When your in the industry its important to have tools that help you. This means you will need more tools to do the job. Doesn't matter if its a gm, Toyota or a European car/truck. I work on gas, diesel, electric, hybrid, alcohol powered vehicles cars trucks. I work in vehicles as old as 1905 and as new as 2020. Working at independent ownership shops means you work on all makes all models. He still shakes his head every time we pass one another.ģ5 years experience as an tech in the automotive repair industry. It‘s been over 20 years since I did that. When he touched it he realized of course it was fake. He walked up and saw the “scratch.” His face went three shades paler and a f me escaped his lips. When he came back from lunch we all just sat back and watched. I cut a 2 1/2 foot piece and placed it on the side of his box, then moved a couple of wire baskets to close proximity. I had discovered that the Teflon tape we use, dark brown in color, if you cut it in really fine strips, you could fake a deep scratch. He had rolled it into the shop to work on our test bench, leaving it for lunch. Maintenance guy had just purchased a massive stacked Limited Edition box. This also reminds me of a little practical joke and a brand spanking new Snap On tool box. That in my opinion was a bit of overkill. I am 6’4” and even I had to stand on a foot stool to reach the top box. One of the guys in my previous employment had several boxes stacked. There is karma in this world and you do get what you pay for.Ĭlick to expand.Mine doesn’t even compare.
I am sure there is stuff out there that is somewhere between the price of HF and SO but with a build closer to SO. Would the Snap-On at 10x the price have been worth it? I think it depends on what you think your time is worth, your personal skills in “shim to fit / caulk like ****” construction techniques, and your mental tolerance for things that are not square. The moral of the story is you get what you pay for with Harbor Freight. I’ve got a 50 pound 6” vise bolted to the top just above one of the vertical 2圆s and I can pound on it all day with absolutely no wiggle or bounce. The cabinets adjacent to this that i built from Ikea base cabinets with vertical 2圆 supports between and at the end of each cabinet and skinned with an end panel are dead quiet and solid. It would not have made any difference had the cabinets been solo and on casters, but bolted together it was a total nightmare and trying to level that with a gazillion little wedges was extremely time consuming.ĭespite something like 80 pounds of self-adhesive sound dampening rubber sheets applied to the bottom, top, back, sides, and the bottom of each drawer and the heavy top bolted onto the cabinets, it vibrates, though a lot less than before the sound dampening. The biggest PITA was the HF chests were not square.
Sheetmetal was I think 1 gauge thinner for the HF. Even the drawer locking mechanism was different. Other than the mounting holes for the handles, the construction was completely different, leading to enormous frustration in building and getting the base to fit. The two HF cabinets i got were side by side in their stock room but had slightly different SKU numbers. I removed them for my application but they would not have handled a very heavy load. Here’s what i found: the HF casters were total crap. It should be noted that John is a quality guy and used Snap-On tool cabinets for his builds. The equivalent Snap-Ons were about 10x the price. Made the top out of two sheets of 3/4” glued and screwed particle board with a tempered Masonite top skin, urethane varnished. I removed the wheels and put them on a wooden base to get the final height I wanted. I wanted to build a base cabinet for a garage work bench similar to what John Coker shows on his website and decided to use a couple of Harbor Freight 8-drawer rolling tool chests.