9 ms·

Its the rule supposedly came up with by Adam Savage - buy cheap tools, use em til you break em, then replace the ones you break with expensive, good tools. The

Its the rule supposedly came up with by Adam Savage - buy cheap tools, use em til you break em, then replace the ones you break with expensive, good tools. The idea of that rule is so new makers can work out what tools they actually are using, so they don't waste a shitload of money. In practice? Some tools are just worth spending the money on upfront, inferior tools will often lead to frustration and failure early on. The problem is people think Adams rule just applies everywhere, because he is famous etc. I actually have a draft blog post on this exact topic that I'm not finished, with examples from my own experiences.

gav 4y ago
I also think he's talking about tools where inferior means build quality vs. performance. You can go buy a bunch of cheap wrenches from Harbor Freight and they'll be just fine compared to Snap-On. > Quality is an issue, true. But for beginning makers there is often no cheaper alternative. Back in the day I’d “test buy” a tool from HFT and then if it was useful I’d invest in a more substantial version. Also browsing their aisles is a singular pleasure. https://twitter.com/donttrythis/status/941149124497305600 https://twitter.com/donttrythis/status/941149124497305600
- Baeocystin 4y ago
  Also worth noting that often the best approach to take is that the tool itself is a consumable. $19 Harbor Freight grinders won't last as long as $150+ ones, but the ~7 you can buy for the same price will outlast even the most expensive one several times over!
  - dandelany 4y ago
    Assuming you place no value on your own time & frustration…
    - Baeocystin 4y ago
      FWIW, I learned this approach while working in the trades as a welder. You have consumables in stock and ready to go, and that includes extra grinders. Some tools you do take the time and effort to really take care of, of course, but a lot more than you might think are in the cattle not pet category of things.
      - crimsontech 4y ago
        Similar for professional kitchens. They use cheap pots, pans, knives, etc. then replace them when needed. No special Damascus steel knives and copper ply pans, just functional cost effective easy to replace stuff.
        LegitShady 4y ago
        ...all the professional kitchens I've seen use very nice professional kitchen equipment. They don't use damascus steel knives because that doesn't offer any advantage in function, but they aren't using cheap anything. Pots, pans, and knives work for a very long time and it doesn't make sense spending little to not get good ones. You can't get heavy guage stainless pots and pans for cheap, ply or no ply. The knives are the most used tool in food prep - they spend money on quality steel and good ergonomics so they dont have to work harder than they need to. In some places people bring their own knives.
        crimsontech 4y ago
        When you sharpen a knife several times a day it’s going to wear out fast, even if it’s expensive. Pots and pans get bashed about and dropped, which damages even expensive pans. Maybe it’s different in the UK but we never used fancy knives or cookware in the kitchens I’ve worked.
        LegitShady 4y ago
        thats why you use quality knives that need sharpening less often. You still sharpen them because that makes the work take less time and effort. They're not fancy they're just high end. They're not damascus steel because that doesn't offer any actual advantages. Thats why you can get a shitty henkels knife for $50 anywhere you look, but the actual zwilling pro chef's knife is 3x the price - because you don't need to sharpen it as often - it keeps the edge for longer. It's not a question of fancy. Regular looking pans and pots made from ultra thick gauge stainless steel dont look fancy, but they survive being dropped on the ground without issue. You have a big miscomprehension if you think expensive = fancy. Not fancy, rather ultra utilitarian but high quality.
  - mwbajor 4y ago
    Bad tools or consumables break at the most inopportune times and yes, in most cases bad = cheap. People like to compare to Snap-On but forget that Snap-On subsidizes their delivery service with the tool cost. Also, yes, Snap-Ons are in fact that much better than HF tools in almost all cases. Its bad when a $9 HF torque wrench breaks at 8:45PM on a Sunday night when you're under your car putting the transmission back on. Or a cheap pot-metal screw strips when you have a manufacturing deadline approaching. I've been in the electronics manufacturing industry for 17 years now and in almost all cases, "buy the best you can afford" is the better mantra. That doesn't go bankrupt over a $1500 dollar Snap-On wrench set, but if you buy the HF stuff, you will spend $1500 in time using their warranty.
    - Breza 3y ago
      I have a bunch of my grandpa's professional tools from the '30s-'60s. Other than a motor failing in his electric drill, I've never had problems.
    - Baeocystin 4y ago
