[j8014]

Since when did "high quality" become impossible? lol. Thats news to me. The fact you think Sears was "high quality" is telling. Maybe you have never bought or been exposed to "quality" in the first place?

I totally disagree with your assessment. 20 years ago it was harder to find quality products than it is today. I am a person that buys "quality", I support local & US companies whenever I can. There are so many excellent boutique companies for just about everything outside of shitty mass produced electronics. I just do not see your world at all, but then again, I don't mistake garbage retailers and company branding for quality.

[bleepblorp]

I think you'd find it helpful to compare the quality of Sears Craftsman tools from 75, 50, 25 years ago and today. Unless you're either old enough to know first hand, happened to inherit older Craftsman tools, or have ties to people who are deeply interested in hand tools, you wouldn't know that at least that part of the Sears brand wasn't always associated with cheap garbage.

In general I find the degree of belligerent defensiveness in your post inexplicable given the topic at hand.

[throwaway0a5e]

There was more labor sunk into the tooling to make those old tools, fancy forging dies and whatnot to forge fancy tools that are thin, light, etc.

Modern metallurgy is soooo much more consistent for equivalent or better outputs though. Thanks to modern electronic process control the dumbest dolts on 3rd shift in some factory in China can hit the spec they were told to hit and they can hit it for pennies.

Plastics, electronics, mechanical assemblies, hydraulics, everything, same story. Modern automation and process control has made the "high quality" of decades past something attainable on a budget.

So your Harbor Freight junk will generally hold its own against grandpa's Craftsman and Snap-On but it won't look good or feel good doing it and you white box wheel bearing will roll your tractor along just as well as the one it replaces.

[Waterfall]

I'm old enough and Sears was never good and there are a lot more specialized and cheaper tools now from harbor freight. I doubt you had good tools either if you considered them high quality, they were good for the warranties, not for their quality. You'd return the screwdrivers after using it to mix cement.

I'm curious what Sears tools you considered high quality.

[potta_coffee]

I have a bunch of my grandpa's Craftsman tools from long before I was born, they were sold with lifetime warranties.