Harbor Freight has been importing from China, Taiwan and elsewhere for a long time, and their quality seems to keep improving; I still look carefully before I buy. A lot of disposable items, like drill bits, are so inexpensive at Harbor Freight that it's almost silly. For quality, detailed work, you can spend more and get really good bits elsewhere. But for quick and dirty stuff, cheap bits work just fine. I'm going to try their carbide bits the next time I'm there.
There are tools at Harbor Freight that are quite good and amazingly priced. For the sheet metal work I'm doing, I've bought two sizes of hand punches -- at $25 and $20
including punch and die sets -- that cost five times as much elsewhere.
I used to buy all Craftsman tools, but the customer service got so bad at Sears that I just stopped going there, and began to consider "disposable" quality tools. For hobby tools, where we don't have to depend on them for a living, Harbor Freight is excellent, and a lot of their products are good enough to work with daily. I used to buy latex gloves for messy work (like oil changes), but now I use the blue nitrile gloves from Harbor Freight -- they're cheap and a lot tougher.
As much as it's philosophically irritating to send my money to manufacturers overseas, I console myself with the fact that even Craftsman is made in Taiwan, now.
My bet is that you'll be glad you made the trip to Harbor Freight. The one near me, in Kennesaw, GA, is clean and well-lighted and well stocked. I'm probably in there once a week. While the store only stocks the faster-moving items -- about 10% of what you see online at
HarborFreight.com -- you'll find that shipping from Harbor Freight is pretty reasonable, too.
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