Where do I get British Made tools?
Discussion
I've been trying to buy a trolley jack for use with my TVR. (plus axle stands etc)
Problem is all there seems to be in the various tool shops is flimsy crap made in all the usual boring crappy places.
I'm voting with my wallet. I do not want to buy this utter rubbish. I want to buy a decent tool made in Britain, by Brits. Price isn't totally irrelvant, but I want whatever I buy to have been made by an adult craftsman, not a violated kid in some sweatshop who has no rights.
Where can I buy decent tools, any ideas?
J
Problem is all there seems to be in the various tool shops is flimsy crap made in all the usual boring crappy places.
I'm voting with my wallet. I do not want to buy this utter rubbish. I want to buy a decent tool made in Britain, by Brits. Price isn't totally irrelvant, but I want whatever I buy to have been made by an adult craftsman, not a violated kid in some sweatshop who has no rights.
Where can I buy decent tools, any ideas?
J
Edited by justyr on Saturday 28th October 18:26
justyr said:
I've been trying to buy a trolley jack for use with my TVR. (plus axle stands etc)
Problem is all there seems to be in the various tool shops is flimsy crap made in all the usual boring crappy places.
I'm voting with my wallet. I do not want to buy this utter rubbish. I want to buy a decent tool made in Britain, by Brits. Price isn't totally irrelvant, but I want whatever I buy to have been made by an adult craftsman, not a violated kid in some sweatshop who has no rights.
Where can I buy decent tools, any ideas?
J
Problem is all there seems to be in the various tool shops is flimsy crap made in all the usual boring crappy places.
I'm voting with my wallet. I do not want to buy this utter rubbish. I want to buy a decent tool made in Britain, by Brits. Price isn't totally irrelvant, but I want whatever I buy to have been made by an adult craftsman, not a violated kid in some sweatshop who has no rights.
Where can I buy decent tools, any ideas?
J
China or Korea probably, we seem to get all their crap.
Tried Machine Mart?
Hmmm :scrathchin: So you want to buy something from a factory that suffers from outdated underinvested manufacturing equipment, thats soon to go bust beacuse they are not competitive in the real world. Where the staff are asking to be paid too much & the sales guys are sat there waiting for you to call them, but they've not asked what it is you might be wanting so they probably won't actually make what your after. Sounds familar :scartchchin:
If you've seen some of the Taiwanese manufacturing plants you would be gobsmacked at their level of investment in high tech accurate machinery, with CNC welding plants, automation & cleanliness, using the best steels from German built foundries that UK did'nt invest in as it was too expensive with too long a pay off time. Take an idea to them & they'll have prototypes in days, manufacturing that can start in weeks.
Unfortunately as per yourself most here in the UK do not realise just how far we have lagged behind the rest of the devoloping world in terms of investment for manufacturing facilities.
I would say that Taiwan IS the manufacturing capital of the world for very good reason. Just watch out for the cheap Chinese stuff that looks as good but is'nt.
If you've seen some of the Taiwanese manufacturing plants you would be gobsmacked at their level of investment in high tech accurate machinery, with CNC welding plants, automation & cleanliness, using the best steels from German built foundries that UK did'nt invest in as it was too expensive with too long a pay off time. Take an idea to them & they'll have prototypes in days, manufacturing that can start in weeks.
Unfortunately as per yourself most here in the UK do not realise just how far we have lagged behind the rest of the devoloping world in terms of investment for manufacturing facilities.
I would say that Taiwan IS the manufacturing capital of the world for very good reason. Just watch out for the cheap Chinese stuff that looks as good but is'nt.
Edited by cptsideways on Saturday 28th October 18:36
cptsideways said:
Hmmm :scrathchin: So you want to buy something from a factory that suffers from outdated underinvested manufacturing equipment, thats soon to go bust beacuse they are not competitive in the real world. Where the staff are asking to be paid too much & the sales guys are sat there waiting for you to call them, but they've not asked what it is you might be wanting so they probably won't actually make what your after. Sounds familar :scartchchin:
If you've seen some of the Taiwanese manufacturing plants you would be gobsmacked at their level of investment in high tech accurate machinery, with CNC welding plants, automation & cleanliness, using the best steels from German built foundries that UK did'nt invest in as it was too expensive with too long a pay off time. Take an idea to them & they'll have prototypes in days, manufacturing that can start in weeks.
