Thread: Cheap tools - are just that!

Never seen a bit do that. Thats worse than cheap it's cheap and nasty.
I have bought the odd Aldi tool but always aware that it could be a lemon so dont spend up big. I have been mostly lucky.
Regards
John

The steel obviously had a higher than usual cheese content....even for Aldi.

I tend to refer to a lot of the tools Aldi sells as "-shaped object". You didn't buy a drill, you bought a "drill-shaped piece of metal"

Somewhere in a bottom drawer I have an Aldi "plane-shaped piece of wood".....

I also have the Aldi wooden plane but mine is on the shelf with the workers. It is actually not too bad. At the time they sold them I figured that's worth it just for the blade but it turned out a plesent surprise. There was quite a bit of discussion on them at the time.
Regards
John

I have never seen a bit do that before... definitely the case of Chinesium either that or you've got a drill capable of cranking some serious RPMs...

I have two sets of ALDI Brad Point bits and they have been as I expected. They do blunt quite readily but I have never had one break or disgrace itself (like in the photo).

I recently broke an 8 and 8.5 mm drill bits trying to get through dodgy steel, although these weren't ALDI they were low costs Bunnings ones of a similar standard. I replaced all my HSS bits with a much higher quality set and they were completely different right from the start.

ALDI Legal department must get sick of dealing with people injured by faulty products. Remember the Ford Pinto that would catch fire whenever there was a small crash. Ford lawyers did the sums and worked out it would be cheaper to payout for deaths and injuries than recall the thousands of Ford Pintos out there. I am not saying that ALDI is doing the same, but all large companies do the equation of does the cost of paying out for defective products exceed the profits are making on the lower cost lower quality product. Bunnings (and other big box stores) are famous for their "generous" warranties where you can return products regardless of reason, because they know most people will not return the items, even where they are clearly defective. Ultimately, ALDI knows they can sell a defective product, usually with the big fat get out of jail card - "for DIY use only", accept the broken ones for refund, and fight people injured by their products (and quietly settle them when finger pointing at get out of jail cards gets no-where).

Best one I had was a knock off of the spring tool nail punch that bunnings was selling. I thought it was suspicious and pull it from the package. Pulled one end out about 200mm and let go. Didn't spring back at all. The spring was mild steel LOL.

I have generally had bad experiences with cheap tools. They are more often junk than anything else. So for example, with cheap Harbor Freight chisels, one or two were pretty decent while the rest were bubblegum. I went through 5 or 6 sets in the quest to build one full good set, but I ended up with a couple quarter inch chisels that were usable and a decent 1 1/4" chisel. All the rest wouldn't hold an edge. I went through 4-sets of Aldi chisels in a similar fruitless quest.

"First quality" hardware store fare is a different animal. That stuff is made to meet defined standards and quality levels. Some is definitely better than other, but it has all been usable.

The only drills I have bought from Aldi are the small sets of twist drills ,they dont break the bank in cost & usually Ok for limited use .These are merely to compliment my other better quality sets that i do not always reach for.

I've decided that there are 3 types of 'cheap tools.'

The first type will get the job done in a pinch and last just as long as it takes you to decide whether to buy a more permanent replacement or not.

The second type are almost identical to the first type, except they'll last forever. Rough in implementation, 'orrors in use, but well enough built that many a shed has one or two of these collecting dust, kept 'just in case.'

This one obviously falls into the third type: not fit for purpose, unless that purpose is purely as a display item. As Mr. Brush said, you've bought a tool-shaped object.

My problem with the "Gets you by in a pinch but only lasts the one job" junk tools is that they usually break during the job, leaving me hanging when I need them the most. I had a bottom of the barrel side grinder puke its gearbox right in the middle of a major auto repair project - leaving me stranded until I could beg a ride from friends. Of course it was a holiday weekend and nothing was open, which was why I was off work doing it in the first place.... Three days later, I bought a good tool and finished the job, and that one is still with me 15 years later. And I use it dozens of times a year.

Oh, and never mind how impossible it is to dig out broken drill bits. Yeah, they were cheap, but they were still high speed steel - which is almost 10x harder than anything I was drilling.

I do get the point about the semi-second quality "Kit" tools. I got a holiday pack of 100 Skil brand high speed drill bits. They were good, except mostly dull and often mis-ground out of the pack. They must have been fall out from a major brand's production lines. Luckily, I own a drill bit sharpener, and have since gotten thousands of miles out of those tools. Hardware store "Buck Brothers" chisels also fall into this category. They generally take too much prep, but have proven to be some of the best paring chisels I own. They consistently go 1.5-2x the work of the next best chisel in my own tests. They don't perform exceptionally at chopping. I have other chisels for that, so it's fine.

The cheesey steel is a safety innovation. If the bit ever grabs, it will twist itself up to prevent this happening:

Gromit Drilling.flv - YouTube

These days it's a bit hit and miss even with big brand drill bits. I have a set of CMT (orange) brad point drills - of the 7 in the set, two were seriously not straight right out of the box; tip wanders by ~2mm in the drill press, so completely unusable. I've even seen this with Colt, which used to be a great brand (especially for Forstners).

I think Skew’s classification is spot on but the other aspect of Aldi’s sale strategy is the impulse buy. You really can’t buy a tool WHEN you need it, unless it happens to correspond to their special buy schedule AND they decide to offer what you need.
at risk of famous last words here but I feel that the evil temptation to impulse buy tools has reduced greatly as my knowledge of and skill with hand tools has improved. Working out how to do a job with what you have firstly removed the need to buy many tools but secondly gives you a much better idea about what to buy if you still decide you need something new.
What I really hate is the way bic companies can offer this stuff that is not fit for purpose. They rely on the fact that 90% of the stuff never gets used even once and 99% of those poor souls who try to use it don’t have the knowledge that the tool is crap or the willpower to complain if they do.

As I've said before, think of all the environmental trouble and tooling (digging up for metals, making plastics from oil, injection mould tooling, labour) that go into making a crappy electric drill with a factory gate price of probably $10 in China, pay for it to get shipped halfway around the world, we buy it at Bunnies, use it twice, declare "What a piece of useless junk", throw it in the bin, then it is returned to the earth in the form of landfill. Does make you think.....