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9 years ago I bought a small Craftsman 1/4” drive socket/ratchet set that came with a clam shell plastic case. After 6 years of using the tar out of that ratchet it broke. I took it back to Sears and they disappointedly replaced it with a remanufactored one. I got 3 years out of that one. Again, it was used in my job on a daily basis. It crapped out last week. On Friday I took it to a Ace Hardware and they exchanged it for a brand new one. It lasted 3 days ............... Bye,Bye Craftsman.

I have an SKB socket set, made in USA. I don't use it heavily, but it seems to be very well made.

bloke wrote: The idea is to use a solid wrench (whether open-end, box-end, or socket driver) to "break" very tight bolts loose, and then (once freed) switch over (for speed/convenience) to the ratchet.

+1 , and in tandem with a nice long piece of pipe for the super-stubborn ones.



Having snapped the swivel connector on a few of these , I don't see them as being any more useful than a ratchet wrench....(although I must admit that the "vintage" Craftsman ones were considerably tougher than the garbage available out there today)

the elephant wrote:it is getting hard to find in stores

It's getting hard to find stores - my local Sears Roebuck closed its doors earlier this year...

BTW, I've got Milwaukee power tools, purchased in the 1980s, that still work GREAT

Mark Finley wrote:When my dad passed, I inherited both his tools and my grandfather's tools. Quite a lot of wrenching history in those sets

my grandfather is 2nd from the right.

Even though he is furthest from the camera, he's still the tallest!!

May be old new but Sears sold the "Craftsman" trademark. For whomever bought it, the only thing that made it worth money was the reputation and the guarantee. If they can't make a product which can have the reputation and the guarantee of Craftsman, they have wasted their money.

Not at all. It's abundantly clear that the connection between people's choices and reality is tenuous at best, and that sure applies to purchasing choices. The "Craftsman" label could coast for generations on its reputation, indeed has been doing just that - people who were paying attention knew that it was over, more than 20 years ago, right? = 1 generation. Much more cost effective to buy a reputation and ruin it, than start from zero and try to make one by producing good products - the landscape is littered with failures of that approach.