IS NOTHING MADE IN THE WEST ANYMORE

[Bob Womack]

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Bob

[TDH]

Many years ago when I was getting started in the welding fabrication trade the company I worked for got in some Japanese steel because? It was half as expensive. The problem was we couldn't weld the stuff. We tried different gas and wire combinations and dozens of different rods and the weld kept cracking out. The solution. Japanese welding rod that had to be special ordered. We used up that batch of steel and never ordered it again. the boss had a chunk of it framed with a couple of the rods in tribute to futility. Maybe some of the Americans here will remember the days when we said if it doesn't say made in the U.S.A. don't buy it. Rumor had it they changed the name of the Manufacturer to USA (without the periods) So it was made in USA. How many of those cheap transistor radios made in USA we went through in the late fifties and early sixties.

[browningautorifle]

How many of those cheap transistor radios made in USA we went through in the late fifties and early sixties

Because they were something new, small and light and cute. Then one day they'd just stop working...then shops sprung up to repair that sort of thing. Now those are all gone because they changed the technology again so it's too expensive to repair, just replace.

[CINDERS]

There have been all sorts of quality problems with "cheap" imported metals in recent years

I was a safety superintendent where we built a Magnetite processing plant for a Chinese consortium (Australia is good at selling itself literally) it had 16,000 tonnes of structural steel which came in sealed 40 foot containers it was bent all over the place the columns some had been butt joined & welded (pieces) with what looked like a runny nose weld, the paint we could not get an MSDS when welding it for toxic fumes so all welders had air feds on, cleats were on wrong, fishplates did not fit and they sent the top steel of the magnetic screening plant first. And this is structural steel.......................
The 75 Tonne pedestal crane they had on the ROM pad to change out the 70 tone cone for the primary crusher folded the boom when it did a test lift of 70 tonnes the plate steel for the boom was only 10mm instead of 25mm T-1 steel who ever passed that crane I hope they got in the sh*te thank goodness no one was injured the new cone was un-damaged I had left by that stage thank goodness as tracking it back to China would have been fun for the investigation team.