road swag

[johnridley]

Another fine piece of road swag. I found a 3/8" Craftsman ratchet about a week ago on an overpass over I94 while riding to the post office. It had been run over by a few vehicles and the ratchet was broken and seized up, so on Wednesday when I was within 1/2 mile of Sears anyway I dropped by and exchanged it for a new one.

Comments

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

My dad once shared a tale from one of his co-workers. This person found a Craftsman socket wrench on the side of the road. Clearly, it had been used as a hammer and was no longer functional. So, he took it to Sears. He was unwilling to admit to having found it. Instead he had to listen to the person at the Sears hardware department show him a hammer and give him the "This is a hammer, this is a socket wrench."

I'm just glad that I can get Craftsman tools at our local Ace. I don't know if they still have the forever warranty or not.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you can exchange them at Ace but you can at Sears. They don't pester me, I just walk up and say I need it replaced, they have a tool chest by the register and find a matching tool, ring it out and hand it over.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

My dad once had them ask how many feet of pipe had been on a breaker bar. Answer was about 6 feet, plus the blue wrench.

The replaced it, of course.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

By the time we got to 6 feet of bar, if possible we switched to the 1" drive breaker bar. We usually also used a little acetylene afterburner on it.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

3/4" was the biggest dad had, IIRC. And the oxy-acetylene torch is the blue wrench.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

We had to go to the neighbor's house to borrow 1" drive stuff. It rarely happened. I recall going over to get it and a 5" (or so) socket to take the 3 foot diameter flywheel off of an old tractor. I think he may have had the only 1" drive set of sockets around, everyone just borrowed his. They don't make "cheap" 1" drive stuff like they do up through 1/2 and to some extent 3/4"