Guy on my crew swore by a $12 brick tongs from Harbor Freight and I called it junk for 2 years
I ran a 3 man crew on a subdivision in Mesa back in 2021 and one of my guys kept showing up with this cheap pair of brick tongs he got for like $12. I gave him hell about it almost every day because I figured anything that cheap was gonna snap on the first course and send block into somebody's shin. We were laying about 400 block a day on those garage walls and he never once dropped a unit, while my fancy $70 tongs from the supply house needed the spring replaced twice that same summer. After he quit I borrowed his pair for a patio job and ended up buying my own set the next week, they still work fine 3 years later. The handle grip is garbage and you gotta check the rivets every month but the steel itself holds up better than stuff that costs 5 times as much. What cheap tool did you swear was trash until you actually put hands on it?