How To Evaluate 123 Blocks- USA Made vs. Imported
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- čas přidán 29. 08. 2024
- We received so many emails regarding our last video on 123 blocks that we felt the need for some additional information. We want to show what the differences are on video as there seems to be a lot of confusion out there regarding the holes. They are supposed to bolt together.
www.subtool.com
I have no experience with what Suburban Tool Inc sells. But I can only thank Mr. Don for all the knowledge he shares. ... And for free ... THANK YOU !
+Saadk Ali Thanks for watching. We love giving back to the community that has been very good to us. If you would like to see what we make you can go to our website and check it out. www.subtool.com
suburban tool makes the finest of tools on the market for the toolroom! They are second to none!
As a home hobbyist, I only have a few dollars here and there to sacrifice on tooling. I bought two set of cheap Chinese 123 block and was shocked to find that bolts didn’t pass through the other holes. I had never used high end 123 blocks and didn’t know that the better block the bolts do pass through the clearance holes. I so glad I watched your video before I tried something dumb.
Thank you for watching!
Came across one of your tools at NYCCNC's / Saunders Machine Works open house this past weekend. Nice stuff, and a really nice shout out from John. Thanks for taking the time to create, edit & post your vids; they're really helpful to someone like me that's only had limited opportunity to work around highly skilled tool room craftsmen. The CZcams metalworking community is great and generous group, thanks for being a part of it.
YCM30cnc Thank you for watching. How did John's open house go?
The Open House @ NYC CNC's shop was great, really cool to see a non-traditional shop guy start up and make a living using current technology and resources in his back yard. Thanks to you for adopting the CZcams avenue; I've heard of / seen Suburban Tool in different places (catalogs I think) before, but never realized that you were a domestic manufacturer. Really nice to be able to put a face to it, and especially cool to see your level of enthusiasm for your products and the generosity to participate in small shop activities like NYC CNC's by donating. Two thumbs up.
Funny cause i bought those import blocks from shars and being a hobby machinist i was so confused as to what those non-threaded holes were for if i couldn't get a bolt through it. Thanks for the clarification!
Mr Bailey,
I am but a lowly welder and I can remove part of the mystery of the import 123 blocks for you.
Silly welders use them for putting things into place so we can melt them. Rarely would I bolt them together, and when I would I end up using Bessy style clamps for speed.
I would love to have a set of your 123 blocks... I would put them in my tool box next to my set of B&S micrometers. They would remain there until I had some reason to use them, Of which I would maybe once a year (if that). If my welded part has to leave my table with tolerances of 1/64" on any feature someone is getting cussed out(under my helmet) as I try and figure out how to make it happen...
It's out of respect and care that I refrain from using fine 123 blocks in my work, as electricity (and heat in general) likes to jump from work piece to block with very little regard to the blocks well being. I'll take a picture of a few of my imports to show you the abuse they endure.
For $20 a pair no one will cry if the arc skips off the part and chews the corner away...
I do enjoy your videos and have learned quite a bit from them. Thank you for sharing your skills and experience.
Clif
The Welder
Hello Mr Bailey, thank you for all the informative videos. The 11 holes do look good, I just ordered a pair, I look forward to using them.
Hi Don, the cost of manufacturing is very high! Example, my interapid indicator cost me $39.00 back in 1960, today, it is $399.00, ten times, yet my wages never went 10 times higher!
The reason for the lack of clearance is that the design decisions were made by an accountant and not a machinist.
Very possible.
Great video showing how you can get what you pay for!
I was wondering where those blocks came from and why in the world they were like that. I've showed it to people and they've looked at me like I got two heads. I'm with you Don I don't know how some one can't understand something so basic.
It does save a step in the manufacturing process since they don't have to change out the drill bit for clearance holes. Still, it reduces their versatility to minimum. I would like to find some that can pass the head of a SHCS in the through holes so you could bolt them together without the screw head protruding from a surface. The imports are little more than paper weights.
Don;
You just saved me from buying that junk.
Thanks!
Mark
I use 2 sets of import 2-4-6 blocks from different sources for milling and its the exact same bloody thing. 5/8 threads with 5/8 holes that destroy any bolt you try and push through. I spent an hour with a pencil grinder trying to grind off all the hardened burrs riddled through the core.
It may be that the clearance holes are for bolting the Block to the work table, and threaded holes are for bolting something to the 1-2-3 Block itself.
But even at that, the point is made. The other designs seem to make so much more sense.
Being new to machining. .... I could not understand why either. It just didn't make sense to me why the through holes didn't mate with the threaded, and this explains it perfectly. What a waste of holes!!!
A waste indeed, but you get what you pay for ;)
Love your channel. Just wish your products were more available in the uk
I will say the cheapie import blocks are good if your model making and just need something to hold stuff RELATIVELY square... then imports are fine. Also if you say need spacers for a saw or something where you do not want to risk damaging NICE blocks... their fine. Otherwise I am with you on the useless clearance holes. Maybe it is good hard material drilling experience for the end person?
