I see now that "China" was never mentioned as a source, my bad.
In my work the heat numbers with all chemistry included came across my desk for snap-on, stanley, craftsman and others (1981-1991). We in-house destruct tested all. The testing for Snap-on was also not just for the heat lot, but, for each ingot. Snap-on demanded only electric furnace steel and all test samples per ingot sent with the coil: each end of a coil, tensile tested. cut, mounted, polished and etched looking for inclusions and spheroidized anneal no carb or de-carb and others). We bought a lot of high quality steel from various sources, then shipped to the manufacture after processing.
I'm sure that other suppliers were used by these manufactures with similar quality standards.
I have some Klein pliers from the 70's as well. Made here in Chicago some of the best tools ever.
Quality control for some is not just a slogan. I have many German and Japanese tools of excellent quality, but, someone always has to be the first to set the bar.
Last edited by kmeyers; 07-03-2023 at 06:43 AM.