      I think your torque wrench example gets to the point of what I was trying to get at. My torque wrenches are Matco, as are my 'good' sockets. And I have a nice set of Mitutoyo calipers in my box for when I need the precision. But for an awful lot of the regular work, it's Harbor Freight magnets, HF welding blankets and soapstone, HF clamps, HF grinders. You learn what works best for your dollar, and very often, it's erring not on the side of the more expensive stuff.
  - fuzzfactor 4y ago
    I've had a number of soldering irons over the decades and some of them have been the bare-bones kind. I have needed to make the most of whatever was available. The cheap small soldering "pencil" irons like they had at Radio Shack were insidiously bad because of the crummy solder that came in the package, and their crummy store brand solder. I would use only Multicore or Kester solder. Much bigger difference than automatic temperature control. These are small irons but they still get hotter than the ideal temperature that most long-term assemblers prefer to work at. At least the iron does, but maybe not the tip, especially if it's not screwed in really tight, or if a lot of oxidation has built up in the iron threaded socket the tip screws into. I used to grab the tip at the base with the curved jaws of a wire stripper and screw it in real tight whether hot or cold. Starting when new so no corrosion has a chance to build up. Different tips will end up with different tip temperatures, but when you've got one of these going properly you can be just as effective as with a controlled unit. The tips are copper with chrome plating which can be a thin layer, but when it oxidizes it gets more of a sheen rather than building up a crust like plain copper. Solder won't want to stick to the chrome too easy, and once it gets oxidized it's even worse. And the oxidized metal will not transfer heat properly to the work. For splicing new pure copper wires using a temp-controlled iron, it is common to heat the copper joint with the tip until the solder melts and behaves like mercury as it soaks well into the joint. This often fails with antique wires since the old conductor has an oxidation layer on the strands so the solder will not wet them. Things like this are best carefully tinned individually before joining, using additional cleaning and flux if necessary. Tinning the new tip is the first thing. Lots of users will wait until the iron heats up too much and try to apply a bit of solder after there is already a thin oxidation layer on the chrome tip. I like to get some solder on the point to wet the chrome as soon as it gets hot enough the first time, then unplug the iron and suspend the tip downward with a fraction of a gram of solder obscuring the point as it hardens. It will really dig into that substrate as it solidifies, and in operation the very tip is the part you are going to have to keep constantly wet with fresh solder, and basically use some liquid metal hanging there to transfer heat more effectively to the work than you can from contact with a non-wet tip of the same temperature. The shaft of the tip will become more and more oxidized, and if the point gets like that you might as well sand it down, most likely down to the copper. Copper tins real easy but it dissolves in the solder much faster than the chrome so the tip will be much more sacrificial as you continue rinsing it with fresh solder when needed so only the freshest non-oxidized solder will come in contact with your work. With new tips or not, properly sized to the work, stuffing a PCB should not require more flux than there is in the core of the solder. Unplug it when you're not actually using it, they do not really take that long to heat up when you need it again. They just sit there oxidizing otherwise. Whatever your approach, you need to be comfortable with handling hot liquid metal to some extent.
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  Yeah, the context is important. Unfortunately the context went missing as soon as the "rule" started making it around hacker/maker internet.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >You can go buy a bunch of cheap wrenches from Harbor Freight and they'll be just fine compared to Snap-On. Harbor Freight wrenches are actually really good, and an excellent value for the money. I've even met pro mechanics that used them. Harbor Freight power tools are a different deal though.
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    FWIW, Harbor Freight has only relatively recently made a concerted effort to start selling higher quality stuff and to shirk the "only sells cheap junk" label. And even now, there's a lot of variance (in both price and quality) across their various brands. The Icon stuff is pretty good. Maybe not quite on par with Snap-On, but when you consider the price difference, probably a better "bang for your buck." But the Pittsburgh stuff is a few steps down the quality ladder. Some of the other newer brands they've rolled out (Quinn, etc.) I'm less sure about.
    - mwbajor 4y ago
      They came out with decent slip jaw pliers that were almost as expensive as real channel locks for about the same quality. At that point, the question becomes "do I trust a new brand?" instead of "do I buy lower quality?"
7speter 4y ago
