Rate the Harbor Freight Tools Thread- Pass or Fail?

[Ken from ontario]

As I started the cut, and the saw began warming up, it started running faster and faster, the warmer it got, the faster it ran... when I stopped and let it cool, it slowed way down again...

If I turn it to its slowest speed, it takes 45 seconds to a minute of holding the trigger until it reaches its speed... if I turn it up one setting, it runs immediately, but within 30 seconds, it is running too fast for steel, IMO...

But it cuts great, otherwise, so I guess pass or fail depends on the users perspective?

I think I will return it and buy a Milwaukee instead...

-Bear

I would return it ,the speed control is likely not working properly, I like your idea of buying a Milwaukee instead,even a good used one will be alright .

 

[ch2co]

Just like Ken said.

 

[kd4gij]

The little black 4 drawer rolling carts are good and handy. Fantastic if you wait to get them on sale for $99. I have two of them. I keep thinking I have three, but I can never find the third one. LOL. PASS

The little 4x6 bandsaw will severe metal, but it needs a lot of work to be a decent saw. I don't think it can reasonably be made into a "good" saw for less than it costs to buy a good saw. Mine arrived partially assembled with the pulley cover off, one pulley chipped out on the side, and stuck on so I was afraid to take it off so I just don't use that speed. PASS just barely.

Drill presses. Well. I have three of them. All different sizes, and I use all of them. One floor model has wobble and runout to make you cry, but once you learn how to use a drill press properly it still makes passably accurate holes. My two small drill presses both have tapping heads on them. They both also seem to have a lot less wobble and runout. I use all three of them every week, so while the one is not great, and I have to say PASS. Just barely for the big one.

I've got a very old mill drill. No longer offered. Really more of a positional drilling machine than a mill drill. Its actually pretty good as a drill. Much better than any of the drill presses. Its only a mediocre mill, but I have to give it a PASS.

Tile saw. I've got a little table saw style tile saw that's pretty hold. It does ok, and you can cut straight with it, but its sooooooo slooooooow. PASS and FAIL. (I might have got that from Home Depot. I'm not sure. LOL)

I had an RF-30 mill drill with a Harbor Freight label on it. It was not a great mill. I could hack out metal, but except for being faster the quality wasn't much better than I could do with a hacksaw and a grinder. Still I did use it to make a couple parts before I sold it. PASS and FAIL with a slight leaning towards FAIL.

Harbor Freight Chinese wood routers. I got six of them to get one that didn't have visible runout. FAIL. I bought one from a vendor on Ebay that was identical except a different color plastic and it was fine.

4-1/2 Inch angle grinders. The older ones were awesome when they would have them on sale. I've got two along with DeWalt, Milwaukee, Makita, Bosch and Porter Cable ones. They all have different wheels or brushes and they all get used. I don't even cringe when I reach for the HF ones. PASS. The 4" was a FAIL though.

Rotary Hand Piece. The no longer have these, but I have two of their old flex shaft rotary hand piece tools with the tiny little 5/32 Jacobs style chuck. They are awesome. I've worn out the motor brushes on both motors once and one of them twice. At one time I had the hand pieces clamped up as dual spindles on a mini cnc mill so I could cut identical parts two at a time. I still have them and the bearings are still ok. I have several Foredom handpieces as well and I use them all pretty much interchangeably. They are tighter than the regular Foredom handpieces with fairly low runout. Only the high price high precision heavy duty Foredom was better. It cost 3 times as much for just the hand piece as the HF units cost for the hand piece and drive. PASS.

Bar clamps. I have a dozen or some little 6 or 12 inch ones. They aren't Bessey, but I have had fewer problems than I did with Irwin bar clamps. I use them all the time to clamp molds closed when I am injecting plastic. They get a lot of use. I actually have over 30 bar clamps of various makes and I use the cheap dark blue HF ones more than any of the rest. They are light, but they are also cheap. PASS.

7 x 10 mini lathe. FAIL. Sorry. I used it and I learned how to fix it, and I am even now converting it to CNC, but as it came it was really barely a machine. The motor is weak. Has poor RPM holding under load. The motor controller is mediocre at best, and well the rest of the machine kind of speaks for itself. As weak as the motor is if you have it in a low gear and load up the cutter it will strip the plastic gears like wiping mud off a window. I have all metal gears in mine now. Well hanging on the wall since it going to have no gears soon. Not even the plastic two speed transmission gears in the head. You have to do a lot of work on it to have a fair mini machine. I know. I've done most of that work. I still have a soft spot in my heart (or maybe that's in my head) because my wife gave me that machine for Christmas one year, so just in case she ever sees this I guess I have to change my vote to PASS.

