First let me clear the air, the sears.com / kmart.com (And all other domains it takes itself on as) are horrible sites for web commerce. Also troubling is the trend to manufacture Craftsman hand tools over seas.

Searching for Craftsman Tools on a Mobile Device

Searching for Tools on sears.com with a mobile device is nearly impossible. First, the search on the mobile site is terrible. Second, most of the content is not there. The worst part is there is no way to switch from the mobile site back to the regular site. Hint: iPhone and Android based phones don’t need a mobile site. I usually prefer the regular site on my iPhone or Android phone 99% of the time.

My alternative method of finding stuff on sears.com from my mobile device is to search Google. Well, guess what, when you navigate to the link, the sears.com site refreshes to a mobile version of the same page, which in most cases does not exist because the mobile site doesn’t have all the content as the main site.

What can Sears do to improve this situation? They can add a link at the bottom of the mobile site to allow users to switch to the regular one.

Why should they do this? Because it can make the difference of a customer coming to the store or not. Last thing I need is going to a store to find they don’t sell what I’m looking for.

Intermingling of Products on Sears.com that are not sold by Sears

First, if you’re not aware, many of the items on sears.com are not sold by Sears. Let me be clear what I am saying, there are items on sears.com not sold by Sears or companies that are part of Sears like Kmart or the Great Indoors. There are products on sears.com sold by other, competing businesses. Why does Sears sell their web real-estate to other businesses? My only guess is that someone pitched the idea to be like “Amazon.com” at a board meeting but didn’t think it through. Unfortunately, someone didn’t explain the Amazon.com model very well to the sears web developers, and what you end up with is a web site that pulls away customers from Sears to other vendors. Signs of an Amazon.com model would include products that are shipped and processed by Sears, with Sears products featured first. Quite the opposite, it appears non-Sears products get priority in search, and worse yet they compete against Sears in number of ways.

Further harming Sears, there appears to be a glitch in Sears’ web application as non-Sears businesses are capable of selling identical Sears merchandise, and those items are featured over the same items sold by Sears, even if Sears has the lowest price on the item. Take the following example:

Craftsman 7 Piece Standard Nutdriver Set (link). As of this writing, this 7 piece set costs 112.83 and is sold by “OnlineSuperSeller” (not Sears). When you search Sears.com for “Craftsman nutdriver”, you get the following results (as pictured) with the 2nd and 3rd results being Craftsman nut drivers listed at nearly 4 times their normal retail price.

After some additional searching, I finally found the product I was looking for (link). Though the Craftsman part numbers are different, the 4-5 digit number is not something I refer to when I look for products. Incidentally a search for “nut driver” with the space in between the two words has completely different search results.

Production Dilution

The web site is diluted by products that compete with their own line of products. For example, when you go to a Sears store, they have 1-2 alternatives to Craftsman Tools (Evolv Sears economy line of tools and GearWrench. Online you have even more brands, most of which again are not sold by Sears or affiliated companies.

Different Prices on Different Pages

When you do the search for “nut driver” and find the nut driver set in question, it will be priced 26.99. When you go to the actual product’s page, the price changes to $29.99. I am sure many customers get this far, see the price change, then immediately leave the page. Those that swallow the price increase and add the item to the cart, they will magically see a $3 discount to the item, bringing the price back to 26.99. Unfortunately, how many customers is Sears loosing when the customer changes their mind when the price changes?

Non-Intelligent Search

The search system for normal (not mobile) Sears and related web sites is horrible. Take for example, a search for “Craftsman Combination wrench set”. The first 2 results are a couple of combination sets, 6 point wrenches, which is good, but then to find more combination wrench sets, you need to brwose beyond the rest of the first 25 results to find more sets. I shouldn’t see individual wrenches when I search for “sets”.

To add insult to injury, the search box does not keep what you last entered, which means if your search isn’t giving you the results you want, you have to re-type everything in.

Craftsman Tools no longer made in USA

I don’t necessarily have a problem with tools being made all over the world, but I do have a problem with the current trend at Sears/Craftsman to move previously made in USA tools off-shore. At first I was not concerned because it appeared obvious that the “Evolv” line (priced accordingly) are made over seas while the traditional Craftsman and Craftsman Professional tools are made in the USA. The price difference between Evolv and Craftsman reminds you that your paying for quality tools made by your own fellow citizens. The first sign of Craftsman tools no longer being made in the USA was when I purchased one of the new Craftsman Dog bone wrenches. When I got home I was surprised to see “made in China” stamped on it. At that point I accepted the idea that perhaps new tools will be made over-seas. More interestingly, the Harbor Freight dog-bone wrenches are identical to the Craftsman dog-bone wrenches.

