Craftsman at Lowes

boston1450

I've got some Craftsman tools I've had for 45-50 years. Sad to see them failing. Like Sears back in the day. They had quite the audio room in Sears near us in the 70's

boston1450

msg wrote: »

boston1450 wrote: »

500.00 for can win survey. Seems Odd. Reported

DAMmit! and it made me think this was a current thread.

gone now

Someone posted a link to a 500.00 survey.

Jstas

You can get the same survey at the bottom of ANY receipt you get from Lowe's. But it goes to the Lowe's site so whatever that dude who posted was peddling, it was a scam.

And it wasn't a 500 dollar survey. It was a contest to win 500 dollars.

But the Lowe's contest is for a Lowe's gift card for some amount of money.


Anyway, Craftsman isn't currently made here and last I knew, it was Craftsman that was trying to bring it back here to the states for production. Stanley pulled the plug on that because of the losses.

Stanley still makes stuff here. They make stuff everywhere else too. I believe MAC is still made here. At least the forged hand tools are.

The problem with making tools is that you have to have very expensive die systems because they have to be strong enough to make tools. Standard level dies for stuff that you make things out of is very different than dies used to make stuff that you make stuff with.

Whether Craftsman actually comes back to the U.S. for production or not remains to be seen. Stanley's factories here are already at capacity and the tooling needed to make a different brand/design of tools is quite expensive. They can't kill production on one line for the sake of another line. Switching the tooling could mean as much as a month of production down time. So the only way to bring Craftsman back here is to build a new plant. The plant itself is a breeze. The tooling is the hard/expensive part. So if your machinery is not producing effective and consistent product, it's hurting you. Stanley was right to pull the plug.

The Craftsman tools I've seen in Lowe's are solid. Not like they used to be but they still come with the Craftsman warranty and Lowe's is honoring ALL Craftsman warranties. Craftsman still has a support line for old tools and such too. But I bought a new torque wrench after my old one snapped the head gears and the new Craftsman one is rated as a "best buy" or "best budget" torque wrench and I have to say, I was impressed. A few years ago, that wrench would have been an absolute joke. But ever since they got out from under the bean counters riding in the sinking Sears ship, they've been turning things around. Even the battery powered tools have gotten better. Like they sent the people from DeWalt to Craftsman to show them where they were **** up.

Stanley Black and Decker also owns Porter Cable which I wish they would put some effort in and restore to it's previous standards and they also owned Delta which is nice to see that while they've obviously cut costs in places, they didn't sacrifice precision. Delta is owned by a Tainwanese based conglomerate now but they took all of Delta Machinery, moved it from the Stanley facilities to a new place in Spartanburg, SC which houses the offices of Delta Power Equipment Group which Delta Machinery is now part of. Manufacturing facilities are in the U.S. too in a couple of South Carolina locations.

You'd be surprised how much Stanley actually owns, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Black_&_Decker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black+Decker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Machinery

Also, before anyone starts bloviating about DeWalt, DeWalt has been a part of Black and Decker since 1960 so it was not a recent acquisition and all the tools that everyone loves about DeWalt were made by Black and Decker.

Stanley Works and Black and Decker merged in 2010 too.

boston1450

Nm

aprazer402

On 6-7-23 I returned a broken 12' Craftsman tape measure to a local Lowe's. The tool dept. manager had to look it up, he was surprised it was still covered for full exchange. He said they've been instructed to no longer exchange any Craftsman ratchets under warranty. He said Craftsman wrenches and sockets can still be exchanged. He said they expect more warranty exclusions for the Craftsman line.

Has anyone else been told this at Lowe's or elsewhere?

I don't have any other defective Craftsman tools to exchange at this time. I have many from the 50's and 60's that still work great that I wouldn't exchange for the new stuff (mostly #!&*) anyway.

Jstas

My local Lowe's (actually, two of them) both said that they were instructed to honor all warranties on Craftsman. Then again, that info is about 3-4 years old so maybe that's changed now. I haven't bothered to ask further because the stuff was pretty garbage then.

But about 2-2.5 years ago, the Lowe's I go to the most cleared out the entire Craftsman section and it was empty for about 2 weeks prior to "the Christmas shopping season" which usually starts in retail around 10/1. Actually, no, it was more than that because it was right before the covid BS hit so 2019. At that point, they got in all new Craftsman compressors which looked to be the same entry level stuff as you see from Husky, DeWalt, Campbell Hausfeld and so on but, at Craftsman prices. Then the rest of the tools started showing up. The reviews for the past two years have all been good and all the BOLTR YouTube channels (BOLTR = Boring Old Lame Tool Review) are singing praises of the stuff as being a turn around from 5-10 years ago with Sears' penny pinching. Some are, of course, sponsored but some aren't and while the ones who aren't sponsored still say they have reservations that have noticed a significant uptick in quality control and quality of design.

