One day, when I was about 12 or so, and my Dad was still a garbageman, he came home from work really excited. Dad would often find things of great value out on his route. Hey, one mans trash is another mans treasure. My brother and I had 3 functional Nintendos because of that.* Anyway; this particular day he came home with a very large torque wrench. It was broken. He was excited because it was a Craftsman tool. He told me that Craftsman tools have a lifetime warranty. That weekend, my Dad, my brother and I went to Sears and the clerk gave my Dad a 130 dollar in-store credit from that broken torque wrench. His excitement was contagious, and we walked around throwing wrenches and screwdrivers and other tools of all sorts into the cart until we used up the credit. I learned that day that a Craftsman tool means something.
I’m a Craftsman Club member, and most of my tools are Craftsman tools.
I present to the court Exhibit A: My Craftsman C3 Collection
From left to right we have:
Planer, Work Light, Fluorescent Light, Right Angle Drill, Reciprocating Saw, 1/2 Driver Drill, 1/2 Hammer Drill.
There’s also Craftsman wrenches and a hammer in that shot.
Deep inside, I know that a lot of these things are sub-par, now. Sears has decided to capitalize on the name and lower the quality of the tool, knowing that sentimental fools like me will buy them anyway. That reciprocating saw has let me down on a few projects. The batteries are definitely not as robust as I would like. But, on average, for most home-improvement jobs, these things are great, and they are reasonably cost effective. If my budget allowed it, I'd get some DeWalt tools on that wall, too, but for the most part, I’m content.
Today I bought this.
It was on sale, and I got an extra 20 bucks off as a Craftsman Club member. I have a large number of huge trees, and the leaves are overwhelming. My Dad and my Father-in-law both have Stihl Backpack Leaf Blowers, and sing their praises, but I can’t afford to drop 500 bones on a single yard tool. Hopefully I won’t regret this purchase. I used it to blow off my rather sizable driveway this afternoon, and while underpowered compared to the Stihl, it did a fine job. I’ll review it after the fall season.
Between visiting the wife at work and running around shopping for a blower, I didn’t get too much done under the sun today. I did 10 feet of fencing. Once the sun went down, a friend and I did a little project I’ve been wanting to knock out to prepare for the cold evenings at home, but I’ll post about that tomorrow.
* Another related story: do you remember Pepsi Stuff? Oh man, did we get a lot of stuff from that catalog; and all thanks to people not recycling.**
** Please recycle.
