alt Hacker News> I've got a number of tools in my workshop that I'll probably use less than 10 times ever. I have no need of a high-quality product in these cases. I'd rather pay a fraction of that price to have something that'll survive the light duty that I put it to because I won't demand anything greater.
I've been burned too often with this thinking. All too often the cheap tool isn't just light duty so it breaks, it is not good enough to do the job at all. If the motor is too weak the tool won't do the job. If the wrench isn't precise enough it will round the bolt - this is worse than breaking: you can't fix the thing at all anymore with any quality of tool.
I don't need the best tools, but I need one that is enough quality to do the job, and the cheap tools generally fail.
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>and the cheap tools generally fail.
Honestly I've not found that to be the case unless you're buying the bottom of the barrel most pot metal tools possible. I've bought numerous wrenches for 5x-10x less than the professional sets that don't slip and I could hang a 5 foot cheater bar off of and nothing broke.
I have a $35 dollar battery powered angle grinder that I've used and abused viciously and it's keeping up with the ones that cost $200+.
The best rule of thumb for tools, at least if you have a decent collection of them for diverse but hobby/homeowner level projects is buy the cheapest to do the immediate job and then replace it with an expensive one if it breaks or you use it often and the better version improves efficiency or quality of life.
Once in a while you get “burned” and immediately end up buying two tools for the same job, but if that happens typically you can return it under retail warranty.
This is definitely the best advice I got way back in the day. I have a small collection of very high end tools I use quite often and abuse at least weekly. Or get use out of having the best quality available to me. But the vast majority of them get used a few times over a decade and sit in storage the rest of the time. I have zero use for a $1500 impact socket set. The $150 one does just fine, and I replace the two commonly used sizes I snap apart with expensive high quality versions while the others I may never use even once.
My power drill and impact driver? Best quality I could find and worth every penny. They bring me value just in the joy I get using them over the cheap stuff.
Agreed. My brother is a painter and has commented, "At least in the past cheap tools were one-time-use, now they are usually zero-time-use. Built so poorly they don't even work out of the box."
I disagree. It's great that you can get a Wen track saw with 100 in of track for $200 with tax and a Makita with 100 in for $800. People who just want to cut a sheet of plywood aren't stuck paying $800, or more likely, using an inferior tool because the cost doesn't match value to them.
Anecdotally my experience is the opposite. I bought an angle grinder from Harbor Freight for something like $10 on sale. It's not something a pro could use every day but it has absolutely been fine for what I do with it: cutting the occasional piece of metal stock, sharpening the lawn mower blade once a year, etc.