I was thinking of ordering a set of those Lisle mini prybars, because I like how both bars are bent tipped and they have different square shaft sizes. I wanted to verify COO first, because I try to avoid anything that sends money to China as much as I can. Amazon does say they are made in China, but they are wrong about their COO's quite often in my exerience, so I emailed Lisle using the "Questions" link on their website. I was hoping they were going to tell me USA or Taiwan, but they just got back to me and said
the COO is in fact China. I guess I will be passing on them.
I might end up buying a Mayhew, Lang, or Snap-on bent tip bar in the future, but for now I figured I would make myself a couple quick prototypes to see how useful I find them to be. I also want to figure out what tip shape or tip angle might be ideal for my uses before going through the effort of making "official" pry bars that are properly heat treated. I took a couple spare pocket screwdrivers I had laying around and heated up the last 1" or so with a propane torch until it was soft enough to bend without snapping. I clamped the base of each shaft into a small bench vise during that process, so the heat wouldn't travel down the shafts and damage the plastic handles. Then I bent the angles I wanted to try and smoothed out the profiles a bit using small metal files and some sandpaper. If I find heat treating necessary for strength, I will remove the handles and heat treat the shafts in the future. I'm expecting it will be necessary on the thin black handled one, but it might not be needed on the two thicker bars.