Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Building socket sets at the pawn shops?

Same here. High cost of quality is normally the cheapest route.

Oh no! Another Joo in our midst

Around here the Mexican flea markets can be good besides the pawn shops. Only problem is around here pawn shops and flea markets are the first place lots of guys shop for tools.

I was turning onto the highway one evening at dusk and spied a whole set of tools that somebody had lost off their truck, evidently, just laying beside the road. I live about two and a half miles from where Klein Tools had a plant, and these were mostly Klein's, probably made right there. Socket set, wrenches, adjustable wrench and a bunch of misc. stuff. Figured there was a good chance the guy would come back for it, but it was right by the highway and there was a much better chance the next guy that came along would grab it, so suddenly I had another set of tools. I waited around for awhile before doing anything with them in case somebody came asking. I think I told my cousin, a local farmer with a big mouth, about it and there was still nothing.

A few years before that, my Dad lost his top tray to his toolbox when he left it laying on the heavy squared bumper of his two-ton truck. Went in the four and a half miles to town where he'd been having a tire worked on and it wasn't anywhere to be seen on the highway nor at the tire place. Most of his tools were in the top tray too, as if he was working on something, he'd tend to lay more in there than would even fit if you closed the lid. Lots of American made stuff, mostly Craftsman, that he'd had ever since I could remember.

So tools do show up.

PITA...just get complete sets off Ebay

Farm sales.

#PotlandOregon
#fewbraincells

Well, as it turned out, I went to a few pawn shops looking for guns and tools. Lucked into a shop selling a craftsman roll away chest lower and upper as a set. Included were just inside 400 sockets, a few extensions, knuckle joints, torx sockets, 5 or 6 air guns, cylinder hone, a bunch of flywheel pullers, some diagnostic equipment, some odd ratcheting box end wrenches, and a bunch of misc tools I can't remember, about 30 air gun sockets. The sockets looked all American, Craftsman mostly, some Proto and SK, I only found one unmarked asian one.

Bunches of tools. $299

A friend from Idaho that read this is going through his inventory and sorting some out for me as well. May just make a road trip up to meet him.

Good. Pictures?

I can do that in a bit. Eating a late lunch and headed out to sort things shortly.

Read this to my wife. She said "dang". My sentiments exactly. What a score.

That's a smoking deal. Pawn shops around here want quite a bit more for stuff in my experience. But I haven't checked them in a long time for just that reason so wouldn't know if better deals are to be had now.

I think this is all of it-

All one really needs is a Mexican metric wrench and good ol
pair of vice grips..

If you have time, you can damn sure find what you need. Ive replaced sockets and wrenches I’ve lost that way. I’ve found a lot of tools at garage sales.

Put a WTB add in the classified section with what you want. You never know

Wow!

When I was a kid, the wrenches were the family jewels.
In 1955 my father got the Craftsman box and open end wrench set.
The whole neighborhood knew we had wrenches, a grinder, and 4" bench vise.

I met my wife in 1976 and she had bought all the tools she needed to replace an overhead camshaft.

In 1985 I started going to garage sales and asking, "Any tools or guns?"

I started buying wrenches like they were underpriced jewels.

Snap on, Bonney, S&K, ..... all the way to just marked: "CHINA". Hundreds of pounds of compulsive buying.

Nothing new, seen it all, until.....



Adjustable wrench from Channellock. My new go to wrench.

Ever see a mine wrench?[img]https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1...renchMining_Icon_grande.png?v=1492527688[/img]

It's metric too! I wonder if the hammer is metric also?