I got a small air compressor from HarborFreight. Its been great! Portable, so i could power it up and chuck it in the car to help a friend with a flat spare. Blowing out the heater every winter. Cleaning tools. You can use it to do small projects with air tools around the house.
Is it one of those small red pancake compressors? Yeah, those aren't bad for small projects, and they're simple enough that they're not going to break down unless you abuse them, but it does get annoying how little pressure they hold. Hard to really airdust a room with one all at once because the tank will need to recharge after a few minutes of spraying, but it's nice to never need a can of compressed air again. Always remember to release all the air from your compressor when you're done. Having your compressor under pressure when it's not in use is bad for the unit.
HarborFreight has a 10 dollar angle grinder that Im about to buy, i have some yard tools that i need to sharpen.
Eh, unless you're just wanting to try out a new tool or just need one for a specific project, I'd stay away from anything that has a motor and comes from Harbor Freight. That 10 dollar price point also sounds suspiciously like Chicago Electric, a legendarily bad manufacturer. Only buy those knowing some Chinese bugman who values human life at about a $1.50 assembled it with only the most tenuous grasp of electrical circuits and motor stress limits.
I get that it's fun to talk about how "they just don't make em like they used to" but it really is true. When my grandfather passed, I claimed his old ass lathe, table saw, and ancient power tools, along with a whole cabinet full of hand tools.
For corded tools, I more or less agree. Every major brand now is "assembled in America" from cheap Chinese manufactured parts, so finding a power drill from when manufacturing quality was prized is an amazing find. Old cordless power tools are just garbage, though. Those nickel cadmium batteries leech power the moment you take them off the charger, and every unit had its own proprietary battery that you'd be lucky to have it work for a slightly different tool of the same brand. All the major manufacturers really hit it out of the park when they introduced their lithium ion lines. All the tools use the same battery pack. No more having to fret over which batteries you need and which ones use what charger, you just have a bag of batteries with one charger and all your tools and that's it. You also never have to constantly charge lithium ion packs. I can leave a pile of charged lithium ions in a box for months and they'll be at the same level as I left them when I pick one up and slap it in my recip-saw. They're a great investment that build upon itself. I like Dewalt personally, but I've handled Craftsman and haven't had them explode in my hands, so they're pretty good for the price point. The lithium ion lines are not interchangeable between brands, though, so if you start with Craftsman, you'll have to buy all new batteries if you want to mess around with another brand.
I buy stuff from HF with the expectation that I'll treat it like shit and inevitably wreck it.
I tend to do this with drill bits, too. I'll pick up a hammer or a prybar from HF as well, but I'm also that psychopath who purchases full-tang Estwing hammers because I want to use the same hammer for 40 years. I have a rubbergrip Estwing I got from my dad, and I'm pretty sure he got that from his dad, and the thing is indestructible. There's something to be said for ponying up the extra $20 on a simple tool knowing you won't have to buy it the next 5 times you would have if you picked it up at Harbor Freight, but it's something where you definitely need to be responsible for your tools if you want to implement it. You can't just be leaving a $30-40 hammer out in the rain, that ruins the investment. A little mantra I picked up to keep my tools nice and never lost is "Don't put it down, put it away."
