Craftsman, Made in China - Return It?

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prax

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I bought a Craftsman 88 piece tool set. It mostly has sockets, ratchets, a few deep sockets, and the little stuff like hex keys. $65 plus tax

I bought it mainly for the lifetime warranty, but it's made in China and based on the general reading I've done, it seems like Craftsman quality is going down. In the future, the replacement parts will probably be worse than the ones I have now.

The set doesn't meet all my needs (no pliers for example) so I'm wondering if I should save some money and get the tools at Walmart. IIRC they also have the lifetime warranty and cost 50% less.

So what do you guys think? Keep it or return it?
 
Some of the Craftsman line is made in China with more possibly in the future. Do your tools have country of origin on them anywhere?
 
I wouldn't trust the Walmart lifetime warranty much. They are constantly changing their stock and who knows if they'd even have anything later on to replace a broken tool with. Also the Craftsman tools even made in china seem higher quality than other brands of Chinese made tools.
 
Hi.

Yes, I would keep it. I don't think the quality has gone down per se...but quality in outsourced products is getting better. A lot better.

There are various reasons as to why manufacturers are going overseas. The trade secret is that now, with modern technology and quality control, manufacturers can get 90% of the product at 10% of the American-made cost.

Hmmm I'm going to go a bit off topic by using an example...

For example, carbon fiber reinforced plastic. It is used extensively in motorsports, airplanes, bicycles, etc.
In many cases,carbon prepreg sheets will be bought from Japan and then sent to China for molding. As long as it meets the performance standards demanded by the application, it makes no difference if the carbon prepreg sheets were placed into the mold by Chinese hands or Japanese or American or whatever.

I like to use it as an example because molding that material into complex shapes, from large to small, is very expensive. That is why we only see it in small amounts or in specialized applications.

For every part made out of the stuff, a metal mold needs to be created. And FEA analysis must be done on each part to determine the "layup schedule." If an F1 car was made out 1000 pieces of the things, then that's 1000 molds, 1000+ extra hours of analysis, etc.

Now, we could substantially cut down on the costs by outsourcing the molds and molding labor to skilled workers in China.

Anyways, I'm going off topic haha.

I know there are significant differences between carbon fiber parts and Craftsman parts but I think the concept could be seen and shared.

There isn't much difference between an American forged and Chinese forged hunk of metal.

Of course, I may be wrong too. The Craftsman tools I share were bought and used by my dad 20 years ago. They were made here.
 
I'd say if money is not the main factor - return it and get american tools. If money is tight - use it, you'd probably be OK at least in the short term.
 
I would return it and wait for a sale for a USA craftsman set, and then supplement your tool list around that. For pliers I'd look at channel lock. The best thing going for craftsman is their warranty.

Much of walmarts stuff is from Stanley, who also outsources a lot to china and Asia.

If you don't mind foreign tools, id look into harbor freights pittsburgh professional line.
 
i would return just cuz it is made in china...i am sick of jobs going there
 
Originally Posted By: chet2
i would return just cuz it is made in china...i am sick of jobs going there

There are few sacraced cows left now. When I was in sales back in the early 80s, factories were starting to leave America. I started losing a few accounts a year because the factory was moving to Mexico.
 
I don't see what the complaint is here. You paid $65 plus tax for a 88-piece tool set. That's $.74 each for the pieces. What do you honestly expect to buy for seventy-four cents?

I recently had to buy a set of triple-square tamperproof bits to tinker with a friends Porsche. The only place that had the bits that I could find was my MAC tool distributor. The cost? $45 for 8 pieces. The country of origin? TAIWAN!

You gotta pay the price to have it nice!
 
You want to return something that's made in China, so you can buy something from Walmart? Am I the only ones that thinks this is fuzzy logic?
 
I will only be using the tools a few times a year at most. The tools won't be doing any heavy duty work.

Thanks for the advice.
 
Originally Posted By: prax
I bought a Craftsman 88 piece tool set. It mostly has sockets, ratchets, a few deep sockets, and the little stuff like hex keys. $65 plus tax


Which set did you buy? I was just looking at tool sets at Sears yesterday and saw nothing with that kind of price. Was it this one?

http://www.amazon.com/Craftsman-9-46379-Piece-Mechanics-Metric/dp/B00065T1YK

Are you sure you're not talking about an Evolv tool set?
 
Last edited:
A genius move by Sears management. Now they will have to replace the individual pieces with store stock? Which still is mainly made in USA? Or will that soon change? Will they send the defective pieces all the way back to China? No, they won't, they or the distributor will eat the warranty costs afaik. At $65, they don't have to replace too much to start losing money.

China is cunning, they get US companies to build factories in China. The Chinese gov't requirement to do that is to share technology. Next they steal many decades of improvements, know how, and technology, for free. Now they have a clear shot at taking over manufacturing entirely of that product. It is quite unbelievable what is happening, and people just stand by staring into space, marveling at how much they get for the money.
 
I have a set of Chinese made Craftsman needle nose pliers that are fairly well made. They came from K-Mart.
 
Originally Posted By: FowVay
I don't see what the complaint is here. You paid $65 plus tax for a 88-piece tool set. That's $.74 each for the pieces. What do you honestly expect to buy for seventy-four cents?

I recently had to buy a set of triple-square tamperproof bits to tinker with a friends Porsche. The only place that had the bits that I could find was my MAC tool distributor. The cost? $45 for 8 pieces. The country of origin? TAIWAN!

You gotta pay the price to have it nice!


To put things into perspective, I just paid $80 for TWO Snap-on chrome swivel sockets to replace the two that grew legs and walked off. If you want USA made, you will pay a lot more than $65 unless you go used from CL or a pawn shop. You can get them for a lot less than the tool truck prices though if you buy Williams (USA made), Wright, Proto and others. If you are willing to use Asian, try Genius, Toptul, Gearwrench or similar that are made in Taiwan. If you can stand the smell, a lot of guys are talking about the new HF "Pro" line that is made in Taiwan. I would avoid those made in communist China due to quality control issues.
 
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