Sears/Craftsman screws another inventor ... again!

http://lumberjocks.com/topics/43107

-- Einstein: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." I'm Poopiekat!!

Sorry poopiekat, didn’t see that as probably was to incensed after reading the Yahoo article to see that it had already been posted!

-- "I never met a board I didn't like!"

I am grateful to poopiekat and oldnovice for posting this article. It merits repeating and ought to be required LJs reading. It speaks volumes about Sears/Craftman and our economic woes. As a kid, like thousands of others, I worked my way through college in American manufacturing. I understand the importance of keeping those jobs. All of us should carefully consider country of origin in tool buying decisions. I am proud that my wrench is from the original American manufacturer.

-- DJ Peck, Lincoln Nebraska. I don't have a Shop. I think of it as a Tool Chase. Where the hell did I put that?

I quit dealing with Sears several years ago, because just about everything was made in China, and cheaply made.

-- Thor and Odin are the greatest of Gods.

Why does it NOT surprise me that Bain Capital was involved in this “out-sourcing”...

And as DJ, I have a bunch of older USA Craftsman forged tools as well.

-- HorizontalMike -- "Woodpeckers understand..."

.....and my Made in the USA 1970 Craftsman Radial Arm Saw chuggs on…...................it will definitely outlive me.

And so then I went and looked at my aging Sears electric impact wrench I use for changing the tires on my car at the start of winter, and with the advent of spring….....it is built unlike any other Sears tool I have ever owned, you just know it will last forever….........Made in the USA.

The quality of those two tools just shouts at you…........but now you almost have to be a detective to find a good American item….......but my Vega TS fence is another Made in the USA first class item…........so it is possible.

-- Jim, Anchorage Alaska

What Americans don’t know is that when you hire a Chinese company to build your widget, you’ve basically given them the rights to the design regardless of patents. Who is going to enforce patent rights on China. Why does it surprise anyone that the same tool ends up back in their face at half the price.

-- Failure does not stop me, it makes me try harder..... because I'm crazy.

That falls under the “major transformation of the design” blanket.
Yep, it is a crappy way of screwin’ the originator of the design, and almost gets into all the blah, blah about the Saw Stop concept.
I don’t shop/buy from Sears.
Bil

-- bill@magraphics.us

As a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) I have attended their big event they call “World Congress”. Every company that has anything to do with automotove anything is there showing off stuff. I was told about it before I went but still couldnt believe it, the foreign engineers taking pictures and even being as bold and whipping out measuring tapes and making sketches of the stuff. One guy at a display chuckled when he saw the look on my face and told me that was their model just for the show, it would never work the way it was made.

The problem with competing with foreign manufacturing is that those countries stack the deck even before the game begins.

I gotta say I’m amused, there is a never-ending fountain of ridiculous, impractical gimmicks touted as the ultimate must-have for your toolbox. Variable-jaw wrenches have periodically come up in one permutation after another for decades. Savvy marketers all know a certain percentage of the population, based on their buying habits, WILL BUY ONE... whether it works or not, whether they need one or not, even if they’ve never twirled a wrench in their life. That’s why this stuff exists. I’d be too embarassed to own one of these goofy things. Well, I do have a rollaway toolchest full of traditional sockets and wrenches. But there is a segment of the buying public who is well-motivated (and hard-wired, maybe) to immediately buy ANY gadgety, gimmicky novelty with the word “New”on the packaging. If Sears wants to exploit this segment of customers with yet another wonder-tool, well, so be it. Buy a good set of tools, and you won’t be back at Sears in a month or two to buy another set, will you? But latest, greatest miracle device keeps ‘em coming back for more. Not to say I don’t feel bad for the original inventor. But this is a tool created to exploit the impulsive shopper anyway. Where’s my coffee? :-)

-- Einstein: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." I'm Poopiekat!!