8.5 x 18 small lathe. Its got a lot wrong with it, but atleast its a little heavier and has a motor that in the words of Doug Marcaida "it will cut." It's not a lot better than the mini, but I've never stripped a gear even when I have stalled the motor. Speaking of the motor. You have to be doing something wrong to stall the motor. Its a single speed AC induction motor. The only way to change speeds it to change pulleys, but it has decent torque. It might not snap off a high speed steel lathe bit, if you stuff it up, but it will sure break the edge off. Its also no longer offered by HF. I still use this machine (single purpose now) several times a week to radius one end of stainless steel dowel pins. I may not have all the gears, but I was never able to find a gear setup that would reach that would cut whatever thread I needed. I made a set of die drives for it instead. I have the gears it says on the chart, but they don't reach. LOL. Still its a useable tool. PASS marginally.

Wrenches, screwdrivers, assorted hand tool. Most are passable. I have a lot of old Challenger (before Proto ruined them), Proto (from before Proto ruined themselves), and Master Mechanic from when True Value still had them made in the USA. I've got SK and older American Made Vise Grip tools. They are all better than the Central Machine hand tools, but to be honest unless you are locking them together for leverage or putting cheater bars on breaker bars you aren't likely to break one. I've broken Proto sockets so... They will wear out and get sloppy though. You can round out a socket or a box end wrench with sloppy technique over time. I know how much it takes to break one too. If I have to lock up two wrenches or use a cheater bar I start with my HF tools so I don't break a good tool. They will never be American Steel from the 70s and early 80s and they will never be German steel from the 90s, but for the most part I have to give them a grudging PASS.

I do have to FAIL most of their T-handle hex drivers though. I got one set of ball end that was pretty awesome. I've snapped the ball off a few of them, but they are hard. I just grind the end flat on the bench sander and put them back in the rack. I've wiped the edges off a couple, but I was using them for much harder bolt remove than they should have ever faced. I just grind the end down and put them back in the rack. Overall I was pretty happy with that set. I wanted to buy a couple more of that set to put have one on each work bench so I wasn't always trying to remember where I used it last. Every single one I bought afterwards was so soft I could almost twist them removing bolts that had been hand tightened. To be fair. They list a set on their website that looks like the one I own, but they don't stock it int he stores. The ones in the store will bend if you look at them. Inspite of one good set I have to say FAIL.

Central Pneumatic Tools. BIG FAT FAIL. Die grinders work but don't last. Impacts work but don't last. Ratchet wrenches work, but don't last. Air nailers work for about half a box of nails at best. Went through 4 clip head framing nailers on a single project. Just kept taking them back. Finally got my money back and got a Ridgid round head from Home Depot. Been using it for almost ten years now. My Porter Cable is 3 or 4 years old. Both still work just fine.

It occurs to me I should stop writing as it reveals I have way to many cheap Harbor Freight tool. LOL

They still have the flex shaft tool, it is just hard to find on there website.

https://www.harborfreight.com/flexible-shaft-grinder-and-carver-40432.html

 

[JimDawson]

Somebody at Harbor Freight is going to be fired for this one.

I decided to use my set of Harbor Freight 1/4 inch insert lathe tool bits for my radius turner. https://www.harborfreight.com/5-piece-indexable-carbide-tool-set-39931.html



I bought this set years ago and have only used them occasionally because the carbide inserts are of rather poor quality. But I figured I had enough edges left to get through 12 parts. Well I didn't quite make it with the original inserts, turning 8-18 stainless. Came up 4 parts short and no more inserts left. So look online to try to find new inserts, at best I'm a week out on getting some and they are expensive. So back to Harbor Freight this morning, to buy another set because I need to get this job done.

I was pleasantly surprised, somebody accidentally packaged the tool set with high quality inserts. Not only that, the fit and finish on the new holders is also high quality. The $25 at Harbor Freight is actually cheaper than buying the inserts + shipping. I'll be buying a couple more sets (with a 20% off coupon of course ) just to have the spare inserts.

I'm going to give this one a pass. The down side is the HF does not sell replacement inserts, but I can live with that.

 

[ch2co]

Hey Jim, how do you rotate the tool? and Is that a homemade tool holder or something available from somewhere else. If so where?

 

[JimDawson]

Hey Jim, how do you rotate the tool? and Is that a homemade tool holder or something available from somewhere else. If so where?

