Hi Andy

Before you lay out for another set there are a couple of things that might help (- apologies if you know all this already, if we start from scratch it may help someone else later).

Is the end of the stock generously chamfered?

‘Just under 6mm’ – you could make this say, 5.8mm – are these solid dies?

One side of the die will have a tapered ‘lead-in’, usually the lettered side, which must be presented to the work.

Are you holding the work in a lathe or doing it on the bench?

..usually the difference between a cheap set and an expensive set is more to do with durability & accuracy – all things being equal I’d still expect them to cut okay..

Buy as you need. You will find that you only use some of the sizes and just replace them when needed. I tend to buy taps as a 3 part set. Bottom, intermediate and bottoming in HSS. And dies as the split type.

When it comes to cheap sets buy the one in the nicest box!

You know that the odds are you will have to replace the taps and dies that you happen to use with better ones which need to be stored appropriately where you can find them. Nice box keeps everything together and protects the cutting edges.

To be honest cheap set prices in general aren’t unreasonable for a decent box on its own. Taps, dies et al being a bonus. For me making boxes is one off those things I can do but never get round to.

Sometimes you get lucky. Way, way back I got a very cheap set, about £1.50 equivalent then, in an unwonderful box from the Calais Hypermarket when helping the official, unofficial kid sister with a biggie run. Purely because it had a some odd ball sizes that were hard to find then at wallets roundly prices. One of which I needed right then but £15 a tap in UK was scary. Most of the taps were good including all the oddballs.

Which was nice.

Fixed size hex dies have done good service for cleaning up threads on bolts and studs when sorting other folks bodge jobs.

Tap wrench and diestock re-defined the concept of c**p tho’.

Clive

The answer is a Lemon!  As far as I know there is no reliable source of cheap taps and dies of reasonable quality, whatever the hell ‘reasonable quality’ means!

What you get in a cheap set is a gamble, anything from all good to all rubbish.   It depends on the material used, the accuracy of the grind, and the effectiveness of the heat-treatment.    The M4 tap in the set I bought from Lidl snapped like a carrot first time I used it, but – so far – all the others are fine.   Lidl is a good place to buy, because although they know nothing about tools, rubbish can be returned, and the customer doesn’t lose money.   Vevor is an online  ‘box-shifter’, selling almost anything they can source:  they aren’t a tool supplier, and don’t manufacture anything.   The brand is just a label.  Like most other box-shifter products, how well-made Vevor items are varies wildly from good to awful.   Buying cheap is a gamble, making some customers very happy, whilst others are horribly disappointed.

The best way to buy taps and dies depends on the needs of the workshop.   One that cuts a lot of threads should go up-market, and not risk cheap sets.   However, I’m probably closer to Andy in that I don’t cut enough threads to justify spending big money on high-end tooling.    Noting that I consider tools to be consumables, not an investment, I went for this compromise:

1. I standardised as far as possible on Metric, M2, M2.5, M4, M10 and M12, and bought mid-range taps and dies for these sizes.  For me “mid-range” means Tracy Tools, whose taps and dies do what I need at reasonable cost, so far with no embarrassing failures.  However, I don’t believe for one second that Tracy sell the best of all possible taps and dies, and would be prepared to cough up for better if the need arose.  For example, if I had to cut a lot more threads than I do, especially in difficult materials.
2. I bought some cheap sets to cover the occasional need to cut Imperial and Metric threads outside my standard range.  When a tap or die from one of these sets fails, it is replaced with a Tracy.
3. New taps and dies are only used on Brass at first.  When they lose sharpness, they’re transferred to the general-purpose set, because other metals are much less fussy about sharpness.   I find threading mild-steel rapidly blunts my taps and dies, spoiling them for Brass.

Although this balance works for me, it’s not for everyone.  A busy professional workshop would almost certainly be happy to spend big-money on taps and dies because time is money: tools that break or go blunt prematurely are money straight down the drain.   Apart from the annoyance, clearing a broken tap doesn’t cost a hobbyist anything.

No easy answers.  There are two unforgivable sins in engineering: wasting money on expensive stuff that doesn’t get used often enough to deliver value; and wasting money on cheap stuff that can’t deliver.  This being a hobby though, personal opinion matters.  Some delight in filling their workshops with the most expensive tooling they can find (even if it’s never used), whilst others do remarkable work with cheap rubbish!   Most of us are probably in the middle, sometimes gambling on cheap, and sometimes choosing to de-risk jobs by going up-market.

In my experience UK hobby suppliers do a reasonable job selecting mid-range tooling, i.e affordable and not too cheap.  Firms like ArcEuro go to some trouble selecting tools for import in a way that a box-shifter or internet seller doesn’t.   Their overheads push prices up compared with a box-shifter, but make it less likely the customer will be disappointed by the product.  And if a customer is disappointed, a UK hobby supplier will usually offer support.   Generally I buy from them, even though an equally good alternative might be available on the internet – I don’t trust my luck much!

Dave

Firstly a disclaimer, I’ve never used this company.
The Tap and Die Company was often recommended as a source of such stuff, but as far as I’m aware has ceased trading.
Stock seems to have been transferred to an existing Sheffield based cutter manufacturer.
They do singles and boxed sets; Imperial & Metric

Sheffield Cutting Tools Home Page

Bill

I’m on (I think) my second Clarke CHT303 set in about 30 years.

They’re not perfect – I’ve had to grind the point off most of the plug taps so they can bottom in blind holes – but they produce an adequate thread and I’ve found the dies’ll start well enough on silver steel, so should work on mild.

They’re made of something they call ‘tungsten steel’ at Machine Mart, so they obviously daren’t call it HSS, but it doesn’t appear to let down with ordinary bench grinding.

Maybe tap the holes first so you can adjust the die to give the fit you want.

I’d say they’ve given me decent service.

Another vote for Tracy Tools.  No issues with their CS ME taps so far.  Also, they were happy to grind off the chamfer on the reverse side of a die, so that I could thread close to a face without an undercut.

Equally impressive is the suggestion that BA threads are easy to understand and use.

I don’t buy from any of ME suppliers listed above after less than satisfactory experiences. For new I buy from the following:

Drill Service

Avon Tap Die

For odd, or little used, threads, or where the commercial supplies are too expensive, I use Ebay looking for quality manufactuers and ideally NOS.

Andrew

Car boot sales – the tools are normally nicked from some un-suspecting employer who probably bought good quality tools. Caveat:- look at the tools to make sure they are not worn out.

Bob

On 1 July 2024 at 16:38 Wink Hackman Said:

Another vote for Drill Service Horley, but the best taps I have came from Cutwel. Just a joy to use, personally I don’t see any point in saving a few quid only to trash the workpiece or snap the cheapo tap.

On 1 July 2024 at 11:50 Speedy Builder5 Said:

Car boot sales – the tools are normally nicked from some un-suspecting employer who probably bought good quality tools. Caveat:- look at the tools to make sure they are not worn out.

Bob

Your car boot sales are far better than those around here where all the tools look like they were stolen from Chatham Dockyard before it closed and have spent the following forty years buried in a compost heap. I haven’t seen anything worth even picking up to look at, let alone actually spend money on, in years.