Unfortunately as per yourself most here in the UK do not realise just how far we have lagged behind the rest of the devoloping world in terms of investment for manufacturing facilities.
I would say that Taiwan IS the manufacturing capital of the world for very good reason. Just watch out for the cheap Chinese stuff that looks as good but is'nt.
If you've seen some of the Taiwanese manufacturing plants you would be gobsmacked at their level of investment in high tech accurate machinery, with CNC welding plants, automation & cleanliness, using the best steels from German built foundries that UK did'nt invest in as it was too expensive with too long a pay off time. Take an idea to them & they'll have prototypes in days, manufacturing that can start in weeks.
Unfortunately as per yourself most here in the UK do not realise just how far we have lagged behind the rest of the devoloping world in terms of investment for manufacturing facilities.
I would say that Taiwan IS the manufacturing capital of the world for very good reason. Just watch out for the cheap Chinese stuff that looks as good but is'nt.
Edited by cptsideways on Saturday 28th October 18:36
I don't think you could be more wrong if you tried! (I works as a machine designer for a predomonantly UK based manufacturing organisation. Eastern world still employ 12 year olds on very dated dangerous equipment for 18 hours a day for a pittance.
Edited by Focus2.0Zetec on Saturday 28th October 19:20
The reason I've posted the question is that the stuff I've seen so far (Chinese and Taiwanese) seems very flimsy and poor quality compared to my mates older stuff that he has.
I'd probably buy something if it evidently had been manufactured in the way you've described. If you know where to buy such a thing please post the answer. I'm open to persuasion if the hard evidence is there in front of me. J
I'd probably buy something if it evidently had been manufactured in the way you've described. If you know where to buy such a thing please post the answer. I'm open to persuasion if the hard evidence is there in front of me. J
Thanks alot for the Sealey link.
Browsing their stuff, it looks like it is imported but from Denmark so I'm happier with that.
Difficult to tell 100% in a picture but it does look better than the bean can stuff elsewhere.
However, whilst browsing around for stockists I also came across what looks like the final answer to my search:
www.draper.co.uk/
Mission accomplished I hope.
J
Browsing their stuff, it looks like it is imported but from Denmark so I'm happier with that.
Difficult to tell 100% in a picture but it does look better than the bean can stuff elsewhere.
However, whilst browsing around for stockists I also came across what looks like the final answer to my search:
www.draper.co.uk/
Mission accomplished I hope. J
Although there are still some superbly well made British tools, Footprint comes to mind, and I'd be delighted to be proved wrong, I very much doubt you're going to find a British made trolley jack.
Draper and Sealey both have plenty of British employees but very few of their products are made in Europe. My own choice would be Facom or Britool. They're now part of US co. Stanley and retain both British employees and (admittedly limited) European manufacture.
Edited for egregious abuses of the English language
Draper and Sealey both have plenty of British employees but very few of their products are made in Europe. My own choice would be Facom or Britool. They're now part of US co. Stanley and retain both British employees and (admittedly limited) European manufacture.
Edited for egregious abuses of the English language
Edited by J111 on Saturday 28th October 20:12
There are very few British made tools these days, For decent trolley jacks, the Sealey Viking range (AKA Snap ON Bluepoint) are superb, the cheaper ones are just that, cheap!!
Laser tools import a very nice light weight alloy trolley jack but it aint cheap
I have a cheap (Draper) 2.5 tonne jack and a Bluepoint one that is 15 years old, The cheapo one creeps(gradually drops), the old one doesnt!!I still use axle stands as well.
