Shars quality

[OrangeAlpine]

Looking at 4 jaw chucks and I've noticed something that I find interesting. Most suppliers do not publish any quality data on their lower priced chucks. Why is that? Shars does list data, and not just for chucks, but for a lot of merchandise. Is it meaningful data or mysterious Chinese numbers? Also, Shars is not the lowest price for what appears to be comparable chucks. Is it the best buy? I've purchased some (not much) Shars tools (not lately) and was satisfied with quality. What's your experience?

Don't tell me that I need to buy a $600 chuck. I know a $600 chuck is better than a $100 chuck, but it ain't gonna happen. I'm bottom feeding and want the best quality detritus available.

Bill

 

[Rbeckett]

A lot of the Shars stuff is meaningless Japanese, Chinese or Hindi fluff. Seems likr when they include perfarmance data it is the engineering specs and not the actual performance of a specific item. I have neard pros and cons for buying from Shars, but have never bought from them myself so cannot confirm or deny any claims. The most recent issue I was following was an extremely poor quality rotary table. It was resolved, but took a while so be prepared if the quality isn't quite up to snuff.
Bob

 

[Richard King]

A lot of the Shars stuff is meaningless Japanese, Chinese or Hindi fluff. Seems likr when they include perfarmance data it is the engineering specs and not the actual performance of a specific item. I have neard pros and cons for buying from Shars, but have never bought from them myself so cannot confirm or deny any claims. The most recent issue I was following was an extremely poor quality rotary table. It was resolved, but took a while so be prepared if the quality isn't quite up to snuff.
Bob

A student of mine bought a granite triangle square and some granite parallels from them 2 yrs ago and took them to a local tech school where he was taking some classes. The checked them on a CMM and both were off. The square was off .002" and they guaranteed it was .00002" /12". He had issues returning them. I have never bought anything from them. I also work in tenths so if you work in thousands maybe their stuff will work for you. Maybe they have improved on workmanship in 2 yrs. But you get what you pay for.
My student gave up and still has them and bought a precision Brown & Sharpe blade square used on Ebay and it was withing .0002" / 12".

 

[HMF]

I've heard from people that they are ok with the Shars tool holders for the QCTP. I have also heard stories of problems with customer service. I would characterize people's experiences as hit or miss. Some people had good experiences, others not so good. That's the main reason we don't have advertisers. You can't give an honest opinion when you are taking money from these people.

What's the solution? Ebay and some used tool sellers and tools4cheap.net (chinese but he watches quality closely). I bought some chucks from all of the above. Plazamachinery.com has good used chucks you can get for much less than $600. On tooling, I have bought Starrett on Ebay used. It is half or less of new retail cost. I just bought a whole bunch of measuring tools for the home shop (thread gauges, small hole gauges, depth mics and gauges). Some of them look like they were never used. Best chuck I have is a Pratt Bernerd (English) I got brand new from Ted Pflugner (latheman2@aol.com) for my South Bend 10L. Still had the cosmoline on it, and original box and I think I paid $350 and the quality is high. Look around, don't settle for crap- it may be ok for a home shop, but the problem is this- when you are learning like me, and you get crummy results, if you get cheap stuff, you won't know if it is you or the tools. With good tools, I know I am the one who messed up.

 

[Bill Gruby]

I have dealt with Shars twice. Although they were courteous on the phone it took time to resolve the issues. Once for a collet nut (wrong size 3 times) and the other for a collet set (all were out of tolerance). I will not get burnt a third time. ------ "Billy G"

 

[Ray C]

... About 1/2 of my purchases are through them and in the grand scheme of things, they're on-par with all the other suppliers in this category-range. They've been very good about letting me change orders mid-stream and have always handled/adjusted the billing properly. The're also good about combining packages and giving good shipping rates. Have only had 1-2 glitches with products and in one case, they sent a new item and didn't want to bother with returning the old one -and it was a $60 item (dovetail cutter that had a defect).

When I first decided to go "full-steam-ahead" with putting my shop together, I dropped about 3 grand in one shot without a glitch. I now have an account with them and make purchases about 3x a year.

As is the case with all import stuff, I double-check accuracy of all items and find no difference at all compared to other import stuff. It is what it is... I don't have the cashflow to buy the top name-brand, don't have time to hunt for used stuff on eBay -and have gotten burned more than once with older stuff that was worn out.

BTW: If you call, ask for Brian. He's very good at following-up on things and making sure it's handled right.

Ray