Can we please stop using Chinese steel in everything?
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Maybe you're right. I do know that in Home Depot and Lowes, the labels on the shelves say that the bolts are zinc. Maybe that means steel with a zinc coating.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
Interesting observation though. So I went looking. Looks like Zinc is a plating type. Scroll down to the comparison window to see an alternative of galvanized. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-3-8-in-16-x-1-in-Zinc-Plated-Hex-Bolt-25-Pack-800820/204281551
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After watching Chinese made stuff result in injury, sickness, and even death my wife and I do everything we can to avoid "made in China". - Pet food - Baby food - Laminate flooring seeping known - Drywall These are the ones that come to the top of my head as they made headlines. Besides, we need to remember Henry Ford's comment that if you don't pay your workers then who'll buy your products. Businesses forget this statement at their long term peril.
I do a lot of wood working and use Baltic Birch Plywood 13 cores and you can drive screws into the end grain without splitting the wood. I have broken some wood screws from Home Depot and ruined a $50.00 piece of wood. So I went over to German technology sourced out of an Ohio company. FYI Construction Fasteners Supplier & Manufacturer | SPAX U.S.[^] Where it is made makes a BIG difference
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haughtonomous wrote:
This is MAGA nonsense.
No politics in the Lounge, please.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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A bolt in my desk chair just snapped in half yesterday. This chair isn't worth re-tapping the hole. I'm not even heavy. I am a scrawny thing. I can't tell you how many times I've had that happen. Head bolts on the little 2-stroke I strapped to a mountain bike had to be replaced. Did that before they snapped. Same with the rest of the major bolts on that drivetrain. I didn't replace the bolts in this chair, and that was my mistake. I replace the casters on the chairs I buy with US manufactured polymer coated rollies that work on my wood floors anyway. I should have dismantled this thing and gone to Ace and replaced all the bolts as my first order of business. I'll be doing that on my next chair. But between the Chinese industrialists schlepping their low grade raw materials off on us, and my own country's schlepping their excess corn and sometimes industrial byproducts off onto us sometimes I feel like we're just used as garbage bins by people with too much money. :~ But zooming back in, it has gotten to the point where it really makes little sense to me now that I have to replace critical load bearing parts in new products as soon as I order them. What is even the point? Just send me the parts disassembled. May as well order everything from Ikea and save myself half the work.
There's smoke in my iris But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids So I'm ready now (What you ready for?) I'm ready for life in this city And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
Why do we buy Chinese at all? Because it is cheap. Around here (i.e. Norway), that is the one primary reason for buying Chinese. It could have been made at a comparable price here, and then the quality would be comparable, too. But then: When I was a boy, i.e. in the 1960s, we were really mocking Japanese products very much the same way as we mock Chinese products today. They were selling millions by millions of cheap transistor radios (we still had mostly tube designs in those days), cameras in a plastic housing, cars that were referred to as 'rice cookers'. We mocked and ridiculed the Japs for at least ten years after Nikon and Canon (and a few more) had taken over the high end camera marked, after the rice cookers had proved to be the most reliable cars around, and high class stereo systems affordable by everyone were 95% Japanese. The Chinese are most definitely making high quality products. They don't need us to buy them - the national market is five times the size of the US of A, and there is a huge Asian market outside China. We may be making a fatal mistake by telling China "Send us the very cheapest products you are able to produce!" and believing that what we then receive is representative for what Chinese industry is capable of producing. I guess comparing Chinese to Western industry today is very much like comparing Japanese industry to Western industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In a few sectors, we have already realized that China has taken over the lead, and we might see more of that as long as we keep on saying "But it is cheaper buying from China than to keep our own industry alive".
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The really worrying part is that the Chinese steel is used in aircraft replacement parts.
So you think it worrying that Chinese industry is capable of delivering high quality? You are right, in a sense. While everyone buying cheap Chinese crap because it is cheap (in both money and quality), Chinese industry is capable of creating really high quality products "behind our backs", because most of us turn their back to them. China is selling us Cheap Crap because we want to buy Cheap Crap (they even have a 'CC' symbol for it :-)). Thinking that the Chinese industry is capable of nothing but Cheap Crap may be the most fatal misjudgement of this century. You get what you pay for. If you pay for high Japanese quality, you get it. If you pay for high American quality, you get it. If you pay for high Chinese quality, you get it.
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Why do we buy Chinese at all? Because it is cheap. Around here (i.e. Norway), that is the one primary reason for buying Chinese. It could have been made at a comparable price here, and then the quality would be comparable, too. But then: When I was a boy, i.e. in the 1960s, we were really mocking Japanese products very much the same way as we mock Chinese products today. They were selling millions by millions of cheap transistor radios (we still had mostly tube designs in those days), cameras in a plastic housing, cars that were referred to as 'rice cookers'. We mocked and ridiculed the Japs for at least ten years after Nikon and Canon (and a few more) had taken over the high end camera marked, after the rice cookers had proved to be the most reliable cars around, and high class stereo systems affordable by everyone were 95% Japanese. The Chinese are most definitely making high quality products. They don't need us to buy them - the national market is five times the size of the US of A, and there is a huge Asian market outside China. We may be making a fatal mistake by telling China "Send us the very cheapest products you are able to produce!" and believing that what we then receive is representative for what Chinese industry is capable of producing. I guess comparing Chinese to Western industry today is very much like comparing Japanese industry to Western industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In a few sectors, we have already realized that China has taken over the lead, and we might see more of that as long as we keep on saying "But it is cheaper buying from China than to keep our own industry alive".
I don't disagree with any of this. If anything I'm lamenting the insistence of US manufacturers on using low grade Chinese material to the exclusion of anything else, to where you can't find quality at any price. I go buy a nicer chair, they'll still use bolts like this. It's frustrating. And I use Chinese products every day for work. Certain things are great to buy from China, but they don't seem to export quality metal. They could I'm sure, if they wanted to, but as you say, there isn't really a market for it in the west. It's a mess.
There's smoke in my iris But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids So I'm ready now (What you ready for?) I'm ready for life in this city And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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haughtonomous wrote:
This is MAGA nonsense.
No politics in the Lounge, please.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
I have to agree with tronderen. The sentence was not out of the scope of all other messages.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I have to agree with tronderen. The sentence was not out of the scope of all other messages.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
Nor was mine.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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The difficulties are related to understanding why "Buy American!" is non-politics and fully acceptable in the Lounge while "'Buy American! is nonsense" is politics and banned from the Lounge.
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So you think it worrying that Chinese industry is capable of delivering high quality? You are right, in a sense. While everyone buying cheap Chinese crap because it is cheap (in both money and quality), Chinese industry is capable of creating really high quality products "behind our backs", because most of us turn their back to them. China is selling us Cheap Crap because we want to buy Cheap Crap (they even have a 'CC' symbol for it :-)). Thinking that the Chinese industry is capable of nothing but Cheap Crap may be the most fatal misjudgement of this century. You get what you pay for. If you pay for high Japanese quality, you get it. If you pay for high American quality, you get it. If you pay for high Chinese quality, you get it.
You are 100% correct. My primary job now is to purchase a myriad of industrial goods and chemicals from China. You certainly get what you pay for, no matter the source.
I don't speak Idiot - please talk slowly and clearly "I have sexdaily. I mean dyslexia. Fcuk!" Driven to the arms of Heineken by the wife
