Made in China.

[AtomKraft]

As the saying goes.
'The Chinese may have tiny dicks, but they **** us all...'

[llondel]

Yesterday, I broke my own rule. Bought a cheap screwdriver and upon opening the packet, it was made from Chinesium.
Today it broke.
There must be a lesson there somewhere...probably don't buy cheap tools.

Over here we have a tool store called Harbor Freight, which has all sorts of cheap tools. I've figured out that provided it doesn't have a cutting edge or require a lot of strength, their stuff is generally OK. I was amused at a refresher course for a milling machine when the instructor recommended we go buy a few cheap cutting tools from there, on the basis that as we gained experience with the mill, we'd undoubtedly break a few and they might as well be the cheap ones. Once the lessons are learned, go buy some decent bits.

Making good tool steel is either something they've not yet mastered, or are not prepared to let on to the outside world that they have.

[Capetonian]

I learned quite young that cheap tools are dangerous, for a start, may not do the job properly even when new, won't last long, and are a false economy.

In about 1975 in CPT, and I think they are a ZA make, I bought a set of Gedore spanners, open-ended, sockets, offset rings, extensions, ratchets etc. It seemed outrageously expensive but I did a lot of work on cars then.

45 years later, I still have that set of spanners, in their original box, and as serviceable as the day I bought them. They have served me, and others, well.

Talking of spanners, there was this girl in our group of friends who was referred to as 'the spanner job', because whenever she was around, our nuts tightened (the guys anyway!)

[AtomKraft]

On the same subject...
'When you buy a good tool, you feel the pain. Once.
When you buy a cheap tool, you feel the pain every time you use it'.

[BenThere]

I like to buy the brands that have served me well, Craftsman, Milwaukie, DeWalt, Snap-on, and others. There's a lot of cheap, mostly Chinese, junk out there. Beware. Look for that lifetime guarantee.

[John Hill]

I only ever buy imported tools.

[boing]

I've got a very frustrating friend fortunately I've learned how to go with his flow. He calls me up and asks about a special tool for a job, I tell him where to find it and always give him the same advice, buy a good one. A week later he will call and mention he bought a cheap version of the tool, broke it immediately, so then he went and bought a good one as I advised.

Does it all the time, some people never learn.

.

[ian16th]

I've found that these sockets with an Arrow trademark last rather well!

Socket.jpg (22.98 KiB) Viewed 422 times

[Pontius Navigator]

On the same subject...
'When you buy a good tool, you feel the pain. Once.
When you buy a cheap tool, you feel the pain every time you use it'.

The joy of low cost is soon lost in the bitterness of poor performance.

My beautiful stainless steel hand fork is like plastic when compared with my Wolf one.

[Boac]

I've found that these sockets with an Arrow trademark last rather well!

You do realise you are using it the wrong way up, don't you?

[AtomKraft]

Great value for money, that 'crows foot' brand!

[bob2s]

Well the Chinese have threatened Australia with a tariff of 80% on the barley we sell to them,this is in retaliation for Australia wanting an enquiry into when and where the beer virus started. Just shows the mentality of the plicks.

[Capetonian]

Most of the poaching of rhinos is driven by demand from Asia, primarily China.

LOCKING HORNS
What does the halting of global travel and eco-tourism mean for the embattled rhino? It’s complicated. By Elizabeth Sleith

Sunday Times
10 May 2020

We’ve all seen those pics lately of nature running wild while humans hide from Covid-19. Goats gone gangsta in Llandudno, Wales, penguins jaywalking in Simon’s Town, monkeys making bollemakiesies into pools in Mumbai … all good for a viral-video chuckle, but hardly victories for conservation. One creature that may turn out to benefit, however, is the rhino — at least, this is the hope of Fabrice Orengo de Lamazière, coowner of the Motswari Private Game Reserve in Limpopo and co-founder of Rhino Disharmony. Since 2014, that campaign has tackled poaching by trying to raise awareness in the places where horns are sold and thus bring down demand.

Orengo de Lamazière says Covid-19 is of course devastating for humans, but it is a “potential lifeline” for rhinos.

Mainly, this is because of the suspected origin of the virus: a gigantic “wet” market in Wuhan, China, where animals of all varieties could be bought live, or slaughtered before customers’ eyes. Epidemiologists say the danger with such markets — common across Asia — is that the animals are typically densely packed, making it easier for diseases to spread from species to species, and ultimately to “jump” to humans in circumstances where hygiene standards are difficult to maintain. This is what is thought to have happened in Wuhan.

China, of course, has been here before. Fingers were pointed at wet markets after the SARS outbreak of 2003, and authorities promptly cracked down on them — but eased restrictions as the health crisis abated. With Covid-19, the signs are promising that the practice could end for good.

In February, China announced a ban on the farming and consumption of wildlife, which is expected to be signed into law this year. The southern city of Shenzhen went further, extending the ban to eating dogs and cats.