Then again, the last time I returned a Craftsman tool on warranty was when a friend bent my screw driver trying to find TDC on a Chevy 350 through the sparkplug hole. He ended up damaging that piston and needing a rebuild because of it so that was just karma for bending my screwdriver.

All my other Craftsman stuff is old enough that there's still rebuild parts for it. I just went and rebuilt my 30 year old ratchets late last year and the old Craftsman power drill and radial arm saw have only required brush replacement on the motor and the radial arm saw needed new drive belts.

sucks2beme

It's a shame that the selection is pretty sparse now.
Not like the days when you could find just about anything.
I guess you can still find a lot of it in pawn shops. I am
Lucky not to need much anymore. I have just about everything
Already. I even have spares sockets in all the commonly lost
sizes. I am still thinking about a new triple bay box from general
(at harbor freight). My top chests are ball bearing, but the old
botton boxes are slides. I had a ball bearing botton craftsman
I gave to my son. He upgraded to snap-on(got a great deal).

msg

I had a ratchet from my first Craftsman tool set spin out sometime in the early/mid 00s. I took it in for exchange, and was disappointed to be handed a clearly used replacement from a box of refurbs from under the counter. Felt a little sheisted.

I was also surprised to learn that they don't, or didn't at that time, warranty torque wrenches. I didn't need mine warranty replaced, but I apparently missed that notice on the packaging, since I always thought it was all Craftsman tools. The tool clerks, both ornery retired fellows, both smugly told me that torque wrenches get beat up. I somewhat indignantly replied, well mine don't.

@jstas - how exactly does one go about finding TDC with a screwdriver, anyway?

I stopped lending tools after the first time I lent tools. My best friend was rebuilding an 80s Subaru GL engine back in the late 90s. I'd stopped by after work to see how things were going. It had been raining pretty hard, and when I went around back to catch up with him, he wasn't around, and I saw my tool case lying open, in the open, all wet. Would one time damage a 105 piece socket and ratchet set? No, but it was a pain drying and WD-40'ing all the pieces. Moreover, I didn't like the careless handling. I realized that not everyone is going to be as careful with my stuff as I am with my own and/or would be with someone else's belongings.

After that I adopted an extension of "neither a borrower nor a lender be", with very few exceptions. I don't care if a person would replace something damaged, I just don't want my schiit jacked up in the first place. That dude's whole family earned a reputation - "The Sandersons wreck everything!"

Side story about the family - one of the brothers totaled one of my motorcycles years later within 30 seconds of throwing his leg over. And he was the most responsible of the lot! This 20yr motorcycle veteran, university coach, and father of 3's explanation? "I wanted to see what it had." Clearly too much for you, Shirley.

He disappeared behind the house on the corner after pulling out of the cul-de-sac, and we heard this wicked revving, then horrible crunching sound, followed by seeing the Givi top case tumbling past the other end of the house into the open, but just the case - no bike and no brother on the bike.

As he later recounted to us, as soon as he left the cul-de-sac, he'd popped it up unexpectedly, at which point was thrown backward, whiskey throttled it, and shot it out from under him as he was thrown/rolled off the back. Luckily, the bike was deflected and stopped when it rammed at a slight angle into a high curb at the foot of a yard - bending the front wheel and twisting the forks, and then went down - because there was a little girl playing in a pool up in that yard.

That stunt earned him a neat custom t-shirt that went something like...

• "Go Steve, Go!" (fast stick figure on motorcycle cartoon)
• "No Steve, No!" (stick figure doing wheelie on motorcycle cartoon)
• "Oh Steve, Oh..." (bandaged stick figure next to twisted scribbles of motorcycle remnants cartoon)

We have another friend who seems to break everything he touches as well. One time it was a weed eater borrowed from another friend. When he brought it back he was talking about how it kept shocking him. Talk about karma.

If these people had nice stereo gear, they'd be the ones you see selling the stuff missing remotes, battery covers, knobs, scratched to hell, missing feet, drop damage and other stuff you just couldn't figure out.

But yeah, Craftsman stuff.

mhardy6647

My father-in-law's Craftsman torque wrench defecated the bed this spring when I was torqueing Mrs. H's lugnuts after installing her summer wheels & tires.

