Stanley buying Black & Decker (and delta, pc, dewalt, etc)

I had heard that DeFault was going belly up, but didn't hear it from an credible source. I say good. I hate their yellow garbage anyway. They took a perfectly good company like Porter-Cable and dissolved all of the quality tools, and watered down what was left.

Maybe Stanley will bring back the Porter-Cable 504 belt sander, and the little commercial grade laminate router.
 
One can only hope (far beyond reason, of course) that the result will be tools like Black & Decker, Stanley, and Porter-Cable all USED to make. Anybody held the old B&D reciprocating saw? The one sheathed entirely with metal? Or one of the old Stanley routers, the R2D2 ones? Those were all good solid tools back in the day.

...but na. I have a dream... and somewhere in that dream are pigs - flying. :D
 
Wouldn't expect the quality of the tools to go up if I were you.

For whatever reason, a bunch of the yellow has invaded my shop, and I find them to be perfectly decent tools. Haven't had an issue with my router, drills, miter saw, or circular saw. The Planer is too new to tell yet, but so far it seems to be well engineered and pretty solid.

And I find my bosch jig saw, with a plastic casing to run pretty darn smooth and with the right blades able to make some nice cuts.

Truth be told I've got some Grizz's, porter cables, deltas, and jets in the shop too. I'm not too brand loyal when it comes to tools. I usually buy what's on sale and represents a good value.
 
I'm with Brent. Buy the tool not the brand. The days of products wearing a certain badge, being of a known quality, are sadly gone.
 
I'm afraid I've got to agree with you, too, Brent - in fact I DO own one yellow circ saw and one yellow DCMS (the 12" one). They're both exceptionally well made by comparison to an awful lot of other tools out there.

I sure like those old metal-bodied tailtools, though. :)

Now... what'll happen to the venerable PC690?
 
Didn't mean to start a tool war or anything. :huh:

Just saying that I don't really see much of a difference in quality for most of the tools out on the shelves these days. I know there may be a few brands that are above the rest, but the cost/benefit ratio for the amount I would use them tend to put them out of my reach. ;)

I.e. Sure I'd like to get some of those super special green tools, but for my needs the yellows and greys and blues and plain greens do pretty much the same thing. If I made my living at this craft, I might change my mind and spring for the nicer tools, but then again, I'd probably also have a much bigger jointer and planer and dust collector and Shop! :thumb:

Not sure if this merger will really have too much of an effect on the tools in the market place, other than laying off 350 million dollars worth of people/salaries out of work...
:dunno:
 
I agree with Brent also. I have a mish mosh of power tools: PC belt sander, saw boss, RO sander 2 routers, router table. Dewalt circ saw and planer. Bosch jig saw. 3 Makita batt. drills. Hitachi 3/8" corded drill. Ridgid recip saw. HF trim router, and a few others that I can't recall.
They all work well and serve their purpose. The only thing that keeps them from working flawlessly is the operator:rofl:
 
I'm not brand loyal in any way shape or form. I buy the best tool to fit the requirements most of the time. I say most of the time because I have an el' cheapo widebelt sander because I couldn't drop the money on a proper unit. But, there is a huge whole in the market for industrial grade tooling that no one wants to fill. Who can blame the manufacturers, good tooling is a niche market. Why buy a $800 whatchacallit, when you can get a similar whatchacallit for less than half?
 
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