tool brand was originally branded as Black & Decker, and as Black & Decker, they were industrial quality tools.
Before Bosch and Hilti cornered the rotary-hammer market, Skil roto-hammers were one of the go-to industrial-quality brands. That ended when Bosch got full ownership of Skil in the early 1990s and discontinued virtually the entire Skil industrial line except for the Model 77 Skilsaws.
vintage nut
Well-known member
I knew it fit in there somewhere, thanks!
Nice wrenches for sure
you can never have too many tools
n8n
Well-known member
My dad's had a Great Neck set of SAE combos as long as I can remember, so they must be mid-70s vintage or earlier. They look kind of **** but they're all still working. He did better with his socket set though, that one is Kraeuter.
I was given a Thorsen 1/2 drive set in 1961 as a graduation present by my older sister and used if for farm repairs for many years. The open gear ratchet is very easy to reverse. Other designs of the period were awkward to use by comparison. Never broke a socket.
Western Auto sold a good line of tools, made by Indestro among others, branded Wizard. They also sold cheaper tools branded Westline.
There were many cheaper tools that were roughly finished and easily recognized, as was stated above, with USA marking being their only claim to fame.
KEH
Western Auto sold a good line of tools, made by Indestro among others, branded Wizard. They also sold cheaper tools branded Westline.
There were many cheaper tools that were roughly finished and easily recognized, as was stated above, with USA marking being their only claim to fame.
KEH
I agree GRX, particularly in our mid-atlantic area..........just leave them sit there, but be sure to let me know where they are so I "can avoid them."
Nope. I have a couple toolboxs full of old Plomb & Proto. Totally craptastic. Sold all my SnapOn and CAT branded tools so I could torture myself using them on a daily basis.So you can collect more of them, right?
MashBill
Member
Nobody has mentioned Allenite. My dad had a 1/2" drive socket set. They were made in Japan and had a very rough finish.
Buck Bros, it depends on when they were made. Pre-War Buck Bros chisels are good. Very good.
twertsy
Well-known member
You take care of the west coast Bob, I got the right coast covered..[emoji41]
toplessHO
Well-known member
LordPsychon
Well-known member
lbgradwell
Well-known member
bwringer
Well-known member
Those Stanley "screwdrivers"... ergh. I wonder how many of us still bear scars from those?
I'd add in "Kmart" brand tools. I used to have a lot of these -- when I was in college, there was a Kmart very close to the house I rented. Flaky, spreading wrenches, butter-soft ratchets and sockets, etc... I had a set of Kmart chisels and punches that were covered in the usual peel-o-matic chrome, with the softest, bluntest edges you've ever seen. I honestly didn't know it was possible for steel to get that soft.
I suppose in hindsight, the lack of metallurgical rigor should have been obvious.
Montgomery Wards tools were a bit before my time, but I found some pretty crappy, crude examples in my Dad and Grandpa's stashes.
I'd add in "Kmart" brand tools. I used to have a lot of these -- when I was in college, there was a Kmart very close to the house I rented. Flaky, spreading wrenches, butter-soft ratchets and sockets, etc... I had a set of Kmart chisels and punches that were covered in the usual peel-o-matic chrome, with the softest, bluntest edges you've ever seen. I honestly didn't know it was possible for steel to get that soft.
I suppose in hindsight, the lack of metallurgical rigor should have been obvious.
Montgomery Wards tools were a bit before my time, but I found some pretty crappy, crude examples in my Dad and Grandpa's stashes.
AceofSpad3s
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I have about 6 of those striped Stanley and I haven't had any issues with them, I have not used the 2 Philips ones much though. For me flat head screwdrivers last pretty much indefinitely if used only as screw drivers, even the cheapest ones tend to be okay. Now about those 100 line one, those are the ****, I got 3 of them that I have picked up over the past couple yard sales I have been to and they are great, philips 2,3,3 are the ones I have and the tips are great and have next to no wear on them.