Our farmer-neighbor Bill is a serious gearhead (as are his two adult sons). Bill has a garage/shop that is purty near* pro-grade, including a hydraulic lift. I knew he'd have a torque wrench, so I ran down and asked if I could use his. "Sure". I was a bit surprised that he had a Husky (Home Despot grade) torque wrench.
It looked and felt nice and worked fine... so I bought myself one, too.

Still have the gorgeous, 60-ish year old, but now slipping Craftsman... I was under the impression that Lowes would exchange it for... something... but maybe not.




Example of some of the rolling stock down the hill.

mhardy6647

He's got a thing for I-H tractors (akin to my thing for Yamaha hifis, I guess). I believe he's got four of 'em currently, at least three of which (incuding the rather husky example above) are in regular use. He's got a gorgeous little Farmall that they either just restored or he recently picked up -- 'cause it looks like new.
No piccie yet, sorry.
Here's one of the other big Internationals, though.

Jstas

msg wrote: »

@jstas - how exactly does one go about finding TDC with a screwdriver, anyway?

A Chevy 350 is a non-interference engine which means the valves can all be open with the pistons at the top of the cylinder and they don't touch.

I wasn't there for this 'cause I had to work. But a friend had gotten himself a used Chevy 350. It was "built". He got robbed on it 'cause "built" to the guy selling it meant it had an aftermarket induction system. So he got a bone stock Chevy 350 with a Weiand intake and Holley "double pumper" which wasn't actually a "double pumper", it was just a dual feed.

Anyway, we got it in the car, tried to start it. It just wouldn't fire. We checked timing, plug wires, firing order, everything we could think of, nothing. There was an old guy, "Big John", with a shop around the corner. He used to come over to see how my friend's projects were coming. He listened to it trying to start, checked if there's fuel in the bowls and then pulled timing out way far. Like twisted the distributor cap almost 180 and then we started getting pops but it sounded like they were hitting on the exhaust stroke.

Big John says "Did you put a cam in this thing?" We did not. So he unscrews the timing cover thinking the timing chain hopped some teeth. It was really loose so we pulled it all apart. The dots weren't lined up exactly because of timing slop from worn gear teeth. Big John says "You gotta replace that timing set. We gotta pull the valve covers too." So we went to Pep Boys, got a brand new Clevite 77 timing set and Mr. Gasket valve cover gaskets.

We pulled the valve covers and the timing gear. I was cleaning up the end of the cam around the timing set to get rid of all the gunky oil and worn nylon. Big John tells me to look at the end of the cam and tell him what numbers are there. So I look and I said "Uhhh...which numbers do you want?" Big John says "Just read the whole number." I was like, ok then and started reading off numbers. Big John is writing them down and he says "Well that's an odd number" before I was done. Then I said "Wait, there's more." Big John says "There isn't supposed to be more" I said "Well there is." Big John comes over and looks and sprays some carb cleaner on and wipes it with a rag. The he smacks me in the back of the head and says "Why didn't you tell me it was a Lunati number?" I was like "I didn't know it was a Lunati number!" and thumped him in the gut.

The Lunati stylized logo was on the end with a stamped serial number. I didn't recognize the Lunati logo because it was upside down and covered in gunk. Anyway, Big John goes back to his shop and a half hour later comes back with all these cam specs written down. He apparently called Lunati with the serial number and they gave him the specs over the phone. He thinks the cam is degreed wrong on the installation. So he shows us the paper, hands it to my friend and tells my friend what to do. It was starting to rain, though, so we bagged it for the day.

The next day I had to work so I wasn't there but I had left my tool box at my friend's house because I was coming back over after work anyway. In my tool box was a long, skinny flat head screw driver.

To check the degree on the cam, he was supposed to pull the cylinder head where #1 cylinder was. He didn't want to do that. So my genius friend thinks through this and says to himself "Self, we know this is a non-interference engine. We know the spark plug won't hit the piston and comes in at an angle between the two valves. So what if I just pulled the spark plug and used something to feel when the piston was at TDC? It'll work, right? What's worst that could happen?" So he pulled number 1 plug, watched the valves and counted revolutions between the intake valve opening and closing. Then, he sticks the screw driver in and thinks it will stay there in the hole while he bumps the starter. It didn't. It slid all the way down in the spark plug hole so when he started clicking the engine over with another screwdriver on the solenoid, the #1 piston came up the cylinder, pinned the screwdriver to the top of the chamber and proceeded to crush and wedge it in. He said he must have rotated the engine a dozen times because on every stroke, he couldn't move the screw driver and thought the piston was at TDC because of it.