My first blocks were like this - I did not realize until I had them in my hands that they couldn't be fastened together as I had seen people doing - boy was I pissed at Enco! (and yet, I wish they were back - oh well).
And most aren't square. I made threaded inserts so I could bolt them together with smaller bolts.
Thank You so much...
Hi! I ain't a machinist but I'm looking to get a pair of 123's for general use. After checking Suburban Tool's web store, I saw1-2-3 blocks that DON'T bolt together, the Value Series. Why make those? Thanks for the nice video!
4 years later... **crickets chirping**
I would have liked to see how square and parallel they both were.
I suspect you would have another reason to promote domestic products.
Once I purchased a steel square (imported) it was off .020 in one inch.
Most plastic ones are better quality.
No quality control other than the customers checking them out when new.
Thanks for the rant...
I bought a second hand bet of Brown and Sharp 123 blocks and they were made like the imports. I don't know where they were made but they came in a plastic blow molded case if that shows their age. I wondered the same thing, how can you use these threaded holes if the included bolts don't fit through?
Nice review, most of those cheap blocks are not square, so they don't want you to bolt them together.
Review?!? This is a infomercial comparing their product with the cheapest crap they could find, aka bullshit! Even the chinese make really good 123 block, you just have to pay for it like any other quality tool.
Thank you, learned something.
Please don't confuse legitimate high standard factories from Europe Japan or even Russia with the PRC ones.
My shop we use them for putting parts on top of when we put them in machines. For matchplates we usually have fixtures, but if we don't or they're already in use, how else are we going to hold them above the table? They have features on both sides. Then there's coreboxes, which get drilled through most of the time anyway, so they're always on blocks too.
I would vote to ask people to refrain from buying overseas and employ people here while receiving extremely superior products and be able to be patriotic.
Cheers
Hi Dave,
I would just like to throw something at you.................As a Canadian fellow, I love to buy American, Canadian, German, Japanese, you name it. The good stuff, were work is dignified and the folks aren't treated like crap (this is changing though). If I can't afford it, I go to craigslist/kijiji/or ebay so I can afford a functional second hand one at a discount. However, I would gladly buy a Chinese product or a Nigerian product (if those exsist) etc, if it was of quality, the workers weren't treated like garbage, and it was at a competitive price to help lift them out of poverty.....................and not flood our markets with cheap crap, which is somewhat affordable, and doesn't do much good for the Chinese or Nigerian fellow trying to feed his family.
The problem is globalism, crony capitalism and a race to BRING EVERYONE DOWN.
The quality of Canadian products has gone down the crapper as of late, I work as an engineer in the Greater Toronto Area, and I can't begin to tell you how badly the "bottom-line-only" mentality is affecting the working individuals.
+Dave Prototype Sure great way to get twice the quality for ten times the price
SuburbanTool Inc
Thanks for your videos.
I'm just getting started & trying to teach myself on a very low budget so most of my stuff is ether home made by myself, bought at flee marker, or China/Taiwan built.
I watched your video on 1-2-3 blocks last night but I was 2 weeks to late watching it. I got my Chinese blocks last week. When I got home to check then out to see if mine were like you said I found that sure enough they were as useless as you said. I'll still get some function out of them but one of my needs was a angle block. I guess I'm only out $20 but I'd rather had known in advance to have put that towards the ones built correctly. I guess I'm back to the plan of building my own. I'll try to build them to mate with these so I'll have two sets.
Actually just found a way that they may still be used. Assuming that they are to hard to drill the through holes I'm going to try some studs turned down small enough to go through the hole & a nut on top. The two inch side has to be stacked against the three inch side.
I have wondered about this forever
And no importer ever fixes it. Crazy
Garry Foster I still haven't checked the hardness of them to see if I can redrill them. If I can't I'm going to make some bolts to be able to bolt them down but I'm concerned they won't be rigged enough.
Every one I have tried have been hardened. Heat and you lose any accuracy they have. It is crazy and every one I have seen have been made this way and people have talked about the problem for 20 years.. I think they drill them all with the tap drill then thread some of the holes harden the block and then surface grind to dimension. Why no importer has tried to fix this is one of the worlds best kept secrets.. I know several of them make trips to China and manage to get certian machine problems resolved but a piece of metal.. Nah can"t be bothered..
Lol. It is crazy. I can't even bolt mine to my table. The holes are too small. You'd think they could at least make through holes.
Never knew that! Thanks
Don,
I completely agree with your stance on "China-Specials" as far as tools or machines go.
Tools made in Quagon-Ding-Dong have their place, but precise they are not.
Now... the way you state this (and some others of our American Brethren) it seems you do not make a distinction between the Chinese stuff and the European toolmakers of old.
It would be nice to hear, from time to time, that us Europeans are also capable of making superb quality gear, especially since some European producers are doing this sort of work, since before there was even talk of a 'United States'
Cheers
Paddy
+gh778jk Good point, and you're absolutely right. We'll make sure to provide proper accolades for our European friends across the pond in the future.
right on the money immigrants from europe made america, was this a commercial. goedendag
They did it like that so they were not going to be accused of copying, The fact they don't work is purely incidental. :>(
God bless Poland.
