The thing that only eats Dremel bits

[Dito]

Man, I can't catch a break. :-)

I've had mixed results with tools from Harbor Freight. Some stuff has been good, some stuff has been really poor made-in-China garbage. A gearhead friend (hot rod builder) said he'd never buy anything from them that had an electrical cord or could kill him - like a garage jack.

I realize step bits or deburring tools won't be part of my everyday existence. But will cheap quality tools be more hassle earned than money saved?

[davent]

I'd splurge on a step bit, i have a cheap titanium prettified stepper in my collection, it's something you keep around as a reminder. A deburrer's a pretty crude hack tool that does it's job, can't see the need for a refined version, i nice ergonomic handle perhaps... nah!

dave

[stallik]

Those are great deburring tools which I use for large sheet edges but for stompboxes, I find that a countersink bit works even by hand

[PRR]

> will cheap quality tools be more hassle earned than money saved?

Some, a few, of my Favorite Tools were cheap-cheap-cheap.

You have to try them. You have to have a yard-sale buddy to take the no-good ones and pass them on to the next sucker tool-trier.

[Jdansti]

Man, I can't catch a break. :-)

I've had mixed results with tools from Harbor Freight. Some stuff has been good, some stuff has been really poor made-in-China garbage. A gearhead friend (hot rod builder) said he'd never buy anything from them that had an electrical cord or could kill him - like a garage jack.

I realize step bits or deburring tools won't be part of my everyday existence. But will cheap quality tools be more hassle earned than money saved?

I've had very good luck with Harbor Freight's cheap step bits on aluminum enclosures, but I don't know how they'd stand up to anything harder.

[J0K3RX]

You have about a 75% chance of getting worthless garbage at Harbor Freight... The remaining 25% is a combination of common sense, experience, trial and error.. and luck. The Titanium step bits are as good as you will get anywhere else. You can use them with a hand held drill if you don't have a press but don't let it get away from ya and take a chunk outa yer hand   There is one Dremel bit that I will never use EVER AGAIN and I don't care where you get it from!!! It seemed like a good idea and I fell for it...  Was a horrible lesson learned! It's the tiny little wire wheel... As soon as it made contact the tiny little wires became flying needles being shot from a 15K RPM spindle and my face became a pin cushion

[deadastronaut]

^ nasty lil bugger...

[Dito]

Would you believe I actually used that brush wheel safely and successfully? It's true!

I was restoring an early '70s pachinko machine. There was some serious rust on a couple of the solid metal parts of the ball-collection assembly. Came right off. I wore a dust mask and work gloves, though.

Never finished that damned thing. Too finicky.

[bloxstompboxes]

Man, I can't catch a break. :-)

I've had mixed results with tools from Harbor Freight. Some stuff has been good, some stuff has been really poor made-in-China garbage. A gearhead friend (hot rod builder) said he'd never buy anything from them that had an electrical cord or could kill him - like a garage jack.

I realize step bits or deburring tools won't be part of my everyday existence. But will cheap quality tools be more hassle earned than money saved?

I've had very good luck with Harbor Freight's cheap step bits on aluminum enclosures, but I don't know how they'd stand up to anything harder.

+1 for sure. I bought a nice one for like $50 at lowes made by Irwin. They would get so hot and cause the drill to draw so much current that the lights would dim, the aluminum would melt to them, and they just drilled like crap. I did a few pedals with it and then went back to my less than $10 step bit I got from harbor freight and it's still going strong.

[Dito]

Hey, look what I got:



Only $2.99!

And a "spare" set of drill bits for vero trace-cutting was only $3.99!

Long live Harbor Freight Tools!