Sold my carpet tools but installer who bought them said I was selling a GEM?

I got one with a handle to cut carpet in strips for ride on machine for over 200$, the handle is solid and the bracket is 3/16" steel. Saves me well over 200$

 

Carpet tools are specialty tools so they are all expensive. Some of the tools are cheaper than they used to be but still too much.

 

And yet another reason that carpet should pay more.

@edteach what are you doing now? Just read an article about a retired carpet installer over seas that opened a waffle and ice cream place. Quite the change from crawling around on his knees.

 

Carpet tools are cheap, what you guys talking about. You get them at the pawn shop after Jimmy goes on a bender one weekend and never comes back....

 

That's funny stuff. I used to work for a company that would supply certain tools if the guys didn't have them and darn if some of them didn't still have pawn tags on them. I have always owned all of my tools. I was amazed, and still am, when an installer shows up to work and doesn't own jack shite for tools yet they bitch that they should be the one running the job instead of me. I would tell them that if they left, the job would take me longer but I would still able to complete it. If I left, they would be dead in the water.

 

The pawn shops around here sell or try to sell stuff for too much. 20 years ago I doubled up on all my major tools on ebay but most of that stuff in too much now. Just have to shop and sometimes rarely you can get some cheap tools. Even craigslist sellers are hiking prices for junk.

 

The "glass cutter" is in fact a specialty tool-----used pimarily for C&A (Tandus) glue down commercial carpet and few residential carpet guys would ever need one unless they got into HEAVY commercial installations.

You don't REALLY need a glass cutter even for the C&A. I've got three of them, all of which I got on Ebay dirt cheap. I'm going to sell one today to an apprentice for 50-60 bucks depending on what else he wants to buy.

USED residential carpet tools are ridiculously cheap online, at yard sales or swap meet because ten hundred zillion dummies try their luck at the trade and then give up or otherwise fail. They're not likely to fetch $.25 on the dollar from what they paid IF they bought them retail. That's why I tell all the apprentices to look for used tools. Basically the same applies to stuff like carpentry tools, sheet metal workers, plumbers, electricians........BASIC stuff is easy to find on the cheap if you settle for used and do a little legwork.

 

Its just hard to find tools that are taken care of correctly like out of the rain,snow,huricanes,etc.

 

We don't really have to deal with that here in the desert. Good tools can last forever. It's really noticable from when I moved here how NICE the older cars and trucks hold up compared to the places I used to live where they suffered from the snow, rain, ice and salt. Likewise, toos here left in the back of a pick-up or even on the back patio are not suffering anymore than if you brought them into your living room every night.

So that's a good thing about here.