I built the radius turner and the tool holder. The tool holder is a 3/4'' grade 8 bolt (somewhat modified )
http://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/new-ball-turner.61524/

 

[ukkarl]

I have a ton of HF stuff that has never let me down (Except for a few of their air tools, which I learned a few years ago are disposable anyway)

I install/remove air compressor and vacuum pumps on/from site, for a large part of my business. I would have spent a hell of a lot of money on tools to help me do this over the years had HF not been in existence

Off the top of my head we currently own

• 2 of their 1000lb hydraulic tables that I have fabricated bolt-on platforms for to enable higher reach - Never failed me in over 10 years, easy to load in the van single handedly.
• 2 of their 2 ton folding engine cranes, again easy to load in the van on my own, and able to lift even the largest pumps I remove
• Pick up crane with winch has saved my old back for a few years now, a
• Their large overhead telescoping lifting gantry - Invaluable in the shop if the fork lift is not readily available
• Heavy Duty electric winch, used with the gantry - Used daily and we've had it for about 10 years
• Cut off saw that is used almost daily, lost a knob off its, but that was due to vibration I think, not the tools fault
• Lifting slings and straps by the dozen - Never had any fail
• One of their older Come-a-longs 8000lb rating with a LONG cable, pulled machines up flights of basement stairs with it for years
• Various barrel and pail fluid pumps - I must have been lucky with ours as none have failed yet!!
• 5 drawer rolling mechanics carts - We have 3 of these at the shop, they do everything our Snap-On ones do equally as well
• Various Dollies, trucks and carts

I have to admit I do not buy hand tools from them, but that is only because I tend to use my Snap-On, Mac or Britool stuff for everything. Rarely buy electrical stuff either. You can kind of tell what will hold up and what won't just by looking at the build

I absolutely love their mini pick sets and have probably a dozen of them in the shop, for seals and stuff

All in all I am very grateful that we have a HF within a few miles of the shop

 

[alloy]

I have one of their 12" 1/2" drive extensions and the release mechanism holding the socket fell apart, and at the same time I broke the 15mm impact swivel socket. But, in their defense I have been pounding on them for over two years with my 1100 ft. Lbs Milwaukee impact removing transmission mounting bolts.


I took them to the Tacoma store and the gal there took a new set of impact swivels and gave me the 15mm one along with a new extension. I was pleasantly surprised by this.

There are a lot of things I won't buy from HF (including anything that plugs in) but these have been amazing for the price I paid.

I won't go into the problems I had with their electric motors other that to say two of them were junk. Jim Dawson and I hooked them up on my lathe and I finally gave up and bought a good motor for it.

I also recently bought one of their oil pressure testing kits. Very nice kit with every adapter known to man included in the kit and came in a nice storage case.

 

[ttabbal]

With powered stuff, electric or air, I find reading the reviews helps a lot. They have some things that hold up decent, but figuring out which ones is a pain sometimes.

Hand tools have held up for me as well as the local box store stuff does, at half the price. Other than tap and die sets. Those are trash.

None of the above are going to be as good as snap-on etc, but they are good enough to toss around the shop and cheap enough that I don't hesitate to grind/cut/weld them into weird shapes for that fastener I just can't get too...

 

[SonofHarold - Metal Carver]

I took the plunge on a 44" General Tools roll-around tool cabinet--big time pass! I'd read the reviews and found them hard to believe, but this is a very well built cabinet. Highly recommended!

I also took advantage of the shipping to get a 4x6 vertical/horizontal band saw. While I'm sure I'll be able to tune it up and make it run great, it is an absolute POS out of the box. The tension knob was broken, one of the legs were bent, the stop pin chains were broken, the blade guard hits' the casting and won't open. Oh, and unlike the tool chest, it has that used-motor-oil HF smell. Not that I was surprised by any of this, but still I'd hoped for better. I need to contact HF and hopefully they'll have replacement parts, as there's no way I can get it back into the box to ship back.

Can't help but to chime in on HF tool cabinets. I was went to work in a testing lab ( larger and well known US Company) several years ago and for some reasson they didn't have a common collection of hand tools for the lab, a lot of tools around and some techs had there own collections for the things they did regularly but no common tools. I was doing a lot of out of the ordinary stuff building and rebuiilding test set ups and the like so ending up hunting or borrowing tools from the maintenace mechanics all the time.
Long story short I convinced the Lab manager to buy some tools so he gave the project to me with a fairly tight budget. I bought a pretty decent set of tools, a lot of them Craftsman but then when it came to storage I "forgot" and pretty much blew the budget on tools hoping to get more once her realized we needed someplace to keep them now. The Manager went out and got one of the larger roll around tool cabinets (General 44" with two rows of drawers) from HF. He had suggested HF and said no, that would be junk... so he Just brought it to work one day in his own truck. I thought "OH bullocks" that is going be apeice of junk that would not hold up. Bottom line I was very pleasantly surprised! ( as I got the project to mark and organize all the tools I just bought also) Had I not recnelty bought a new larger roll around from a Sears outlet for myself I would have got one of the HF versions. It's at least 90% as good at less than half the price. I was there another 5 years and It held up well to some less than kind use. I imagine it's still there. I'd bet a lot of the tools are gone but it's hard for someone to "lose" a tool cabinet. Recently I bought one of the single drawer carts and it is more than adequte as a stand of my Gerstner to sit on.
HF tool storage I'd have to give a Pass, Good value for the money.