That, for Orengo de Lamazière, is the glimmer of hope in the disaster, especially if it ultimately leads to a mind shift.

“If the Chinese completely change their attitude towards the consumption and trade of animals and animal parts, that is the biggest victory. It’s what we have been trying to do for years — to stop the trafficking.”

Motswari co-owner and Rhino Disharmony co-founder Marion GeigerOrengo agrees: “If the demand stops then the killing stops, so this is what I’m hoping the ripple effect will be.”

The problematic loophole for the rhino, however, is that the ban excludes the use of animal parts for “medicinal purposes” — the supposed purpose for which rhino horn is sold. Even more worrying, the International Rhino Foundation says it has received reports that those selling rhino horn in China and Laos are now advertising medicines containing rhino horn as a cure for Covid-19.

LIVES UNDER LOCKDOWN

It’s well known that SA, home to 80% of the world’s rhinos, has been hardest hit by rhino poaching, with more than 1,000 killed each year between 2013 and 2017.

Anti-poaching units in our national parks and private reserves have been fighting hard to stem the tide. But with those places now shuttered, the tourists gone and the lodges surviving on skeleton staff, what has the impact been?

Albi Modise, communications director at the department of environment, forestry & fisheries, says law-enforcement officials remain on duty in the national parks. In fact, since the lockdown began on March 27, Modise says there has been a decrease in the number of rhinos and elephants poached, as well as a decline in marine poaching. This, he says, is likely due to low demand for the products and the fact that “law enforcement has been strengthened in ports of entries”.

At Motswari, which shares unfenced boundaries with the Kruger National Park, Orengo de Lamazière says “incidents of incursion” initially increased.

“Criminals must have seen the absence of people as their chance to poach and also to attempt to rob the lodges.” But discussions with the national park and private antipoaching units have led to skeleton staff at the lodges in the Timbavati and Umbabat private reserves also participating in patrols, day and night, just to have “feet on the ground and wheels on the sand roads”.

Incursions have since decreased, which has also been the experience at Tintswalo

Safari in the Manyeleti Nature Reserve, also adjacent to the Kruger. General manager Alistair Leuner, who is spending lockdown at the lodge, says this is “most probably due to the presence of police and the army in the surrounding communities”.

Many of those virtual safaris to which we’ve pointed you in recent issues — including Motswari’s Instagram (@motswari_private) and Tintswalo’s website (tintswalo.com )— are really thanks to security patrols — the real reason those rangers are out there.

STILL ’TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE’

The fear, of course, was that poachers would be emboldened by the absence of people in the parks. This was the situation painted last month by the New York Times, which quoted Nico Jacobs of Rhino 911, a nonprofit that evacuates injured rhinos by helicopter, as saying “at least nine rhinos” had been poached in the North West alone since the lockdown began.

In fact, Jacobs says the reporter misunderstood him on the dates, and that, though the first week of the lockdown was extremely busy — “and so was the week before, nothing abnormal” — things quietened down after that. Jacobs attributes this to the stay-at-home order, to roadblocks, and to the closure of national borders, which all hamper poachers’ ability to get the horns out.

“It’s been proven that poached horns get to China within the first week,” he says.

The actual number of rhinos lost in the province during the lockdown so far is “three or four”. Jacobs is emphatic, however, that this is still “totally unacceptable”.

“People must realise that we are sitting with a huge problem in SA, which has not been resolved. Is it a little bit better? Yes. But we are still far from acceptable norms, where we can say we’ve got numbers — not stable, but increasing numbers — with mothers raising their calves and the calves getting to adulthood.”

He emphasises, too, how hard the people in the parks are working — patrolling at all hours and doing their absolute best to protect the animals with very limited resources.

Botswana, meanwhile, has lost six rhinos since March 27, a situation so dire that National Geographic reports the government is now evacuating black rhinos from the Okavango Delta to save them.

THE MONEY MATTERS

The more complicated issue for rhinos — and wildlife in general — relates to funding. Tourism levies, now totally dried up, are funnelled into conservation and protection measures, and also provide a sustainable living for neighbouring communities.

The shutdown in tourism is a conservation disaster from that perspective, something Geiger-Orengo calls “a full-circle damaging effect”, with livelihoods jeopardised and protection money halted.

Gary Harwood, from communications agency HKLM, which represents eco-tourism brands across Africa, recently wrote an opinion piece on the impact of Covid19. He says the shutdown of global travel will likely lead to a “slowdown of poaching of endangered species to supply the once-thriving eastern markets” but cautions that if this tempts reserves to “pull back on anti-poaching initiatives in order to save money”, this could exacerbate bush-meat poaching, where local communities are desperate to put food on the table.

