Posted by David Sherman on Thursday, February 17, 2005 at 2:30PM :
In Reply to: North American Made posted by Marty on Wednesday, February 16, 2005 at 10:26PM :
I agree that most people nowadays don't know how much better good tool steel is than the cheap stuff. Drill bits and chisels (cold chisels or wood chisels) are two areas where you can really see the difference. Actually, my best wood chisels and plane irons are imports, but they were imported from Sheffield England around 1870 and used by my great-great grandfather in his cabinet shop. They have hard high-carbon steel edges forge-welded onto tough er steel backs. Most modern chisels are a compromise between a steel that will hold a good edge and one that won't break. I have some modern Proto cold chisels that really will cut steel, unlike the Chinese ones. One Proto chisel costs as much as a whole set of Harbor Freight ones, but if a tool won't do the job, your money was wasted no matter how cheap it was.
Likewise with drill bits, if you are in the miserable position of having to drill out a broken grade-8 stud, a cheap bit won't even cut into it. I keep a set of US-made bits that I only use for drilling hardened steel, so I won't accidentally break them on something where a cheap bit would do the job.
If you're going to buy expensive drill bits, it makes sense to buy a sharpening jig and learn how to sharpen the larger sizes (> 1/4"). Even good bits do get dull or chipped. I think part of the reason so many people go for the $15 29-piece drill set is that they consider them disposable.
I do buy a lot of cheap Chinese tools, but I do that so I can keep a set of essentials in each vehicle, and leave some basic tools out at my cabin. When I'm back in the woods working on something, I'd rather have a cheap tool on hand, rather than have to go back to town to get a good one, and I'm certainly not going to leave anything US-made out there for the tweakers to steal.