Are Snap On tools worth the £s ?

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Have been on a Snap On tools van and it was better decked out than Buckingham Palace, I was very impressed.

It seems that their sockets and ring spanner have the corners rounded out so they only make contact with the side of the nut rather than the corner - a clever idea I think !

The price though !! I can get a set of comby spanners in my local Lidl for 1/2 the price of a single Snap On spanner.

Should DIYers bother with them ?
 
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They're great tools and worth it if you use them every day IMHO. Personally I think something mid range is good enough for diy tho.
 
Britool used to be just about on par with Snap-on ages ago.....I don't know how they compare now.
Halfords Professional range have a lifetime guarantee and they are very good indeed.....I've had 2 replacement 1/4" drive ratchets and 1 4mm allen driver.
John :)
 
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I wouldn't buy them, not because I don't think they are good but I tend to loose mine well before they are worn out. What I do buy are Silverline spanners, available from Toolstation and on ebay they are pretty cheap but also of good quality, I have never broken one or worn it out yet.

Peter
 
If i worked at a dealership id probably use them as they used to allow weekly payments etc, not sure its the same now.
Ive used Halfords stuff for years and am quite impressed by them, ive also got some teng stuff too but they are quite expensive.
Britool is not what it once was, think its draper in disguise now. Nothing really wrong with draper but britool were the dogs danglies many years ago.
 
I've got a couple of small Britool socket sets from the '40/'50s. I think they were the first ones I ever saw, I was only a kid then but already had an interest in things mechanical. One was a free sample given to my uncle who was a commercial artist and used to design the catalogues.

Peter
 
Halfords Professional range have a lifetime guarantee and they are very good indeed.....I've had 2 replacement 1/4" drive ratchets and 1 4mm allen driver.
John :)

I love the Halfords Advanced stuff, especially when its on half price offer which is always rotating. They did tell me though that the ratchet drive is only guaranteed for 1 year not the lifetime warranty they imply.
 
I've got a couple of small Britool socket sets from the '40/'50s. I think they were the first ones I ever saw, I was only a kid then but already had an interest in things mechanical. One was a free sample given to my uncle who was a commercial artist and used to design the catalogues.

Peter

I've got what's left of a Britool 1/4" drive set from that era. Wooden handled nut driver. I think it had been used in a maintenance shop before I inherited it, so that explains the missing bits. The rest is battered but still going strong.
Generally I've just bought what I needed as I went along. So most of my stuff is a mishmash of makes. (Old) Elora and Kamasa sockets, some Halford stuff, some Britool and a lot of the older decent makes.
Recently I needed a 21mm ring, and thought I must get one next time I saw a decent make. Saw some sets in Lidl, set of open end or cranked rings for £4.99. I noticed they had this mark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geprüfte_Sicherheit. Looks OK to me. Spanners have been used now and appear to be OK.
I bought a set of each. I was expecting to pay a tenner for one ring spanner!

So to answer the OPs question. Snap-on are great tools, I've used a few in the past. However I wouldn't pay for them personally for DIY work.
 
I bought a new Elora socket set in about 1965, cost me £17.50, just short of a weeks wages. I also bought a Bradbury trolley jack which I still have, that was £27.50 well over a weeks wages.:( Tools are cheap now.

Peter
 
It's combination spanners for me, every time......usually a pair of the popular sizes.
Ratcheting combinations are also brilliant, and the Halfords pro range are very similar to Britool - wondering if there's a connection there!
Unfortunately I tend to misplace a few tools every year - the perils of going mobile, it seems :(
John :)
 
I remember the big 1/2" drive Elora sets being over £20 at the place I had a Saturday job in the early 70s. Lot of money back then!
Mine was bought bit at a time. The missus bought me the 3/8" 1/4" Kamasa set one Christmas in the late 70s. They were advertised on the telly at Woolies. £14.99 IIRC. They had a lifetime guarantee, and the last time I looked they said they would still honour it.
A chap I knew used to very kindly lend me his Snap-On ratchet ring spanner to do the U-bolts on the front drive shafts on Minis. Makes it easy. No doubt about it Snap-On make very good tools. Mind you I think that double ended spanner (1/2" X 9/16" IIRC) was about twenty quid back then.
How Lidl knock out those sets of spanners for £4.99 now I don't know.
 
I like combination spanners as well John. Again Lidl do a set for (I think) ten quid. I nearly bought some last time they were on offer, but you could go on and on, and to be honest, I don't do nearly as much as I used to.
 
Kamasa gear in the green box! I think they were the original 1/4 drive sockets for the masses....didn't we just use box spanners before that?
John :)
 
I remember the big 1/2" drive Elora sets being over £20 at the place I had a Saturday job in the early 70s. Lot of money back then!
.
I could only afford a £16.00 Elora set @ that time - to fix my 5 year old Triumph Saint bike that cost me c.£160. So pro rata some things have got cheaper over the years. Damned if I can remember how much a packet of Player's Gold Leaf were back then;)
 
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