More recently I’ve been shopping for a set of flare wrenches. When I looked at the Craftsman Professional flare wrench set, I discovered they are now made over seas. This scares me, because over the past 20+ years I’ve been purchasing Craftsman hand tools, usually priced 2-3 times more than their import counterparts, with the satisfaction that I was buying a quality tool made in the USA. I have no problem paying a premium knowing the money I spend is paying some tool makers salary somewhere in the country. If someone told me back in 1993 that in 20 years from now the tools you buy will no longer be made in the USA, I wouldn’t have bought them. I’m not questioning quality of the tools, I have some tools from Harbor Freight made in China and they’re great. My issue is with what I thought the brand represented, and apparently I was wrong.

Again, new or specialty tools made over seas with a Craftsman logo on them I can understand. I have a vintage (made in the 70′s-80′s) Craftsman Distributor wrench 9/16″ #47755 that’s made in Japan. Craftsman no longer makes the wrench, most likely because cars no longer have distributors, so it was a smart move on their part not to invest on the tool and die here in the states for such a tool. But the idea of the core hand tools no longer being made in the USA yet still having the premium pricing bothers me.

Lowes just recently completed their transition to a made over-seas tool line,  and I’ve made a point never to buy Kobalt tools. If I find out the traditional Craftsman wrenches and hand tools are produced over seals then Craftsman will go on my “never buy list as well”.

By the way, if you are looking for USA made tools, try Wright Tool (made in Barberton, Ohio!), Williams (division of Snap-on), or Masterforce (a Menards brand, not all Masterforce tools are USA made, but most are).

My Thoughts

Sears has a lot of brands with brand recognition built up over many years that is now negatively impacted by a poorly executed web site and possibly poor decision making on where some of their items are made (Craftsman no longer made in USA). Though I love going into a Sears store when shopping for Tools, between the web site making it difficult for me to make the decision to go to the physical store and the fact that the product brand I seek now has issues that trouble me, I find it harder and harder to pick going to a Sears store over my local Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes or Menards.

What can Sears do to fix the problems? Stop meddling with the Craftsman line and put out a press release guaranteeing that their tools will remain made in USA. Stop trying to be like Amazon, and use their web site to re-enforce sales at your local stores. Physical stores should use their web sites to reinforce sales at the stores, making the web site compete with the stores is just a bad business practice in my opinion, unless your plan is to eventually close all the stores. Fix the search system by adding better product descriptions, incorporating product importance weights and creating special search algorithms for different departments (e.g. a Tool finding widget). Keep pricing consistent, if you show a price on a web page, make sure the same price appears on all other pages. I would take down the mobile site and only replace it when developers use the same database and infrastructure as the regular site  and include the ability to go back to the regular site.

This Memorial Day weekend I got to do some work around the house. My initial plan was to start building the Pontiac 400, but I recently discovered I needed one more part (Cam thrust plate) and it did not arrive yet, so I decided to work on the firewall and other various little parts on the Trans Am. After spending about an hour in the garage moving stuff around, I decided to switch my car project to a Garage improvement weekend. By Monday I installed 64 square feet of pegboard and enough hangers/hooks to get just about everything shy of 15 pounds off the garage floor.

On Monday I started work on tearing down the Pontiac 301 Turbo. If you’re not familiar with the Pontiac 301 Turbo, it was made in 1980 and 1981 for the Pontiac Trans Am and Formula making it a rather rare engine. Some say it was ahead of it’s time, others say it was plagued by it’s oil cooled turbo charger. It was the last true Pontiac designed V8. What ever your thoughts on this short lived engine are, once I confirmed that my Trans Am was not a special edition, I decided to swap it out with a Pontiac 400. Since last fall this V8 has been sitting in the garage just taking space. This weekend I decided it was time to take it apart to see what was wrong with it and recycle what ever parts that can be reused. Believe it or not, this engine shares a lot with it’s larger cousins (350, 400 and 455) such as engine mounts, fuel pumps and the bell housing.

During the initial tear down I ran into a couple snags. First was the flywheel bolts having 12 point heads. My plan was to use my compressor with the impact wrench attached. My plan went foul once I discovered that the impact sockets I got with my compressor are all 6 point. A run to the neighborhood home improvement stores showed me how rare 12 point impact sockets are. I do understand that a 6 point socket is better for 6 point bolt heads and that’s most likely why the 12 point impact sockets are hard to find, but come on, someone has to sell 12 point impact sockets! When you’re dealing with a 12 point bolt head, you can’t use a 6 point socket.

