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Honestly, I tried using a $40 fish tape from Harbor Freight on a tough pull last week and it actually held up better than my Klein.
Ngl, I was ready for it to snap or kink on this run through a crowded attic in an old house in Charlotte. The pull was about 75 feet with two 90 degree bends. My usual Klein tape is great, but this cheap one fed smoother and didn't bind up once. I'm not saying ditch the good stuff, but maybe the budget option isn't always junk for every job. Anyone else had a surprise win with a tool they expected to fail?
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jake_owens6d ago
Read an article a while back about how some of the generic tool makers are just using the same factories as the big brands. Makes you wonder if we're sometimes just paying for the name and the color of the handle. Your story about the fish tape lines up with that idea perfectly. It's a good reminder to actually test a tool instead of just assuming it's bad because it was cheap. What's the oldest off-brand tool you've got that's still kicking?
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pats8916d ago
No way, a Harbor Freight fish tape handling a 75-foot pull with two bends? That's wild, I'd have bet money it would kink for sure. Reminds me of what @simonb92 said about a cheap multimeter, sometimes the off-brand stuff just works. My old boss had a no-name tape that outlasted his expensive one for years on simple jobs. Still, I'd be scared to trust it on a really gnarly pull, but maybe I need to stop judging tools by their price tags, lol.
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