Go to as many swap meets, trash & treasure markets, charity car boot sales as you can find.
There are always tool merchants with loads of excellent quality tools going for a song because they are not highly polished & chromed enough to be sufficiently sexy for the average villiage idiot to hold in his hand.
Look for tools that are thin but heavy for their size.
These have a high Nickel content and are indicative of high quality forging steel.
Most will not be chromed.
Trash & treasures oft have grandaughters with the entire contents of Pa's shed going for next to nothing and Pa's tools will always be top shelf cause he needed them to be reliable.
You can get a mixed set of spanners from 1/4" to 2" like this for about the same as a single Snap on socket.
Thin side walls and sections make it easy to get into all those wide open spaces you can see, but not get a spanner on to.
Also have a close look at the ring end.
Top quality spanners will have the hole perfectly concentric with the outside of the ring.
Decide weather you are going electric or air early and stick to it.
You must have a compressor, so buy a good one, prefferably a V twin pump with a big tank, again swap meets and church car boot sales are your best resource.
That weird looking thing some ones grandpa cobbled together 50 years ago will be better value than any cheap temporary diverted landfill you can buy at garbage merchants like Harbour Freight.
As you now already have the compressor & you got a big one then air will be your best value for auto wrenches & impact drivers .
Pay the extra and buy a good impact. The ones with several speeds plus a forward & reverse are more useful that ones with adjustment in one direction only.
I have a big unit 1400ft.lbs and there are still some nuts, particularly spindle nuts it won't touch.
Not as sexy as the Milwakie or DeWalt battery stuff, but much more reliable and outstandingly better value.
You will need both deep wall & shallow wall sockets.
Tension wrenches a small one for working in alloy & tensioning swing back blades 0-30 ft.lb range plus the std 10-150 ft.lbs.
Allen keys & Torx keys are most useful as T handles and the longer the better.
A good quality vacuum pump is essential for diagnosing 2 stroke engines as is a spark tester.
I use my ColorTune daily & I strongly advise you buying one.
It will pay for itself in saved time the first week you use it.
To go with the vacuum pump/tester you need a leak down tester and a compression tester is also handy.
You can buy this gear or make it yourself you will find hundreds of home made tool of this type on You Tube.
You can never have too many screwdrivers & pliers and things like long reach pliers and bent pliers are really handy as is spring loaded tweezers and again size matters.
I use a lot of different air dusters in lengths from 1/2" to 4'.
The long one is handy for cleaning grass clippings from inside the frame channels , around spindle pulleys and inside the turret ( on conventional tractors) & gets used most.
A quick method of lifting up a mower is really good, floor jacks just do not cut the mustard.
I have an old pallet yard crane, a modified bumper jack ( we call them Kangaroo jacks) and two chain hoists at various places in the shop & they all get worked hard daily.
One of those portable work benches where the entire top is a vice works well for holding things like chainsaws and line trimmers and again can be bought used for a song.
With a couple of bracket the same can be used to hold push mowers at a convienant height.
A couple of mounting plates that can be clamped into the workbench make working and testing vertical shaft engines easier and ditto for things like hand held earth augers.
Although long term they need to be mounted to something that is bolted down, a couple will be good at start up.
A pipe ( V jaw) vice is handy for similar reasons.
If you are going to do chainsaws then a chain grinder, chain splitter & rivet spinner will also pay for themselves in no time flat.
I now have 3 chain grinders 2 fitted with diamond wheels for cutters and one with a std wheel for depth stops.
Most of the chain customers drop off the chain on their way home & pick it up in the morning via a drop box and I now do near 300 chains a season. ( $10 each )
Trade customers are GOD.
I now do nearly all of the lawn & garden tradies who live in my area , about 22 of them.
They don't get discounts on my time but do get discounts on parts as they order so much I get a big total spend discounts from my suppliers & can justify buying trade packs of a lot of parts so make it up with the extra margin to my domestic customers.
Trade customers get overnight servicing as comparred to 1 to 2 weeks turn around in season from the glass front shops and for them reduced down time is much more valuable than any "trade discount" offered.
SO remember you are a SERVICE industry and are there to provide a SERVICE and you will do well, even if that means working 14 hour days in season or even giving some customers after hours access to your shop.
My 5 best customers have keys and if I am not available help themselves to whatever parts they need so I don't have to be there at 4 am when they are on their way to their first job.
On the subject of parts, they are vital and try to keep good stock of what your trade customers use. If a trade customer want's it, you keep it. I have genuine Kohler filters for one & genuine B & S for another, because that is what they want. Having the right belts & blades in stock is oft the difference between adding them to a routine service or loosing the sale all together and those couple of extra dollars add up very quickly.
Currently my stock of parts is running around $ 20,000.
Every time I need a service part for a customer I buy 2 so I end up with a parts store customised to my customers machines.
This goes as far as complete engines, particularly Courage's which are prone to cracking the crankcase.
They get a new engine replaced for about 20% less than buying the engine alone from a glass front & I keep the old one so end up with "free" cranks, carbies & starters.
