Month: January 2011

I have a confession. I am a 26 year old semi-handy man who doesn’t own a wrench set. I have cruised through life borrowing my father’s wrenches or making do with what was available wherever I was working. Lately I have been trying to rectify this. Last night I happened to stumble into a Sears, fully knowing that I probably wouldn’t leave empty handed.
After looking around for about 20 minutes, I had two options that were very puzzling to me.
The first option was from the Craftsman Evolv line. A set of 14 wrenches, which included 7 metric and 7 SAE, plus 4 bonus wrenches, just for the hell of it. That’s 18 wrenches for a very good price of $19.99. Where’s the catch? There it is. The Evolv line, with it’s eco-friendly paper packaging, boasts about how it is more cost efficient and still just what you need to “get the job done.” Yes, it’s easy to be cost efficient when your product is made in China and you use materials that you can’t even back up with your lifetime warranty. That’s right, the famous Craftsman lifetime warranty does not cover it’s Evolv line. The only thing that will get you a replacement is if the tool suffers from a manufacturing defect. Apparently, the Evolv line is Craftman’s new low end tools, meant to replace their Companion line, which had an even worse warranty from what I hear.
My next option is to buy two 9 piece wrench sets, one metric and the other standard. These are $29.99 each, but were on sale for $19.99 each. This means that if I want an American made, fully warranted wrench set, I have to drop twice as much as my other option. I know that in reality, it is fully worth it in many aspects to buy these wrenches over any other set. This is upsetting. So upsetting that I had to pace around the store, for what probably seemed like 30 minutes to Ashlinn. I paced and paced until I just had to leave, empty handed.
I continue to be a 26 year old semi-handy man without a wrench set.