- Joined
- Jan 28, 2022
- Messages
- 853
Interesting in many ways. Your last sentence pretty much sums it up for me. After many clapped out beautiful small 6 to 9" American lathes I realized I had to go Import to get my 1440 ( Taiwanese ) lathe. Used American lathes of that size were either worn out and if not 3 times what I paid for a new 1440 delivered. Very sad, but the way it is now. A well executed plan. Nuff said.Ive brought this up before.
The whole "Cheap Chinese crap" mentality has fallen off IMO. Yes you are still supporting quasi communists (They are no longer real communists) and while not actually hurting American company's any longer, not helping them either.
The "Hurting" is over (Its dead Jim) and looking at it from a home shop or even small business side, things have really never been better.
Think about how much more capacity to fix or make things you would pay dearly to buy or pay to have fixed than home shop guys had in the past.
I always wanted a home shop, so Ive been playing this game for a loooong time, 35yrs or better. I've bought things that were actual JUNK which was frequent back 30yrs ago, a real crapshoot.
Today you can get a product that is nearly as good as old school equipment for pennies on the dollar. I remember scraping a couple hundred dollars together (When a couple hundred was big money)to buy an Aloris style tool post and holders from Enco. These were $300 or so and roughly 1/3 of what the actual product cost.
Now you can get similar quality for $150.
I look at some of the prized things I bought over the years only to find them looking like hammered dog **** and seeing NEW ones available for 1/10th the cost of what I paid used.
Cake/Eat it.