I had to assist my 93yr old father in law in mounting a flat screen tv on a wall, before I went I asked if he had all the tools that would be needed, I was assured he had everything including 2 new sets of drill bits, once there he proudly showed me an imperial and also metric set of drill bits branded Frost he had purchased that morning "good aussie made drill bits" he said "Frost have always been a quality brand". Handing me his old 7.2v cordless drill he dropped it and it landed on the drill bit - on picking it up I saw that the bit was bent at right angles not snapped off as I would have expected.

This echoes my own personal experience with the Frost brand, needing some 4,5 and 6mm taps I found my self at Bunnings looking at a Frost brand tap and die set 3mm -12mm normally $75 but reduced to $35 as someone had swiped the tap handle, Frost was a good brand I thought and they looked ok so they came home with me. I was tapping into soft cast iron - my elderly Riobi cordless drill had no issues drilling through 12mm thick castings. Partway through the job I noticed that tapping was becoming harder, I think most can relate to this as a blunt tap as well as being harder to turn also has a different feel to it, you can feel it is no longer cutting the same and feels more like it is forcing it's way through. I checked under a strong magnifier and could see that the cutting edges were starting to round off, this was with the 5mm tap - I counted the number of tapped holes there were only 9, how pathetic I thought.

Later I did some reasearch and found that Frost are now owned by Sutton Tools - the Frost brand which was once respected for quality gear is now the cheap arm of Sutton and is in my opinion about the quality you would expect to find in a Woolies or Coles grocery store.


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