Amen to that, making wood shavings just for the sound, tactile feedback and beautiful curls rolling off a well set up plane when pushing or pulling it through an aromatic board leaves absolutely nothing to be desired!

As far as Craftsman tools go, their mechanics too sets and boxes were marketed to compete with fully professional brands like Snap-On back when my grandpa was setting up shop. It's easier to go to Sears or buy tools mail order from them than it is to get the Snap-On truck to stop by your home or farm workshop.

Their Power tools were never warrantied for life, just the hand tools. Some of the early Craftsman Power Tools like Jointers and TableSaws were pretty nice. I don't remember which year it was, but when Sears switched to imported power tools, the quality went way down.

As I recall, Home Depot put the mill to work producing their Rigid Brand power tools, they're undoubtedly from offshore as well.

Offrshore isn't a bad word to me, I had an inexpensive horizontal bandsaw from the Rong Fu mill in Taiwan that was incredible. Some that looked the same were just terrible.

I haven't had the heart to look at a Delta 14 Bandsaw in years, my 1 HP enclosed base 14 is industrial to the bone, what I saw just a few years back clearly wasn't.

Dunno, life goes on . . .