Another vote for Sears’ ratcheting wrenches!
The matching sockets are also great. At first glance they may seem redundant when you already have a set of normal sockets. But since the ratcheting box-ends fit around them instead of in line you end up with a lower overall profile than with a standard ratchet/socket; really nice in tight quarters.
And or course, they’re all forged with the initials U.S.A.
And speaking of tight quarters, I made a point to get the ones with the reversing lever, not the “flip over to reverse” style.
Imagine for a moment that you’ve wedged yourself in some painfully awkward position to cram your hand into some ridiculously tight space to use your marvelous ratcheting wrench to remove a fastener from some evil little corner. Further imagine that after merrily spinning said fastener with your marvelous ratcheting wrench you find that you’ve backed it into the wall of that evil corner before it came out and that you really needed to remove something else before attempting that fastener.
What do you do? You simply spin it back in right? No problem, just flip the little lever, <span style="font-style: italic">if</span> the wrench has one. If not, well let’s see, fastener wedged against a wall, need to remove the box end wrench and flip it over, uh, um, errrr...
If you want a set and you’re not in an immediate hurry, don’t forget that Sears’s pricing is pretty fluid, especially now. They’re really working the cash flow and seem to have a different sale every few days. I bought mine after a couple months of checking back any time I saw a sale announcement and finally bit when the price seemed to hit bottom (and before it jumped up again).
pc.