Well it's that time of year for some serious machine fettling.
The shortcomings in our tool collection have once again brought us to a halt with some jobs, where did those Whitworth spanners come from!? Like most people our tool kits have been built up over the last 40 years and made up of hand me downs, odd sockets and spanners many of dubious quality.
Anyway have more or less decided to buy middling range socket set and combination spanners from Bahco ( owned by Snap On) all in one case as multiple users have a tendency not to replace after use so it's easy to see if anything has walked ! The set is S106 and can get online for £139 inc vat and delivery or do we go for a Chinese set off Amazon for around £39 and accept some failures?
Have also looked at Draper expert and Halfords professional range but the Bahco wins on content and price per item.
Be interested to hear what other people have bought and their thoughts and experiences particularly with the Amazon options.
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We have several of the S106 socket sets and they are just brilliant - built to last a lifetime with fine movement on the ratchets!
It's a bit like the analogy , Do you prefer to buy one pair of shoes costing £100 or Ten pairs of shoes costing £10 a pair ?
I have had a Halfords socket set for over Twenty years and it's still serving me well but I feel the quality was better Twenty years ago .
If you compare proper mole grips of yesteryear to the budget ones you can get today for instance you can feel the difference .
Going back to the shoes I tend to go for the Ten pairs for £100 instead of the one pair .
But the shoe analogy doesn't work as when the tool that you using lets down when you need it then most when used in the field to fix something to get job finished and your cheap socket shatters or the gap in the spanner has loads of slop in it.
It's meant to demonstrate buying preferences in general Dave .
Quantity over quality is it false economy ? , You could apply it to secateurs £10 ones or pay much more for a pair which will last you the duration of your work life hopefully if you don't lose them
With tools today you do get what you pay for even if you look after them they appear to be disposable as do many of the fittings you are trying to undo
My generation were buying tools before the internet of a quality which can be handed down to the next generation mostly made from steel
My previous industry required not only precision tools but also very basic tools which had to be fit for purpose or you just could not achieve the standard required .
I always find buying the best hand tools you can afford the more tactile they feel when in use
Nick, we normally use half inch drive , just wondered how useful the three qt and quarter sockets are along with the screwdriver / torx bits are ? Thanks
Halfords... on the basis that I can buy lost items locally.
The catch with the CHinese ones is when they turn to toffee on a particular job - it will be totally the wrong job/time/client for them to have done that
Bacho are generally good tools, halfords socket sets are also good, i had a friend who used them in his business and only ever had to replace them when the guys working for him had lost enough bits of the set, that it had become no longer usable!
I would be an advocate of buying quality tools over cheap, mainly because you will end up pushing it to greater limits than you expect to when buying. Something trivial like buying a cheap set because you only ever intend on working on your small machinery, then 6 months down the line you end up somewhere putting 10mm thunderbolts into a masonary wall, and that socket sets is the only one you have with you.
I have a teng set though, and the ratchet in it is the worst I have ever come across so my buy the best you cam philosophy didn't really work out for me on this one!!
Never tried Bahco, but for us, if affordable, we always go for quality over price. When you're starting out and funds are tight, you have to do what you have to do, but really, once you're established, cheap is definitely not chearful. It is an utter pain in the bum when cheap kit lets you down.
The problem is two fold we need both metric and imperial sockets and spanners as we have some american machinery which makes it a dear job ! Also unless you are prepared to spend a fortune on the likes of Elora what you think of so called quality kit is made in the far east, Bacho and Teng made in Taiwan along with Britool, Kamasa, Hilka the list goes on, its a race to the bottom so starting to think buy chinese crap and treat it as disposable
Mixed thoughts usually only buy more expensive end stuff. However when I turned 18 my dad grabbed 3 sets of £10 socket sets I thought cheap crap I'll break that in seconds. I'm now 39 and haven't broken single thing it lives in my van and used most days so some things cheap.can be good but they are hit miss and maybe
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