The article writer talks about his harbor freight iron. Harbor freight is the perfect place to buy a first <insert tool> to see if youre gonna use it enough to justify a higher quality version of said tool. What isn’t all that good of a place to get a first tool is amazon, because its either cheap chinese crap or potentially counterfeit crap.
- mwbajor 4y ago
  I disagree, but in the absence of shop-class and summer factory jobs, then yes.
fsckboy 4y ago
>In practice? Some tools are just worth spending the money on upfront, inferior tools will often lead to frustration and failure early on. no, you can't undermine the idea with this trick. For example (grabbing examples from other comments in this thread), while an expensive soldering iron might be much better than a cheap one, there is no way you know before you start whether you're going to be soldering a lot. I know how to solder, I've soldered a lot since I was about 13, and I can solder just fine with a crappy soldering iron (just like good pizza makers can use a primitive wood fired oven) but after I learned to wire-wrap, I put down my soldering iron almost for good... and does wire-wrapping even exist any more? If I wanted to take it up again, I'd find antique wirewrapping tools before I'd torture myself with soldering anything. All of which is my way to say, if I can't predict how much soldering I'm going to do, then no beginner can predict whether an expensive soldering iron is what they need or not. Maybe if you went out and geared up with the most expensive technical mountain climbing gear, you could climb Everest on your first try, and you could then make the case that had you bought the cheap stuff you would have been discouraged by frostbite. But that's just not a good plan.
- detaro 4y ago
  There is a vast difference between "went out and geared up with the most expensive" and "spend ~$30 more to go from cheap crap to something baseline competent" (e.g. while the article author says "ultra-cheap" about his linked choice, it's actually more in that range). And nowadays its quite easy to figure out if that's the case for what you are planning to buy, as long as it is a somewhat mainstream topic. And then make a somewhat informed choice. Irons are also not really getting used up, so if you truly follow the "replace if it breaks" rule you're potentially using crap a loooong time.
- krapht 4y ago
  I know so many people who get frustrated with hobby tools and then quit the hobby, when if they would've bought something decent to start off with, might've kept interest. The price differential is a lot less if you buy used, but quality tooling. This tooling is fully depreciated, and you can turn around and sell it for what you paid for it as long as it's still in working order. To bring it around to programming, imagine trying to debug code in GEdit+Terminal vs having the latest and greatest Jetbrains IDE to help out (ignoring the fact that the community editions are actually pretty functional - let's time travel back 20 years when you had to pay for VS or Borland). One is way more frustrating than the other; one is way more likely to lose motivation. Or soldering - avoid the cheapest harbor freight iron, and EBay a used Weller for $50+shipping. If you never solder again pass it on and you're out the shipping costs. Weller irons have been and always will be around $50~$60 used.
Dalewyn 4y ago
I'd say the truth lies somewhere down the middle. Get run-of-the-mill tools if you're starting out on something new. Not too cheap because you'll be miserable, but not too expensive because you can't appreciate them. Once you start doing whatever it is you started doing, if you end up using a tool only once every blue moon, you didn't waste money on a tool you won't appreciate. If you end up using a tool all day and feel annoyed by its limitations, you've learned what aspects to appreciate in that line of tools and you are now better informed to make your next real purchase.
Robotbeat 4y ago
Yeah, I generally agree with that rule, but a crap soldering iron is super frustrating and makes you think you suck at soldering.
Waterluvian 4y ago
It’s also great advice for people starting things because most people don’t follow through. There’s a survivorship bias in seeing it as bad advice, I think. Those who stick with a new hobby wish they had bought the good tools to begin with. I think it’s a good thing to be able to comfortably try out lots of new things. Spending money can make you feel bound to the hobby that you might not enjoy after all.
__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
I've had a relevant experience with ergonomic chairs. If you buy the cheap chair, it's hard to be sure. Maybe spending more will fix the problem. The expensive chair though... if that doesn't do it then you can be sure that what you actually needed was weights and a yoga mat. I'm glad I jumped straight to the expensive one, because otherwise I'd have gotten the middle one and then the expensive one.
KolenCh 4y ago
I think it is an older saying but I don't know who said it first. The version I heard was from scientist and the rule is to first buy the cheapest tool that does the job, then when you need something better, buy the best that you can afford. For soldiering, I'm still at the first stage.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