So after doing some online shopping, I found that only a handful of tool companies make such sockets. Sadly most all of these sockets are through brands like Snap-On, which make the tools too expensive for a weekend mechanic like myself. I did find a set of 12 point SAE impact sockets on Amazon.com that meets my price range. (see picture). They also have 12 point metric impact sockets.

The second snag working on the 301 Turbo came when I made a rookie mechanic mistake! I am using an engine leveler for lifting the motor, that way I can easily level the engine with the engine hoist/cherry picker. I recall today reading somewhere “Always connect engine levelers and engine hoist chains using grade 8 bolts to engine heads. Avoid connecting to bell housing or aluminum intake manifolds when possible“. Well I learned yesterday the hard way why you don’t connect your engine hoist to the bell housing! When I got ready to bolt the engine to the engine stand, you can guess the colorful language that came out of my mouth! Lesson learned the hard way, never never NEVER ever use the bell housing when lifting an engine!

I’m currently in the process of rebuilding a Pontiac 400 v8. The process has led me to buy a lot of new tools. Most of these new tools aren’t too expensive, such as a dead blow hammer and piston ring compressor. The one tool for this project that is quite an investment is a good torque wrench.

I already own Craftsman beam type torque wrenches and a Harbor Freight 1/2″ drive torque wrench. They worked well for the little things I’ve needed to torque down, but decided that they are not up to par for an engine rebuild. Thus my torque wrench research started.

Testing Torque Wrenches

Around Christmas I got an Alltrade 940759 Powerbuilt Digital Torque Adaptor. It comes with what they call a calibration cube, it’s a square chunk of metal for your vice that has a 1/2″ square hole machined into it to plug your torque adapter into. The Adaptor can be used as a torque wrench, but it is better used as a way to test the calibration of your torque wrenches. I took it over to a buddies place and we tested his torque wrenches (he had a small click-stop that measures in inches and a larger click-stop that measures in pounds, I believe both are from AutoZone). We found that placement where you held your hand on the torque wrench effected the measured torque as much as +/- 10 pounds depending on where you had your hand on the handle. Essentially we learned that you want your hand exactly where the manufacturer tells you to hold it, and you want most of the force to be applied along your index finger and thumb so the force you apply is placed exactly where the torque wrench expects it.

The following weekend I tested my torque wrenches (I have a 1/2″ 0-150 ft. lb beam style Craftsman, a 3/8″ 0-75 ft. lb beam style Craftsman, and a 20-150 ft. lb. click-stop Harbor Freight) and found them all to be very accurate. With the beam wrenches, you need to be able to read it straight on, any angle and you were reading 5-10lb over/under. The beam style wrenches have special handles that pivot exactly where you want all the force to be applied, so there was no issue of hand misplacement like the click-stop type. The click-stop from Harbor Freight however, was not as accurate counter clockwise as it was clockwise. The Harbor Freight, though accurate, was not precise and would click anywhere between +/- 3 ft. lb. when torquing tests of 75, 100 and 125 ft. lbs. This is within the advertised +/- 4%.

Precision and Accuracy

There is a difference between precision and accuracy. Accuracy is when you’re within a certain range consistently. Precision is when you hit the same measurement every time. You can be precise without being accurate, e.g. you set your torque wrench for 100 ft lb and it constantly stops at 110 ft. lbs, your precise, but it’s not accurate. To be both precise and accurate is the end goal.

What to Look For

When buying torque wrenches, there are details you need to look for.

• Does it meet industry standards? (e.g. ASME B107.14M-1994, ISO 6789)
• What do other folks say about the wrench
• Type of torque wrench (beam, click-stop, split-beam, dial, digital)
• What is the accuracy +/- in what percent of the range

The type of torque wrench is important based on how you plan on using the tool. I prefer the beam style simply because they are very reliable, you can rely on the beam to be accurate every time and they typically never need calibrated. The only down side is you need to be able to read the wrench straight on. The click-stop are the most popular, but their accuracy and precision is heavily focused on the manufacturer of the wrench. The split-beam are excellent wrenches as well that will not need calibration as often as a click-stop, but they only torque clockwise, which could be a problem depending on what you want to do. Dial type wrenches are expensive. Digital torque wrenches are great, but most are priced beyond what we can afford.