This seems to already be playing out in the North West, where Jacobs estimates meat poaching has risen 200%-300% since the lockdown began. That situation undoes years of hard work in terms of buy-in from local communities. As Jacobs says with regard to saving the rhino, “We need to get communities involved to protect these animals for future generations because that’s where their money lies.” It stands to reason that if the money is gone, so is the incentive to conserve.

SAVE THEM SO THEY CAN SAVE US

Ultimately then, the outlook is worrying. And with tourism minister Mmamoloko KubayiNgubane having said last week that even domestic tourism will likely only re-start in December, that’s a bleak picture for the people, landscapes and animals whose survival depends on the sector.

Many in the tourism industry, of course, pray that Kubayi-Ngubane is wrong. In the meantime, rescuers such as Jacobs “are still flying and patrolling and doing what we can”, while the likes of Motswari and Tintswalo are poised to resume welcoming visitors — and bring back their staff — just as soon as they can.

Orengo de Lamazière insists there is hope, and that eco-tourism will be key to SA’s postcorona recovery because our natural assets are so incomparable. “We will always have people, everywhere in the world, who will want to come to see the wildlife,” he says.

Harwood, meanwhile, adds: “Whilst you may have experienced the disappointment of having to cancel or postpone your own getaway, consider making a donation to ensure the people, the animals and the wilderness within your planned destination also survive during the trying times ahead.

“Then, once we are able to start travelling again, please also consider returning to

Africa’s incredible destinations. Simply by being there, you will be contributing towards conservation.”

“If the demand stops then the killing stops, so this is what I’m hoping the ripple effect will be.” MARION GEIGER-ORENGO Co-owner of Motswari Private Reserve and co-founder of Rhino Disharmony

[Dushan]

I learned quite young that cheap tools are dangerous, for a start, may not do the job properly even when new, won't last long, and are a false economy.

In about 1975 in CPT, and I think they are a ZA make, I bought a set of Gedore spanners, open-ended, sockets, offset rings, extensions, ratchets etc. It seemed outrageously expensive but I did a lot of work on cars then.

45 years later, I still have that set of spanners, in their original box, and as serviceable as the day I bought them. They have served me, and others, well.

Talking of spanners, there was this girl in our group of friends who was referred to as 'the spanner job', because whenever she was around, our nuts tightened (the guys anyway!)

Gedore is a German brand. Excellent tools.
I have Craftsman (Sears brand before they went belly up) sockets and ratchets that I bought in the 70s and they still work flawlessly. The good sign of a quality socket is that it is very thin yet strong enough for the nut/bolt they are turning. Quality ones like SnapOn and MAC are very expensive, but as you say, worth every penny.

However I have bought cheap tools, in the past (Harbor Freight or Canadian equivalent Princess Auto) for "one time" jobs, like a 28mm socket for wheel hubs.

[ian16th]

A source of cheap good tools, are auctions!
House contents and deceased estates.

[Dushan]

Indeed, and I keep telling my wife, and a buddy of mine to be careful when getting rid of my stuff. Pointing to Wiha screwdrivers and Knipex pliers.

[Pontius Navigator]

Ian indeed. I got several from my aunt. She was an inveterate auction goer. Best, which I still have, is a spade with a curved blade and rounded end. The metal is thicker than a flat spade. It is the only spade that will penetrate our limestone soil.

Another, which I sold was a 2lb claw hammer but there was a difference. It had what looked like a ball hearing wedged in the claw. Man who bought it said he had to have it but didn't know what it was for.

I think it was to stop small nails getting stuck in the claw but still enabled larger ones to be extracted.

[AtomKraft]

Very true.
I got a beautiful 'Snap-On' 3/8 drive ratchet in the skip at my local council dump.

I had to climb down into the skip to get it, which I did as I could see many outsize sockets down there- always handy to have.

Whoever discarded that pukka ratchet was clearly not the man who'd owned it.

[ian16th]

Very true.
I got a beautiful 'Snap-On' 3/8 drive ratchet in the skip at my local council dump.

I had to climb down into the skip to get it, which I did as I could see many outsize sockets down there- always handy to have.

Whoever discarded that pukka ratchet was clearly not the man who'd owned it.

Probably the divorcee ex-wife!

[BenThere]

What we can take from this thread is that you get what you pay for. Quality is worth the price in general. Call me chauvinistic but when I see 'Made in USA' I get a warm, fuzzy feeling. When I see 'Made in China' I get a sense of being screwed.

There's nothing more rewarding than buying a quality product and having it serve you for a long time. I have a Kitchen Aide 6 quart mixer that I've used for 30-40 years, making bread, grinding venison sausage, turning wheat and other grains to flour, and much more. The thing just keeps working and working. Once I had a problem with the motor and sent it back to Kitchen Aide for repair. They sent me the brand new one I use today, and that was a long time ago.

So I usually buy the proven brands, Snap-on, Kraft/Heinz, Smuckers, Craftsmen, et al. In the long run it pays off.