It wasn't, he degreed the cam all wrong, hooked everything back up and when I got over there we tried to start it. It doesn't start, of course, and the cam is now like 76 degrees out of alignment so the engine is firing on the intake stroke but without compression, no boom. Just a fizzle. He's cranking and cranking and I can hear valve train parts moving and this squeaking but no boom boom. The there was a backfire and nothing blew up but this fountain of flames came out of the carb. Set the hood insulation on fire and everything.

I asked him what he did and then around the corner comes running Big John asking if everything was ok. He said he saw the flash from the flames and heard the explosion. That was when we got the story of how the day had progressed with the genius being unsupervised.

We had to tear the engine down anyway and instead of just tearing down and rebuilding with a new gasket kit we had to tear down, replace a connecting rod, a piston, two valves, one valve spring and a pushrod and collapsed lifter. We also had to helicoil the spark plug hole.

Where did he get this lame brained idea? A concubine of his mom's, who was a groundskeeper for the local high school but lacked the Scottish accent and ancestry one would expect, gave him the idea. Bruno, the non-Scottish ancestry groundskeeper had never rebuilt an engine in his life, not even a lawnmower engine, gave my friend the idea of using a screwdriver because Bruno had stopped by earlier in the Day of Infamy and came out back to see what was going on and "Hang with the guys".

So after regaling us with the story, Big John says "So where's the screw driver?" He pulls out the screw driver from his tool box and it has this s-curve in the shaft with a hard, 30 degree bend at the end about 2 inches up from the tip. The shaft near the handle has these gouges in it. Big John just says "Jesus Christ!" Then he asked what the gouges are and my friend says "Oh, that was where the vice grips were cranked down and I had to hammer it out of the hole."

So he basically pounded a set of vice grips with a hammer and straightened the screw driver enough to get it out by forcefully extruding it through the spark plug hole. When I heard Big John ask my friend "What the f*&^ is wrong with you?!?" I came over, asked what was going on and Big John holds up the screw driver and says "Do you see a problem here?" I said "Yeah, that's my f&^%$@ screw driver!"

Big John doubles over laughing and I'm looking at my screw driver and cursing.

That was a Tuesday afternoon. That Friday we went to the mall and we parked at the SEARS where we normally did because we could walk through the tool section on the way to whatever BS we were going to get in to at the mall. We stop at the counter and the guy says "Can I help you, sir?" to my friend. My friend pulls my bent up screw driver out of his pocket and says "Yeah. Warranty exchange." The guy behind the counter is stunned to silence for a second and the says "Uhhh....I don't....um...well...let me see if we even have another one available first." So he walks over to the tool case, finds another screw driver just like it and says "Can I ask what happened for the exchange reason?" My friend looks at him like are you serious? Then he says "It fell. From a very tall ladder." The SEARS guy and my friend lock eyes for a minute and says "Ok, good enough." Takes the bent screw driver, throws it in the trash, hands him the new screw driver and an exchange receipt and says "Thank you for shopping at SEARS! Have a good evening!" We walk away from the counter and my friend slams the screw driver against my chest and says "Quit yer bitchin'."

The reason for the exchange on the receipt said "Fell from a very high height."

Jstas

So that's how you find TDC with a screwdriver.

Also, Big John had given me some very good advice during the 6 or so years I knew him.

The best piece of advice was "Take care of your tools and they will take care of you."

The best piece of wisdom he ever gave me was in reference to the friend above and that was "I hope you're f&%^$ paying attention to this because I couldn't teach you what NOT to do better than he is!"

I've reduced that wisdom and necessary back story down to the following which I have already told my kids and that is: "Get yourself some stupid friends that way you can have all the stories and none of the injuries!"


Also, stuff like torque wrenches aren't warrantied under the lifetime replacement because they have to be regularly recalibrated and they do wear out eventually. A 9/16ths box end wrench will last a lifetime of normal use. A torque wrench, maybe 10 years, tops, if you use it regularly. 20-25 if you don't but store it properly between uses.

Harbor Freight, though, recently adopted the Craftsman style warranty and the biggest advantage to the Craftsman warranty was that you didn't have to wait days or weeks for a replacement. You break a 5/8ths socket at 1pm on a Saturday afternoon, you have a new one in hand and are working again by 2pm because you could go to any SEARS and get a new one.

So in all honesty, I don't need a precision wrench to turn nuts and bolts. As long as the size is accurate, any junk will do. If you're going to warranty your junk for life and I can easily get a replacement in hours vs days or weeks, I will be more likely to buy your junk from your store that's open 7 days a week than to buy the junk off that guy's truck and I'll have to wait a week for him to come back around. In the meantime, I probably went and bought the junk from guy's store up the street to get by while my "precision" junk sat on the counter waiting for the crook with the truck to come by with a new one and to collect his broken junk.

