The end.
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Buy now.
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I guess itās time to get all my stripped Phillips screwdrivers replaced.
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It will now be Stanley-Black&Decker-Dewalt-Craftsman. Do you think the price of tools will go up? Maybe the sale wonāt go through due to anti-trust lawsā¦hah, hah, hah, hahā¦sorry couldnāt control myself for a moment. 
- Rich
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Bummer.
Honestly though, they havenāt been all that great for a while now. the older stuff is solid. but have found many of their new tools to be defective, cheap, and disappointing. There are few big brands anymore that are high quality and consistent. nothing last forever I guess.
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It is a heart breaker. Even though they have the royalty-free rights for 15 years, itās like an old friend has passed away (I have Craftsman tools 30 plus years old).
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Thatās such a bummer. Iād seen the quality go down over the past few years, and wondered if something like this was in the making.
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I worked at Sears while in college (my wife and I met while working in the Auto Center 
). In the early 80s, Craftsman tools were all but bomb-proof, and we would replace any tool for any reason.
āSatisfaction guaranteed or your money backā was the entire return policy. Cut the power cord while using your new jigsaw? No problem-- hereās a new one. Just ādidnāt like it?ā Hereās your $20 back.
Heck, I once issued a refund on azalea bushes that died after two years!
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And in USA Todayā¦
Stanley Black & Decker to open U.S. plant after Trumpās āborder taxā threat
Stanley Black & Decker said Thursday that it would open a new $35 million manufacturing plant in the U.S. after acquiring the Craftsman tool brand from ailing retailer Sears Holdings.
Expanding American manufacturing makes ābusiness senseā amid āpervasiveā uncertainty regarding the future of U.S. trade with China and Mexico, Stanley Black & Decker CEO James Loree told investors Thursday in a conference call.
Although he did not mention Donald Trump by name in his remarks to investors, Loreeās comments had all the hallmarks of an effort to inoculate his company from the possible effects of the president-electās threatened āborder tax.ā
āWe view it sort of as one of several political movements, or concepts, that really drive us to this concept of make-where-we-sell,ā Loree said. āItās going to be advisable to have more manufacturing in the U.S.ā
Stanley Black & Decker has about 3,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs today, up 800 from three years ago, according to a company presentation. It was not immediately clear how many jobs the company plans to add.
Loree said the location of the new manufacturing plant to produce Craftsman products has not yet been determined. The company currently operates 29 total U.S. plants
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This buy-out makes me sick.
Black and Decker have been Stanleyās quality certainly has fallen since they were acquired. Craftsman had the best quality consumer-priced sockets that you could get. I wonder what this means for future manufacturingā¦ new warranty replacement tools may be of far lower quality. Boo.
So then I looked up who has been manufacturing those sockets, most recently it was Apex Tool Groupā¦ owned by Bain Capitalā¦ not a company I try to support. The free-market is what it is, and companies buy each other out all the time, and thatās just how it isā¦ but I hate how convoluted the levels of ownership have gotten. I guess it would be a lot harder to maintain brand-loyalty if it were easier to see the outsourcing and re-branding. Still, this puts me off.
ā edit[quote=āchrgeup, post:9, topic:4556ā]
Stanley Black & Decker said Thursday that it would open a new $35 million manufacturing plant in the U.S.
[/quote]
this is good, at least. I hear there is cheap manufacturing property available in Detroit.
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The first tools I ever owned was a 30ish piece set of Craftsman screwdrivers I got for something like my 15th or 16th birthday in the mid 80s. I still have almost all of them and use a few almost daily.
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Same here, except that it was Christmas and I was about 11 or 12.
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So after the merger will the new Brand be called āCrack and Discardā 
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Might be good news. They own DeWalt, which is fine, and the BD brand is pretty craptacular these days, so the Craftsman quality may actually rise compared to what itās been these past few.
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Craftsmen, black and decker, Stanley, dewalt all brands I put just a hair above harbor freight
Edit. Revised to say the stuff you can buy today vs 20-30 years ago. though I have never had anything black and decker that was any good
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cool, but iāve never had an issue with dewalts stuff.
iām pretty easy to please, though, i tend to stick to ryobi since itās cheap and more than good enough for all my relatively modest woodworking needs.
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Unfortunately costs drive companies to do stupid things like buy cheap steel (poor quality control, out of spec) (read Chinese and others). This leads to not so good quality tools. I have American made tools, made with American made steel, that I bought 40 years ago (!!?), that have been through hundreds of boats, 7cars, and a house and still look and work like new. They are not Craftsman (although I have some of those too), they were Proto tools. They are available today, American made, they make Stanley as well. - Rich
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Interesting, I will have to look into Proto tools.
B&D are also buying Irwin, maker of Vise-Grips. I remember a few years ago when you started having to check vise-grip packaging for the country of originā¦ the american-made ones were still great, but the chinese-made ones wereā¦ lacking. Deformably-bendy handles.
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This makes me sad even though I canāt say it is a surprise. Sears has been on its way out for years now.
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+1 for Ryobi. I like fancy tools and I have friends who turn their nose up at Ryobi tools, but back when I was a college student, that was the ONLY thing I could afford. And guess what? My 18V Ryobi drill (blue, not lime green) survived me teaching 3 seasons of FIRST robotics, and itās still going strong 10 years later. Iāve replaced the switch once.
For hand tools such as screwdrivers and to some extend wrenches, Iām a huge fan of Wera. Check out their Zyklop and Koloss wrench and their screwdrivers are some of the most comfortable ones Iāve held. I also make it to Hong Kong every so often and I load up my luggage with good quality German, Japanese and Taiwanese made hand tools. Pliers, cutters, wire strippers, specialty files for working in plastics for prototype building, etc. I recently bought @Kusmeroglu a set of wire strippers for her new house. 
and on my most recent trip I loaded up on profile gauges and thread gauges. All useful stuff for someone in my line of work. 
In this day and age of Amazon and Amazon Prime, consumers have more options than just what is carried at big box stores; and sometimes for not much of a price delta. For a few bucks more than what Home Depot wanted for garden hose connectors, for example, I scored a set of Gardena hose couplers that are made in Germany. My first set was installed 5 years ago on my pressure washer and I still havenāt had a leak. Itās not that the Chinese canāt manufacture good products, but big box stores generally donāt want to pay for good manufacturing and rather keep the profit for themselves.
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