RivetBangers.com

Man I hate driving by Harbor Freight. It's not like I can just ignore its there. I have to stop in and peruse the flier and isles for the deals of the week. The fun part is I set myself a budget before I go in every time - today was a $10 day.

I needed some razor blades and a chainsaw sharpener, so with those two things obtained, I had a cool $3 to spend to stay in budget. Nothing really jumped out at me until I saw some automatic wire strippers on sale for $1.79. I never have had a pair, and at this price I couldn't go wrong.

Knowing what I paid for them, I wasn't expecting much. The first test was on some 22 gauge stranded wire. Worked great. Second test was much tougher -- some 20 or 22 gauge tefzel from the chopped wire harness that my avionics came from. WORKED GREAT. Next test was shielded tefzel. Worked great too!

Now I don't expect these to last very long cutting tefzel...I bought them to toss in my electrical toolbox for other jobs. But who knows, as long as it works, I might hold off spending the $40 on the ideal StripMaster!

Here is the link:

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/d ... mber=95124

Those are dangerous places to go dude. You should always change your route so you don't have to drive by one. They are like black holes and they will suck you in.

John

I hate that store. I can go in there not needing a thing, and come out $100 poorer.

I hear ya. I went in last week for a set of pliers. I came out with three sets of pliers (dad could use one ), three sets of micro screwdriver sets, a pair of gloves, an IR temperature sensor, a box of rubber gloves, and cleco pliers.

They must pump subliminal adds through the canned music in the store.

I need some more rubber gloves, thanx for reminding me!!

Spike wrote:I need some more rubber gloves, thanx for reminding me!!

They had them on Sale when I was there Saturday.

Now the challenge is can you go in there and JUST buy gloves???

it's roughly 3.5hrs to the nearest HF for me.

I got the mail the other day and mentioned to my wife, "hey I got another Habor Freight flyer" She said "you get one almost everyweek, but I throw them out before you get any ideas!"

Oh Well, if it were closer, I'd probably only be allowed supervised visits just like the gun store

ooohh the gun store. . . another place that likes to take my money.

I purchased a wire stripper that looked just like that at frys electronics. I spent $8 on it and it stripped all sizes of wires flawlessly. I worked in the electronic prop shop for the movie Armageton and stripped over 8,000 wires and the stripper still works great even today.

I purchased an extra cheap pair at osh like the ones from harbor frieght but they did not work as good as my frys electronics one.

Maybe I just got a bad pair. Good luck with yours,


Mike Balzer

Yeah, I imagine it is hit or miss with these cheap strippers (just like real strippers ). I am probably gonna bite the bullet and buy a set of Ideal Stripmasters. My fear is I will be in the middle of wiring, these things will break and then I will be down waiting for a better set to arrive in the mail for a few days. $40 isn't that bad for a tool.

bullojm1 wrote:I am probably gonna bite the bullet and buy a set of Ideal Stripmasters.

Good call. The benefit of the stripmaster is that because of the die it doesn't nick the wire. I got mine, along with a ratcheting crimper, from www.mytoolstore.com.

http://www.mytoolstore.com/ideal/ide11-24.html

Well, I got out of HF yesterday for less than $100--kind of a victory.

Too bad for me I went in for a set on $11 dollar gloves and a wheel cart that was out of stock

$91 dollars of one more welding helmet, some allen wrenches, and the above mentioned gloves.