Another piece of wisdom Big John gave me was "Just because you have the most expensive and best hammer and saw money can buy, it doesn't make you a f*&^%$ carpenter."

He was stone cold right on that one too. If you don't think so, go watch Jacques Pepin on TV or YouTube and watch his knife work and take a good look at the brands he's using. A sharp knife is a sharp knife whether it's J.A. Henckels or OXO Good Grips, a tool is a tool, a master it does not make.

Big John was a machine shop foreman for a living. Worked at Conrail for most of his life until the Conrail shop he worked at got closed down. Then he went to work for a local automation shop running quality control on the machine parts they built for the manufacturing machines and robots they would custom build. Big John did not suffer fools easily and as long as you were willing to learn and listen, he'd help anybody any way he could. He was just a good man. Grumpy as hell but if you needed him, he was there. Giving you s#!% about it the whole time too. He also would work as hard as you did, right next to you, again, giving you s#!% the whole time but he was in it with you the whole time. I met Big John in 1995 when he was 61. He retired at 66 and a year later he moved down to South Carolina to be closer to his grandkids. Last I had heard he passed away around 2004-2005 from complications from cancer. Every time I'm working on a car, I hear his gravely profanity telling me to be f%$@^# smart about what you're doing, kid. Just makes me wish he was there.

msg

LOLOL so many laughs in that one!

DaveHo

I haven't found Lowes willing to warranty Craftsman sold by Sears, but I haven't tried since soon after Lowes started selling the brand. Could be different now.

la2vegas

Picked this up recently. Wonder if Lowes will warranty it, probably not but I don't care. All I have to do is look at it and I'm getting my money's worth.

mantis

I grew up in Sears and Craftsman tools where always a part of my life.
When Sears went under, I piece of me died that day. My family Shopped there for generations.

So when I learned Lowes carried Craftsman stuff, I started shopping there and got my garage storage.
I was going to get the Husky's from Home Depot as I found them to be a tad nicer but I'm fine with the Craftsman stuff and I already owned a Craftsman tool box in Red so now they all just match.

kevhed72

mantis wrote: »

I grew up in Sears and Craftsman tools where always a part of my life.
When Sears went under, I piece of me died that day. My family Shopped there for generations.

So when I learned Lowes carried Craftsman stuff, I started shopping there and got my garage storage.
I was going to get the Husky's from Home Depot as I found them to be a tad nicer but I'm fine with the Craftsman stuff and I already owned a Craftsman tool box in Red so now they all just match.

You are jump starting my own OCD this morning with this pic. BTW what some people call " OCD" others view as simply being organized....just as non OCD types on the other end of the spectrum could be viewed as unorganized slobs. Anyway very nice!

mantis

Thanks,
It's ok man, I only know how to do things one way so that's just the way I do it.

la2vegas

My old craftsman tool cart was feeling lonely so I bought the shorter one this morning. It was full of 1950's craftsman tools. Not bad for 50 bucks.

The previous owner left behind several trinkets including a 1955 instruction manual for Volkswagen. As well as a letter addressed then president Bush senior.

msg

Hey Doc - those are some great photos! I love stuff like that.
What're you shooting with theses days?

Also, I'm gonna steal that phrase. But I won't ref. Mrs. H. in it when I use it.
I don't know how I'm gonna use it yet.

mhardy6647 wrote: »

...when I was torqueing Mrs. H's lugnuts ...

aprazer402

Wrong thread. Post a photo.

msg

Dude, that's awesome. I'd really enjoy refreshing that, cleaning it up, lubing the drawers, making it work all nice.

( Go ahead, @pitdogg2 and @Hermitism - lobbed you guys a freebie ^^^ )

la2vegas wrote: »

Picked this up recently. Wonder if Lowes will warranty it, probably not but I don't care. All I have to do is look at it and I'm getting my money's worth.

mhardy6647

msg wrote: »

Hey Doc - those are some great photos! I love stuff like that.
What're you shooting with theses days?

Also, I'm gonna steal that phrase. But I won't ref. Mrs. H. in it when I use it.
I don't know how I'm gonna use it yet.

mhardy6647 wrote: »

...when I was torqueing Mrs. H's lugnuts ...

Still using the Nikon D5600 DX-format DSLR that my son gave me* He's a good lad, he is.
He gave me most of the good glass I have, too.
He is to Nikkor optics as I am to Yamaha hifi.

_____________
* Which replaced the D5000 that he gave me, which replaced the D40 that I gave him, and that he gave back to me when he started getting more serious about digital photography. He's still a film kinda guy at heart.


(from his grad school days in Virginnie)