Sunday 19 November 2017

Top Tips for Selecting Quality Agricultural Tools

If you’re in farming, then budgets are likely to be tight and you’ll often be looking for economies. That’s virtually “business as usual” in agriculture.

However, one area you might not want to cut spending corners in is that of your tools. There might be little point in purchasing prestige items like for example Krone hay equipment if you then put that at risk by trying to maintain it with cheap tools.

So, here are some top tips for selecting quality tools.

1. Look for recognised quality brands.  If they’ve been around a long time and have a reputation for quality, then they’re clearly doing something right. Be prepared to pay a little extra, if necessary, for that reassurance.

2.  Learn a bit about metal descriptions. For example, if terms such as “HSS” or “Chrome Vanadium” don’t mean much to you, you should research them and other such technical designators. That’s because tool producers often use such designations to describe the quality of the metallurgy they use. Note that metal hardness isn’t always necessarily the only criterion behind selection – read up on that too.

Friday 17 November 2017

So, You Need a New Set of Tools?


During one of our recent chats with a visitor, they commented that they’d purchased a new socket set recently.

They also said just how cheap it had been and it all sounded really good. Their joy at their bargain lasted right up until about the third time they’d tried to use it when various parts of the set had started breaking under stress. Apparently, the ratchets gave up first then bits of the main metal parts started to shear or “round”.

Now you can probably see where we’re going with this because we’ve blogged on it before (socket sets in particular seem to arise commonly in this respect), albeit a long time back. Even so, we’ll offer our thoughts again.

Generally speaking – cheap tools are a bad idea! OK, if you’re able to buy a quality second-hand branded set at a bargain price then good luck to you. That’s different. Read more So, You Need a New Set of Tools?