Tool brands

Look in the Hot Deals section. That's your best friend / worst enemy. lol I may or may not go to Lowes, Home Depot, Sears once a week to buy tools

On a related note O'Reilly Auto parts is clearancing out all of their KD Brand tools for cheap. KD is now Gearwrench.

OP I have a mix of tools. Snap-On, MAC, Matco, Lots of Craftsman, some Kolbolt stuff The lowes stuff I have used is really good if you can get a deal on it. Lowes normally marks that stuff down almost 50% a lot of the time on their sets. I have never really broken many tools from any brand unless I was doing something I shouldn't be with it.

 

Most of mine are Craftsman, but they have really gone downhill since K-mart took over. Luckily they still exchange broken tools.

 

Some strong opinions in that forum, and some of those guys really drink the snap on cool aid by the gallon every day.
Some really cool garage/shop builds there. I remember a guy called oldcarguy, his compound was the most ridiculous playground i had ever seen.

 

Indeed. Some of those guys only buy a specific color SO stuff.

I originally joined to research an old vise I was buying and it when from there. I have gotten some cool ideas for my garage there and some good deals.

 

For power tools: Milwaukee cordless stuff at home, dewalt at work (employer provided). Both take a decent beating and continue to do their job, I tend to prefer Milwaukee.

Corded angle grinder is a Bosch.

For hand tools:

Pliers/strippers/cutters: name brand, generally Channel Lock or Klein.

Measuring tools or precision tools: tapes/squares/levels/ect. I try to stick with USA manufactured or
At least name brands - Stanley/Milwaukee.

Screwdrivers/ratchets/sockets/wrenches/hacksaws: Craftsman/kobalt/husky... Whatever is cheapest or has a "no questions" type warranty... These are tools that are used to frequently that they are more likely to break from being dropped long before they actually wear out.

Currently building elevators. The tools that get dropped (although infrequent) are often unusable and need to be replaced...
No need to spend 10x the money when it's gonna need to be replaced after a fall no matter what.

Although, to Kobalts credit, I dropped a kobalt "compact" tape measure down 9 stories... Appx 150 ft to the bottom of the pit, and although it had a giant crack into the body, it stayed in one piece and still retracted fine.

 

I was a member there years ago, but walked away because i just could not take the tool superiority complex. I did love the garage and shop build section though. And i did score a few tools and places to get things along the way.
I found that site when i stumbled on this awesome loft garage build this guy had going somewhere in the midwest.

 

I agree. I stick to only a few places there because of that.

I was hoping this thread would take off but never did
http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/garage-workshop/238441-garage-workshop-bs-thread.html

 

There was a awesome fab guy there, ztfab or weld or something like that, that guy could weld like nobody's business. he did offroad fab stuff, i think he was from the IE. And there was a guy that built race cars in the north east that was very knowledgeable and willing to help.
most guys over there didn't seem to care about offroad racing stuff though.

Just checked and my account is no longer.

 

I never had an issue with the stanleys at my shop aka garage! Haha.... seem well built.