God bless the Chinese

[Jim Alfredson]

So this week I've been trying to finish some left-over odd repair jobs around the house and also organize my garage and office. My garage has a new roof (no leaks!!! YAY!) and half of it will be my workshop for restoring pianos, but it is full of crap and all my tools are scattered all over the place. I've been trying to clean it up and I need to make a nice workbench and somehow catagorize and organize all my tools. I'm getting tired of not being able to find my hammer, buying a new one, and then finding the old one a day later.

Anyway, one project I needed to finish was a repair to one of our plaster walls that I started last winter. A space about 2 feet by 4 feet was bulging pretty bad, so I knocked it all out, put in a piece of drywall, and filled the surrounding space with drywall compound and feathered everything in as good as I could. Really all I needed to do for the past 6 months is re-attach the molding.

I realized that I was really lacking in finishing nails, but I found just enough to do the job. Unfortunately, the first two decided not to go in straight and bent. They were not going in very easy. Rather than dig out my cordless drill and make pilot holes, I decided to go to Harbor Freight and see if I could get a finishing nail gun (I've always wanted one).

Long story short: A finish nail gun that accepts up to 2" nails and a box of 5000 2" nails cost me a grand total of $31.47. That same gun would cost four times that (at least) at some place like Home Depot.

I feel dirty. At the same time, damn... how is a man supposed to resist? I have a 10" tile saw from Harbor Freight that I used to tile my hallway and my kitchen counter and backsplash that I paid under $200 for. The same tool with a name brand would be $600 to $800 anywhere else. Amazing.

To tie in with my other thread tonight: I think we're fucked.

[marcello]

Don't worry about the Chinese, Jim.

They have sucking up so much of the raw material on the planet, that you pay higher prices for almost everything else you could buy.

My steel prices have gone up 40% this year alone because most of the steel is shipped there.

[Jazzmoose]

Well...I've tried Harbor Freight tools before myself, and I'll say this. I don't think you'll see too many construction pros saving a buck by going there. For the occasional user, yeah, it's a great deal, but their products don't hold up for shit if you're going to use them on a regular basis.

Then again, why should us "once in a while handymen" have to buy pro-level tools? If I'm looking for tools for my bike, I'm not going near the place, but if I needed a finishing nail gun that I'd probably rarely use, I'd go for it.

[AllenLowe]

well, whenever I need a small nuclear device I always go to my local representative of Chinese Organized Crime - those damned arabs just want too much cash -

[Niko]

had a very positive chinese experience this morning, we were visiting our new office building and when we were in that very nice looking room, which clearly was the best one i could hope for, our chinese colleague (who already had a better room elsewhere) went straight up to our boss with like five people in the room and said "niko will get this room, right?", a german person would never have been that direct i guess (especially concerning other people's business), think i have the room now while most other people will have to wait until january for a decision; this direct way can be quite annoying, too...

[Tom Storer]

Don't worry about the Chinese, Jim.

They have sucking up so much of the raw material on the planet, that you pay higher prices for almost everything else you could buy.

My steel prices have gone up 40% this year alone because most of the steel is shipped there.

That's supply and demand for you. More demand, prices rise.

[Chas]

The recent large increases in commodity prices are to some extent a function of their being priced in a rapidly depreciating U.S. dollar . That said , the last 5 years have seen an across-the-board rise in inflation-adjusted commodity prices as well , as China feeds the U.S. overconsumption that has been brought about by lax U.S. monetary policy .

Historically however , shorter-term upward movements in real commodity prices such as the one currently underway , have never really come close to putting an end to the now 150-year trend of declining real commodity prices made possible by technological innovation .

The fact that Chinese goods can be as cheap as they are in an era of rising commodity prices speaks to just how much of a cost advantage (primarily labor , but also regulatory ) the Chinese have vis-à-vis the United States , which is what Jim's initial post was pointing up . The price-deflation of manufactured goods resulting from this cost advantage isn't as great as it seems however given the poor quality of many Chinese goods .

[Jim Alfredson]

We'll see about the quality. I didn't expect the tile saw to last through the first project, which was cutting porcelain tiles for my kitchen counter. They are extremely hard, much harder than ceramic, and yet the saw held up fine, did the hallway job, and I also loaned it to a couple of friends that did some pretty big jobs with it, too. It's still rockin'.

[.:.impossible]

Definitely sounds like $200 worth to me! Thanks for the tip. I wish I had known. I've tiled about 650 sq ft of our house over the past three years. It would have been nice to have owned the wet saw, instead of watching the clock on rentals...

I could use a finishing gun. Quite a few projects around here that my wife would like for me to finish!