Their lifetime warranty used to cover their poor quality. Buying duplicates was cheaper than snap-on and better suited to field work, where losing tools is a fact of life. My dad would buy duplicates and bulk-return the broken ones a few times a year. Apparently he deduced out the engineered working life of most of their tools.

Hazard Fraught is moving up the food chain in a number of tool lines. They're definitely filling that void.

The business model appears to be to sell reasonable quality tools and nail consumers with low quality consumables.

I avoid HF if I can but their new line of welders is getting rave reviews at a 1/4 the price of the American brands.

At this point, I would buy HF over Crapsman.

Honestly, I avoided harbor freight for anything unless I knew I was going to destroy whatever it was in short order.

I now have a woodshop full of HF clamps that carry a better warranty than bessey and work just as well. I also have the HF wood lathe that is super cheap for the quality.

At Harbor Freight, every Indian-made tool I've used has been junk (wrenches). Every Chinese-made product has been acceptable to good. Every Taiwanese- and American-made (yes, they have a few!) product has been excellent.

The chrome and stamping on the sockets is every bit as good as my ~2000 era Craftsman sockets, and far better than the last Craftsman tool I bought around '07.

Husky seems to be aiming to fill that void, and by some reports they're doing a decent job.

I'm sure they don't measure up to Craftsman of fifty years ago, but neither does Craftsman.

I'd suggest Gearwrench or Tekton, Wright or Williams (same manufacturer as Snap On) if you want American made.

How is Wright a hobbyist tool though? All the Wright tools I have purchased have been as much or more than Snap-On, they are mainly targeting the industrial market (with pricing to match).

Plus, Gearwrench is not american made, it is Taiwanese. Good tools, but your statement is factually incorrect.

> Plus, Gearwrench is not american made, it is Taiwanese. Good tools, but your statement is factually incorrect.

I think that's just ambiguous wording. Try parsing it like this:

> I'd suggest ((Gearwrench) or (Tekton, Wright or Williams (same manufacturer as Snap On) if you want American made.))

It's just crappy wording on my part. I was unsure if Tekton was also Taiwanese so I omitted country of origin on the first two. To clarify:

Gearwrench, Tekton and some Williams wrenches: Asia-made, reasonably priced, more than adequate for hobbyist use.

Wright and some Williams wrenches: US-made, more expensive but cheaper and more available than Snap-on, marketed towards industrial applications instead of professional mechanics.

Tekton doesn't make any tools, but source them from other manufacturers. So they have some Taiwanese, some Chinese, and some US made. Most of the pliers and all of the punches come from Wilde, a US manufacturer.