The accuracy in what percent of the range was one item that took me a while to put my head around. Basically, a torque wrench will have a range e.g. 10-100 ft. lbs, and in most of that range it is accurate. Typically the torque wrench makers call this it’s accuracy percent range.  All the wrenches I narrowed my results down to have  upper 80% range accuracy. What this means is that the first 20% of the range of the torque wrench may not be within the advertised +/- accuracy.  In the case of a 10-100 ft. lbs torque wrench, this would mean that from 10lb to 28lb the wrench may not be as effective. I suspect the lower range is not as accurate because of the low tension being applied to internal springs. With this accuracy range in mind, it may be ideal to have multiple torque wrenches to cover specific ranges.

Narrowed the Results Down

In January, I discovered there are quality wrenches under $150 if you know where to look. Here’s a quick outline.

• CDI Torque Wrenches (Maker of the Snap-on torque wrenches) can be purchased online for a great deal less than their Snap-On counterparts. The Best thing is, they don’t hide the fact that they are a division of Snap-on. Wrenches are made in USA.
• Precision Instruments Split Beam (maker of the Snap-on Split-Beam specific wrenches) wrenches can be purchased online for a great price as well. Split-beam are less likely to ever need calibration, but one downside is they only torque clockwise. Wrenches are made in USA.
• GearWrench and KD Tools (divisions of Danaher Tool Group, who also make torque wrenches for Sears Craftsman) have well made torque wrenches for the money.  Torque wrenches are made in USA.
• Brown Line Metal Works BLD0212 Digital Torque Wrench is a new torque wrench that is the only digital wrench that fits within the budget. It is a new wrench from a new company, regardless I believe they have a pretty reliable design.  I talk further about this torque wrench at the bottom of this post. Wrench made in Malaysia.

What I Purchased

Based on all the different ranges each torque wrench advertises, I decided to purchase two wrenches.

CDI 1002MFRMH 3/8″ drive 10-100 ft. lbs: I would say this is the best designed torque wrench I’ve had in my hands to date. Changing the torque amount is easy and the wrench definitely feels like a precision tool. I plan on using this for torquing bolts between 30-100 ft. lbs.

GearWrench 85054 1/2″ drive 25-250 ft. lbs: Also well designed torque wrench, adjusting the torque setting is just as easy as the CDI model, but it doesn’t quite feel as precise as the CDI, though still in the same quality class as the CDI. The long length of the wrench makes it easier to apply torque. I plan on using this for torquing bolts between 75-250 ft. lbs.

Both the GearWrench and the CDI are both accurate and precise when I tested with my Digital Torque Adaptor, both clockwise and counter clockwise. I was unable to test the GearWrench beyond 147 ft lbs due to the limitation of the Digital Torque Adaptor. They are both excellent torque wrenches.

The BrownLine Digital Torque Wrench

This wrench really interests me. I tried to contact the manufacturer to see if someone sells the wrench locally and received no response. I did do some research and found the patent they filed for the wrench. I also found from an Ebay seller that the wrench is made in Malaysia.

When I reviewed the patent, I quickly figured out what they did. Essentially the BrownLine torque wrench is a beam-style wrench with a microprocessor that translates the beam measurement to digital. This essentially solves the issue with reading beam wrenches at an angle. Remember the beam style wrenches don’t go out of calibration unless the actual beam itself is broken. By reason, this wrench should last a very long time. Aside from the microprocessor, there’s not much with this wrench to go wrong. Had I been able to see one of these wrenches in person, I may have purchased one.

Conclusion

If you have the money, the Snap-on torque wrench is definitely a quality tool. If you are on a budget like me, the CDI torque wrenches (which are essentially Snap-on torque wrenches without the logo on them) are a real bargain. If you want a torque wrench you never have to worry about calibrating or torquing counter clockwise, the Precision Instruments will fit the bill nicely. If you’re on a really tight budget, The GearWrench torque wrenches are the best value priced on the market.

If you have a Brown Line digital torque wrench, please leave a comment and tell me what you think of it.

If you like to monitor MySQL, you are going to love this application.

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AJAXMyTop is a simple web application that allows you to monitor the currently executed queries on your MySQL server.  It is pretty useful, especially when you are trying to diagnose page loading issues.

If you seek a freeware anti-virus solution for your Windows machine, look no further. Check out ClamWin:
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Ever wanted to know how much data is stored in a particular folder when browsing your computer? Use FolderSize:

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It also reports file sizes, so you could simply delete the filesize column in Windows Explorer Details View and put ‘Folder Size’ in its place.