gav 4y ago

I also think he's talking about tools where inferior means build quality vs. performance. You can go buy a bunch of cheap wrenches from Harbor Freight and they'll be just fine compared to Snap-On. > Quality is an issue, true. But for beginning makers there is often no cheaper alternative. Back in the day I’d “test buy” a tool from HFT and then if it was useful I’d invest in a more substantial version. Also browsing their aisles is a singular pleasure. https://twitter.com/donttrythis/status/941149124497305600 https://twitter.com/donttrythis/status/941149124497305600

Baeocystin 4y ago
Also worth noting that often the best approach to take is that the tool itself is a consumable. $19 Harbor Freight grinders won't last as long as $150+ ones, but the ~7 you can buy for the same price will outlast even the most expensive one several times over!
- dandelany 4y ago
  Assuming you place no value on your own time & frustration…
  - Baeocystin 4y ago
    FWIW, I learned this approach while working in the trades as a welder. You have consumables in stock and ready to go, and that includes extra grinders. Some tools you do take the time and effort to really take care of, of course, but a lot more than you might think are in the cattle not pet category of things.
    - crimsontech 4y ago
      Similar for professional kitchens. They use cheap pots, pans, knives, etc. then replace them when needed. No special Damascus steel knives and copper ply pans, just functional cost effective easy to replace stuff.
      - LegitShady 4y ago
        ...all the professional kitchens I've seen use very nice professional kitchen equipment. They don't use damascus steel knives because that doesn't offer any advantage in function, but they aren't using cheap anything. Pots, pans, and knives work for a very long time and it doesn't make sense spending little to not get good ones. You can't get heavy guage stainless pots and pans for cheap, ply or no ply. The knives are the most used tool in food prep - they spend money on quality steel and good ergonomics so they dont have to work harder than they need to. In some places people bring their own knives.
        crimsontech 4y ago
        When you sharpen a knife several times a day it’s going to wear out fast, even if it’s expensive. Pots and pans get bashed about and dropped, which damages even expensive pans. Maybe it’s different in the UK but we never used fancy knives or cookware in the kitchens I’ve worked.
        LegitShady 4y ago
        thats why you use quality knives that need sharpening less often. You still sharpen them because that makes the work take less time and effort. They're not fancy they're just high end. They're not damascus steel because that doesn't offer any actual advantages. Thats why you can get a shitty henkels knife for $50 anywhere you look, but the actual zwilling pro chef's knife is 3x the price - because you don't need to sharpen it as often - it keeps the edge for longer. It's not a question of fancy. Regular looking pans and pots made from ultra thick gauge stainless steel dont look fancy, but they survive being dropped on the ground without issue. You have a big miscomprehension if you think expensive = fancy. Not fancy, rather ultra utilitarian but high quality.
- mwbajor 4y ago
  Bad tools or consumables break at the most inopportune times and yes, in most cases bad = cheap. People like to compare to Snap-On but forget that Snap-On subsidizes their delivery service with the tool cost. Also, yes, Snap-Ons are in fact that much better than HF tools in almost all cases. Its bad when a $9 HF torque wrench breaks at 8:45PM on a Sunday night when you're under your car putting the transmission back on. Or a cheap pot-metal screw strips when you have a manufacturing deadline approaching. I've been in the electronics manufacturing industry for 17 years now and in almost all cases, "buy the best you can afford" is the better mantra. That doesn't go bankrupt over a $1500 dollar Snap-On wrench set, but if you buy the HF stuff, you will spend $1500 in time using their warranty.
  - Breza 3y ago
    I have a bunch of my grandpa's professional tools from the '30s-'60s. Other than a motor failing in his electric drill, I've never had problems.
  - Baeocystin 4y ago
    I think your torque wrench example gets to the point of what I was trying to get at. My torque wrenches are Matco, as are my 'good' sockets. And I have a nice set of Mitutoyo calipers in my box for when I need the precision. But for an awful lot of the regular work, it's Harbor Freight magnets, HF welding blankets and soapstone, HF clamps, HF grinders. You learn what works best for your dollar, and very often, it's erring not on the side of the more expensive stuff.