For Hand Tools, any of the top Brands are ok for quality; Professional use: Britool (made in france now) Facom (france),Stahlville (German), Snap on (USA), MAC (USA), King Dick (UK), Beta(Italy) are fine, the others are imports of dubious heritage and varying quality on the whole in my experience (I used to work for one of the above and still work for one of the others but not hand tools)
A simple observasion test on ring spanners and sockets is as follows: the closer to the edge of the tool that the gripping face reaches, then the better quality the tool, some cheap sockets are so far recessed that they wont work with "half nuts" (yes i mess with old cars and bikes), this is less of an issue with metric fasteners as they are larger.
Hope this Helps
Mark
P.S. my tool kit has allsorts in it!!
Laser tools import a very nice light weight alloy trolley jack but it aint cheap
I have a cheap (Draper) 2.5 tonne jack and a Bluepoint one that is 15 years old, The cheapo one creeps(gradually drops), the old one doesnt!!I still use axle stands as well.
For Hand Tools, any of the top Brands are ok for quality; Professional use: Britool (made in france now) Facom (france),Stahlville (German), Snap on (USA), MAC (USA), King Dick (UK), Beta(Italy) are fine, the others are imports of dubious heritage and varying quality on the whole in my experience (I used to work for one of the above and still work for one of the others but not hand tools)
A simple observasion test on ring spanners and sockets is as follows: the closer to the edge of the tool that the gripping face reaches, then the better quality the tool, some cheap sockets are so far recessed that they wont work with "half nuts" (yes i mess with old cars and bikes), this is less of an issue with metric fasteners as they are larger.
Hope this Helps
Mark
P.S. my tool kit has allsorts in it!!
[quote=ELAN+2]A simple observasion test on ring spanners and sockets is as follows: the closer to the edge of the tool that the gripping face reaches, then the better quality the tool, some cheap sockets are so far recessed that they wont work with "half nuts" (yes i mess with old cars and bikes), this is less of an issue with metric fasteners as they are larger.[/quote]
That's an easy one to sort with sockets. Just use your bench grinder to remove the taper! It can be done with ring spanners, but it's more difficult and depending how bad the tool is, "as new", you may end up with no spanner left.
I'm not sure if anyone in the UK is making hand tools that are noticably better than anywhere else in the world. We do still make some machine tools, but most people don't buy them. The best way to get decent tools is to buy second hand.
There are lots of places doing second hand tools that date around the end of the war, where they've been looked after they are noticably better than stuff you might buy new, even if they are 50 or 60 years old.
Generally the best stuff for precision machining is Swiss. It always was, and still is. Japanese measuring (metrology) tools lead the world. You have to go back an awful long way to find British tooling of any kind that leads the world. Maybe, we're good for machine grinders, but I think that's about it.
That's an easy one to sort with sockets. Just use your bench grinder to remove the taper! It can be done with ring spanners, but it's more difficult and depending how bad the tool is, "as new", you may end up with no spanner left.
I'm not sure if anyone in the UK is making hand tools that are noticably better than anywhere else in the world. We do still make some machine tools, but most people don't buy them. The best way to get decent tools is to buy second hand.
There are lots of places doing second hand tools that date around the end of the war, where they've been looked after they are noticably better than stuff you might buy new, even if they are 50 or 60 years old.
Generally the best stuff for precision machining is Swiss. It always was, and still is. Japanese measuring (metrology) tools lead the world. You have to go back an awful long way to find British tooling of any kind that leads the world. Maybe, we're good for machine grinders, but I think that's about it.
Edited by dilbert on Sunday 29th October 12:17
i have to admit i usually buying the cheapest, then if it breaks i'll just go and get another. i got a small 2 ton jack and axel stands for around £20 it works great it'll lift a big toyota hiace van and a tractor that weights god knows how much with out much trouble, although recently with anything really heavy it slowly lowers its self now. but saying that ive had it nearly 5 years and i've given it a lot of stick and it does lower really slowly (over about 20/30 minutes!) and i'm not stupid enough to go underneath without the axel stands!!!
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