South Korea

For all you HF haters out there I'll defend my first "electric tool" purchase as one of the best buys I've ever made in the tool world. I'm building a trailer and as such I had a LOT of cutting to do on larger angle iron and square tubing. I knew I'd not really need a "port-a-band" for my daily life but I wanted one for this project so I wouldn't have to deal with moving 20 foot sticks of heavy asses steel in place for my cut off saw Sooooo I bought a portable band saw from HF. This thing is a BEAST. I've worked with my hands in one way or another all my life and I must say this saw is now one of my favorites in my shop.

Back to HF in general I was able to buy the wire loom and wire splicers for my trailer build for fully 50% less than my local supplier. For years I bought NOTHING but consumables at HF as their reputation on quality was crap. Now I have one of their plasma cutters, a stick welder and a multi-purpose mig welder. ALL OF THEM WORK AS ADVERTISED. I'm just a retired old fart but in my book and for my money IF you're careful and do your homework HF certainly has a place in your shop.

My US made DELTA floor model drill press had the under carriage literally crumble when I for the FIRST time attempted to "tilt" the base to punch a hole on an angle. The base of the carriage was made of what looked to be pot metal. JUNK. You guessed it,,,HF sold me a new drill press and it works just fine. In addition I found the "work" type clamps that HF sells to hold a part in position on the deck of the drill press to be a real bargain.

Now Ya'll need to know that as an investment we built and owned a LARGE Ace Hardware so I had access to almost anything the major manufactures sold in the US as well as the chinesium stuff for many years. In my experience ACE HARDWARE is a shithole covered over by a hat made out of MonkeyPox. I became disgusted with their "ethics" almost immediately after we joined their co-op. My point is that I have seen a lot of imported tool items. My money is/was hard to come by and I'm quite careful with it. That being said I find HF to be improving almost daily in terms of quality. I was in one of their stores the other day and was inline behind a tall suntanned young man with a "Bauer" skillsaw in his hand. I asked him if he thought it would work for him. He responded that he was a framing contractor and he had given up on Loews and HD for power tools for his crews and had switched over to the Bauer brand because they "worked". That spoke volumes to me as before the Ace store we built we had owned a large mfg. company that use LOTS of power tools. Hmmm.

Nobody needs a high capacity 10mm socket set like that.  
Ban it.  
I have spoken.

Man, my shit is old.  The 1/2" is my 10mm.

I was going to add stop supporting a company owned by a Liberal-supporting/donating asshole. But communism will do, as well.

I was at Tractor supply a while back and got a pack of nut driver heads.  The kind that can go into a cordless drill, all 10mm, I think it had a dozen of them.

It would be worth it to keep your tools locked up and buy a separate basic set of Harbor Freight tools for them to misuse.

Yep, I've been buying tools from there for decades...  
I've lost or misplaced several, but I can't remember one that I broke or did not do the job I bought it for, or the job I used it for.

I'm no mechanic, I'm a hobbyist at best.  
My M.O. has always been I'll buy H.F. and use the shit outta of it as I will, IF it ever breaks it'll get replaced by something T1 or T2...  
But I'm not spending Snap On money on something that rarely ever get used and when it does a HF tool will do me just fine.

JMHO, YMMV...

It's funny... For the past 20 years, I have been buying used cars, mid-range PC components, reasonably priced clothing, moderate home, etc....
But, when it comes to tools, I have always felt the need to get the best or latest.  For a router or grinder that I use once a year or so, I don't really need a $300 version.  I've backed off on this lately, and started watching for bargains. I have some Dewalt cordless tools like the circular saw and impact driver because it is hard to argue they are very good values, but a Ryobi cordless grinder is probably more than enough, and less than half the cost.

Yep. HF has started carrying quite few "Made in Taiwan" tools lately. I think they understand that many people don't want to buy chinese shit as much anymore.

ETA: and Taiwan made tools are generally pretty damn good.

Smaller set but made in Taiwan

LoL
I have a little Stanley toolkit I keep in the car it's pushing 15 years old and  since it was new the fucking 10mm falls out of its spot everytime I open it

Thanks to this thread, I saved a bunch of money tonight.
Needed to chip out some cracked blacktop and patch a pothole.
Didn't want to spend $35 on a mattock at Lowes for a small one time project.
Thought about this thread and drove across the street to HF, where I bought a $14 smaller hand mattock.

Ah another thread full of China supporters. Make sure you guys stock up for WWIII. Help China win that war!

The 13th floor of the tool world.

Bought a set at tractor supply. Lost the the whole damn set.

The ones that came as assembly bolts. 6 & 8mm bolts/nuts/washers. I replaced them with 1/4 & 5/16. Some they supplied were barely long enough to even work.

17mm ain't gettin' the axle nut.

Picked this up today. I might keep it in the safe so it doesn't make a break for it.

@Dawgfan28

Why you hate Taiwan..

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10mm is the best mm.

WTF is with you guys and 10mm?  I can spot mine a mile away.
The 17mm is the escape artist in my world