- fuzzfactor 4y ago
  I've had a number of soldering irons over the decades and some of them have been the bare-bones kind. I have needed to make the most of whatever was available. The cheap small soldering "pencil" irons like they had at Radio Shack were insidiously bad because of the crummy solder that came in the package, and their crummy store brand solder. I would use only Multicore or Kester solder. Much bigger difference than automatic temperature control. These are small irons but they still get hotter than the ideal temperature that most long-term assemblers prefer to work at. At least the iron does, but maybe not the tip, especially if it's not screwed in really tight, or if a lot of oxidation has built up in the iron threaded socket the tip screws into. I used to grab the tip at the base with the curved jaws of a wire stripper and screw it in real tight whether hot or cold. Starting when new so no corrosion has a chance to build up. Different tips will end up with different tip temperatures, but when you've got one of these going properly you can be just as effective as with a controlled unit. The tips are copper with chrome plating which can be a thin layer, but when it oxidizes it gets more of a sheen rather than building up a crust like plain copper. Solder won't want to stick to the chrome too easy, and once it gets oxidized it's even worse. And the oxidized metal will not transfer heat properly to the work. For splicing new pure copper wires using a temp-controlled iron, it is common to heat the copper joint with the tip until the solder melts and behaves like mercury as it soaks well into the joint. This often fails with antique wires since the old conductor has an oxidation layer on the strands so the solder will not wet them. Things like this are best carefully tinned individually before joining, using additional cleaning and flux if necessary. Tinning the new tip is the first thing. Lots of users will wait until the iron heats up too much and try to apply a bit of solder after there is already a thin oxidation layer on the chrome tip. I like to get some solder on the point to wet the chrome as soon as it gets hot enough the first time, then unplug the iron and suspend the tip downward with a fraction of a gram of solder obscuring the point as it hardens. It will really dig into that substrate as it solidifies, and in operation the very tip is the part you are going to have to keep constantly wet with fresh solder, and basically use some liquid metal hanging there to transfer heat more effectively to the work than you can from contact with a non-wet tip of the same temperature. The shaft of the tip will become more and more oxidized, and if the point gets like that you might as well sand it down, most likely down to the copper. Copper tins real easy but it dissolves in the solder much faster than the chrome so the tip will be much more sacrificial as you continue rinsing it with fresh solder when needed so only the freshest non-oxidized solder will come in contact with your work. With new tips or not, properly sized to the work, stuffing a PCB should not require more flux than there is in the core of the solder. Unplug it when you're not actually using it, they do not really take that long to heat up when you need it again. They just sit there oxidizing otherwise. Whatever your approach, you need to be comfortable with handling hot liquid metal to some extent.
nibbleshifter 4y ago
Yeah, the context is important. Unfortunately the context went missing as soon as the "rule" started making it around hacker/maker internet.
midoridensha 4y ago
>You can go buy a bunch of cheap wrenches from Harbor Freight and they'll be just fine compared to Snap-On. Harbor Freight wrenches are actually really good, and an excellent value for the money. I've even met pro mechanics that used them. Harbor Freight power tools are a different deal though.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  FWIW, Harbor Freight has only relatively recently made a concerted effort to start selling higher quality stuff and to shirk the "only sells cheap junk" label. And even now, there's a lot of variance (in both price and quality) across their various brands. The Icon stuff is pretty good. Maybe not quite on par with Snap-On, but when you consider the price difference, probably a better "bang for your buck." But the Pittsburgh stuff is a few steps down the quality ladder. Some of the other newer brands they've rolled out (Quinn, etc.) I'm less sure about.
  - mwbajor 4y ago
    They came out with decent slip jaw pliers that were almost as expensive as real channel locks for about the same quality. At that point, the question becomes "do I trust a new brand?" instead of "do I buy lower quality?"