I always thought those holes were for weight reduction, ha ha. Think of all the metal shavings that gets recycled.
Everything has its place and for the price they're hard to resist for mill work. Let the Chinese produce things like this all they want. Saves me a bunch of time and money. I can't buy the metal for what they sell some of their stuff for. I have two sets each of the solid and ones with holes. Both sets are made in China at less than $40 each and are well within .0002 in both squareness and size and that's fine for what I use them for. I've never had a use for the tapped holes or a reason to the join the blocks together. But I don't use them for precision surface grinding nor inspection. I use mine mostly as parallels in the mill. The solid ones are nice as they don't fill up with chips or coolant.
I also have a set of 2,4,6 and 2,3,4 blocks that I got cheap somewhere years ago for 20% of what Suburban sells them for. I probably would have never bought them if I had to pay what Suburban wants for theirs. Suburban makes and sells great stuff, I have a large number of items from them and love them, but simple tools for mill work I can make do with the Chinese stuff and not feel guilty about it. Don't mean to offend, just being practical.
No offense taken. The points you have detailed are just a few of the reasons we carry our imported Value Line, as well as our precision ground products that we make at home. For certain applications, the imported tools work just fine! But when it comes to precision grinding or inspection, they're not going to match up to the precision ground tools. Thanks for leaving us a message, and thanks again for watching!
It really is inexplicable, though, why they wouldn't just drill the holes larger. They would have even more chips to recycle if they did!
cheap vs expensive, simple as that, nothing to do with our superior metric system!!!! (just kidding about superior, sort of. here in the UK we use both. also, love your tools, wish I could afford them for my home shop, lol)
I have ran into this problem when running machinery at work they buy it because it is cheap to buy 30 of them at once
It's an excellent product, but the Suburban ones cost four times as much. I'd love to find one with properly-sized holes for reasonable money.
Yes, but they should last a lifetime.
I think it has to do with, people want the one with the most option. Not knowing what for.
Thanks, You just saved me some money from not buying china crap!!
Great, thank you for watching.
I bought a new pair of new "Brown & Sharp" 123 blocks on ebay & they cannot be bolted together!. I am not a toolmaker I'm a fitter & turner & did not know that they should be bolted together!
I thought "Brown & Sharp" were top shelf... Evidently not so... Thanks for the education...
Peter Spence...
+Peter Spence Same happened to me. B&S used to be a great American tooling company but they were sold off to a Swiss conglomerate. I too bought a set of B&S "ultra precision" blocks. The blocks are accurate but the threads and holes are junk. Half the threads are buggered up and burred up, and don't line up when bolted together, and since they're case hardened, you can't retap them by hand and it's not worth my time to threadmill them true.
I have a feeling they're just generic imports and B&S quadruples the price after laser engraving their name on it...
+Syng Stripetail
Same here. Probably same type B&S blocks you bought! I assumed (stupid me) that they could be bolted together... Definitely a huge WTF! Moment when I got them and found out the "clearance" hole doesn't clear jack.
Unfortunately, most home machinists can’t afford the really great tools Suburban and other top makers offer, and that’s why these cheap tools exist. I know, these can be bought by themselves. But then, what about all the rest? One tool might be saved up for, but overall, which tools should be top notch, and which not? That can be a hard decision to make for many people.
Very true but remember what John Ruskin said. "It's unwise to pay too much...but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.
Can you just drill them for clearance?
They would have to drilled prior to being hardened. Thank you for watching.
So Don - why are your Suburban Value Line 123 blocks clearance holes under size?
+Zander Kale The value line products are imported and are not our design. Our 123 blocks that we make here in our factory do bolt together.
While I am happy with the Suburban import 123 blocks, I think you really missed an opportunity to put value into Value! Please don't dilute the Suburban brand with short sighted decisions; I know I'll view the Value line in a differnt light.
+Zander Kale The value line is imported and we make that clear on our website. The USA made Suburban products are our designs and made here in our factory. Some people need the functionality and tolerance consistency of the USA line and some do not. We offer both to give our customers a choice.
+SuburbanTool Inc I apologize - I misread "imported" to mean "our design, our spec/tolerance, manufactured elsewhere", not as "our name, their product"
+SuburbanTool Inc Why not present it that way in the video then?
"We import these. Understand that we ensure their accuracy, but they don't have the functionality of our precision blocks. Let me show you what precision blocks are intended to do. If you don't need this functionality, the value blocks might be for you."
I surely hope the value blocks are verified (because I bought them), though something tells me they do not go through QC at Suburban. Globally sourced, finished in the USA. Square within .0002, flat and parallel within .0002, held to size within .0002. But how could you know unless you're paying someone to put them through QC checks?
Is it true that they are made as a set?
Suburban Tool blocks are made as a set, imported blocks are made in a batch.
Argh. Mine are Chinese junk. Maybe I can wrap sandpaper around them and sand things with them?