On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 21:44:33 -0700 (PDT), Tim
wrote:

On Apr 20, 11:18?pm, george wrote:
On Apr 21, 3:17 pm, wrote:

The Chinese ones were $1.20 for a dozen while the USA made ones at Ace
were $1.10 EACH. ?Yeah, I got ripped off but I needed them NOW and
will not put chinese crap on my boat.

At those prices you get a dozen against one.
That means one with 11 replacements
In the real world the Chinese fittings are no better or worse than any
made in any other country..

That's true, but the diffeence is in the quality of steel.

I have found that out the hard way with Heavy diesel armature shafts.

Even if you get them with heat treated splines, they still bend,
twist, or break.

I don't think the chinese know what a "Rockewell Standard" is...

Hey, that reminds me. Spent my first few years out of the Navy as a
heat treater at IH. The bull work, not the technical or QC part.
But we understood it had to be done according to the process.
Heating, quenching, drawing. Sometimes carbonizing with compound.
Hot job!
Later I was in Oregon and got a job at Beaverton Heat Treating, which
was a newly started operation out in the sticks. The owner liked me,
and started mentoring me right off on the technical end.
He was disappointed when I told him I was leaving after 2 weeks,
and I felt so bad for him I told him he could keep my pay, which was
on 2 week holdback. Didn't feel I'd earned it, given his efforts with
me and the actual work I'd done. But he insisted on paying me.
Nice guy, and I hope he made it work. Pretty sure he did.
What got me to quit was the vats of molten cyanide, and boredom with
the work. He had mostly small lot orders and too much dead time,
making it boring. That cyanide ain't pretty, and when you have dead
time you get to thinking about it.
At IH I did many tons of metal a day and had salt stains down to my
socks from sweating so I never got bored. And no cyanide.
But proper heat treating is critical, though most people never think
about it. Need lots of "attention to detail."

--Vic