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I am looking for Transfer punches

chriscodisco

Plastic
Joined
Mar 19, 2017
Looking for transfer punches. I want made in USA metric size. Usually buy Starrett stuff or Brown and Sharpe but, I am having a lot of difficulty finding it online. Any reputable sets that fulfill my buying needs?
 
Go to Harbor Freight, that's where my metric ones came from. I put them in a hole and hit them with a hammer, they make a mark on the work. Problem solved.

I spent what I'd saved from buying a US brand that's made in China anyway on cheap wine and hookers. I still have the transfer punches ... the hookers shot through years ago.
 
Looking for transfer punches. I want made in USA metric size. Usually buy Starrett stuff or Brown and Sharpe but, I am having a lot of difficulty finding it online. Any reputable sets that fulfill my buying needs?

Michigan is still in the USA. Go make them.

Cheating to start with a metric drill-blank set, "OCD" to start with a metric pin-gage set, but decent sets of either are cheap enough that no one will actually give a s**t either way that you've modified them.

Not as if they were vintage Cadillac Pla-Check gages, Weber Croblox, or tri-lobed bore micrometers, after all.
 
I spent what I'd saved from buying a US brand that's made in China anyway on cheap wine and hookers. I still have the transfer punches ... the hookers shot through years ago.

Don't skimp on the hookers! None from Bangkok! Pay for Homegrown! Don't want the itchy duct tape pee pee. Pete forgot to mention that.

I'd look on Ebay to see if I could find and old set of punches?

Brent
 
Don't skimp on the hookers! None from Bangkok! Pay for Homegrown! Don't want the itchy duct tape pee pee. Pete forgot to mention that.

Yes but I get two for the price of one in Bangers. Imagine how many hookers I could get if he wanted both a metric and an imperial set of US made transfer punches! :drool5:
 
My made in China set had a couple break due to what likely was improper heat treating. The little "tit" broke off and it was easier to make replacements from drill rod than to anneal, turn, and re-treat the made in China POS. Others in the set held up well and on close examination the set seems to have been made in different "factories". I put that in quotes because from what I understand much manufacturing in China is of the cottage industry type.

One trick that works well is to buy some decent sets of transfer screws so for special jobs you can turn a "punch" from any rod and tap it to suit. Then the transfer screw can be turned in as much as needed to keep it from touching the work before the shaft of the punch is even in the whole to be transferred. I find the design of most stock punches sucks for holes in thin panels. The homemade ones work better and can be "re-pointed" by mounting another transfer screw as needed.
 
You mean to tell me that there's Harbor Freight in Oz ? That's a troubling thought...:(

I'm afraid not. I wish there was, as I sometimes need a fix of cheap Chinese rubber smell to remind me as to why I buy quality tools!

Instead of HF, we get worse quality at 2-3 times the price, often more.

I spent a lot of time in the US, hence why I have so much HF crap. Often it serves its purpose and will be good enough. For example I have a HF deadblow hammer, cost me about 3 bucks with a coupon IIRC. It gets used constantly and works just as well as the $20-30 one I'd buy here. The HF transfer punches I have are fine, and I have both metric and imperial. Like any cheap tool you have to be conservative with them. Transfer punches are the equivalent of prick punches, so should be struck accordingly. They are NOT centre punches, and anyone who is breaking the tips off them probably needs a lesson in punch use. They are a marking tool, designed to be followed up by a centre punch, and you tap them just hard enough to leave a decent mark.
 
Screw transfer punches. Use a spray can. You can get all of the holes marked and as a bonus you get a nice outline of your part !!
 
I'm afraid not. I wish there was, as I sometimes need a fix of cheap Chinese rubber smell to remind me as to why I buy quality tools!

Instead of HF, we get worse quality at 2-3 times the price, often more.

I spent a lot of time in the US, hence why I have so much HF crap.

More time in the small villages of the UK, Germany, Scandihoologa, France, Italy, Switzerland wudda served you better!

Got too old and too married to chase strange p***y, could only eat or drink but so much local food, wine, or beer, the time had come to scout lovely old-style tools instead!

'94, C&W Plc HQ picking up the tab, I had Angel Case ship close to a hundred pounds of good-old ENGLISH MADE hand tools back to the USA for me. Most had become 'shelf queens', no longer in demand even in the UK, whole generations of young folks having decide to become dole-drones or "Merchant Bankers" of one sort or another instead of honest craftsmen..

My most beloved of drills and countersinks were picked up on periodic visits to Thalwill, near Zurich.

The way so many hand tools have been HF-ized, stateside, I suspect one could nowadays do better in the Czech Republic or Bulgaria.

The better Hong Kong shops keep the 'good stuff' - German, Japanese, Korean, even still a few US-made brands, segregated from the "PRC made" equivalents. It still sells well at a multiple of what they ask for 'mainland' goods.

Countermen look at a "Gweilo" customer as if he had two heads if he picks the Chinese stuff instead of an import. Chinese may be hungry enough to MAKE all the s**t Walmart or HF cares to order, but they ain't yet stupid enough to USE it at home.
 








 
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