7speter 4y ago

The article writer talks about his harbor freight iron. Harbor freight is the perfect place to buy a first <insert tool> to see if youre gonna use it enough to justify a higher quality version of said tool. What isn’t all that good of a place to get a first tool is amazon, because its either cheap chinese crap or potentially counterfeit crap.

mwbajor 4y ago
I disagree, but in the absence of shop-class and summer factory jobs, then yes.

fsckboy 4y ago

>In practice? Some tools are just worth spending the money on upfront, inferior tools will often lead to frustration and failure early on. no, you can't undermine the idea with this trick. For example (grabbing examples from other comments in this thread), while an expensive soldering iron might be much better than a cheap one, there is no way you know before you start whether you're going to be soldering a lot. I know how to solder, I've soldered a lot since I was about 13, and I can solder just fine with a crappy soldering iron (just like good pizza makers can use a primitive wood fired oven) but after I learned to wire-wrap, I put down my soldering iron almost for good... and does wire-wrapping even exist any more? If I wanted to take it up again, I'd find antique wirewrapping tools before I'd torture myself with soldering anything. All of which is my way to say, if I can't predict how much soldering I'm going to do, then no beginner can predict whether an expensive soldering iron is what they need or not. Maybe if you went out and geared up with the most expensive technical mountain climbing gear, you could climb Everest on your first try, and you could then make the case that had you bought the cheap stuff you would have been discouraged by frostbite. But that's just not a good plan.

detaro 4y ago
There is a vast difference between "went out and geared up with the most expensive" and "spend ~$30 more to go from cheap crap to something baseline competent" (e.g. while the article author says "ultra-cheap" about his linked choice, it's actually more in that range). And nowadays its quite easy to figure out if that's the case for what you are planning to buy, as long as it is a somewhat mainstream topic. And then make a somewhat informed choice. Irons are also not really getting used up, so if you truly follow the "replace if it breaks" rule you're potentially using crap a loooong time.
krapht 4y ago
I know so many people who get frustrated with hobby tools and then quit the hobby, when if they would've bought something decent to start off with, might've kept interest. The price differential is a lot less if you buy used, but quality tooling. This tooling is fully depreciated, and you can turn around and sell it for what you paid for it as long as it's still in working order. To bring it around to programming, imagine trying to debug code in GEdit+Terminal vs having the latest and greatest Jetbrains IDE to help out (ignoring the fact that the community editions are actually pretty functional - let's time travel back 20 years when you had to pay for VS or Borland). One is way more frustrating than the other; one is way more likely to lose motivation. Or soldering - avoid the cheapest harbor freight iron, and EBay a used Weller for $50+shipping. If you never solder again pass it on and you're out the shipping costs. Weller irons have been and always will be around $50~$60 used.

Dalewyn 4y ago

I'd say the truth lies somewhere down the middle. Get run-of-the-mill tools if you're starting out on something new. Not too cheap because you'll be miserable, but not too expensive because you can't appreciate them. Once you start doing whatever it is you started doing, if you end up using a tool only once every blue moon, you didn't waste money on a tool you won't appreciate. If you end up using a tool all day and feel annoyed by its limitations, you've learned what aspects to appreciate in that line of tools and you are now better informed to make your next real purchase.

Robotbeat 4y ago

Yeah, I generally agree with that rule, but a crap soldering iron is super frustrating and makes you think you suck at soldering.

Waterluvian 4y ago

It’s also great advice for people starting things because most people don’t follow through. There’s a survivorship bias in seeing it as bad advice, I think. Those who stick with a new hobby wish they had bought the good tools to begin with. I think it’s a good thing to be able to comfortably try out lots of new things. Spending money can make you feel bound to the hobby that you might not enjoy after all.

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago

I've had a relevant experience with ergonomic chairs. If you buy the cheap chair, it's hard to be sure. Maybe spending more will fix the problem. The expensive chair though... if that doesn't do it then you can be sure that what you actually needed was weights and a yoga mat. I'm glad I jumped straight to the expensive one, because otherwise I'd have gotten the middle one and then the expensive one.

KolenCh 4y ago

I think it is an older saying but I don't know who said it first. The version I heard was from scientist and the rule is to first buy the cheapest tool that does the job, then when you need something better, buy the best that you can afford. For soldiering, I'm still at the first stage.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]