California schools $
20M solar project - Page 8

 wrote:

I was in HF one day when a guy returned a reciprocating saw. It caught
fire. Need I say more!

HF is a great place to buy a tarp, those stepped hole drill bits rock,
and I use their plastic bins to organize components. But plug into the
mains? I don't think so.

 
Good point.  For wrenches and such, HF seems good enough for light car
maintenance work.  But...

I bought a rechargeable drill from them awhile back, and the NiCd
battery charger doesn't even have a sensor telling when charging is
done.  You have to guess when it's done charging.

Dad wanted to buy same drill (on sale for $
5); I talked him out of
it.

Michael

 
It's probably just a transformer->rectifier->resistor->battery, set to charge
at a C/10 rate or thereabouts.

So you just wait ~12 hours or so and you're guaranteed it's fully charged --  
no guessing necessary. :-)

There was a time, not that long ago, when most battery chargers were this, um,
"featureless!"


Sounds like it might be worth $
5, actually...

I think Harbor Freight is a good example of (1) you tend to get what you pay
for and (2) advertising leads many people to believe they need a lot more than
they really do.  Their "value for the dollar" is actually pretty good --  
unlike a well-known brand name where the "image" can sometimes be much
flashier than what you're really getting (counting on many people never
recognizing as much -- see #2), with Harbor Freight it's pretty clear exactly
how rugged (or not) the item you're purchasing is.

If you really want to impress your dad, get him one of these:
(Amazon.com product link shortened)

---Joel

 
Joel Koltner wrote:

   I see a lot of people buying tools for their business at Harbor
Freight, and at Northern Tools.  They don't complain about the quality,
they complain that people steal their tools.


--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

 On Wed, 02 Jun 2010 21:47:48 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"


Right.  No one would steal a HF tool.  <rdh>

BTW, I have an order with them now for a portable dust collector ($
0) and a
wide-crown pneumatic stapler ($
0).  They didn't have them on sale in the
store in Dothan Saturday.