In January 2005, a Hong Kong conglomerate called Techtronic Industries paid $626.6 million for Milwaukee Electric Tool, a respectable second-tier American brand best known for its Sawzall reciprocating saws. Twelve years later, in a deal completed in March 2017 , Stanley Black & Decker paid roughly $900 million for Craftsman, a respectable American brand that had spent its entire existence as a label glued onto other people's tools at Sears. Two acquisitions of comparable size in adjacent decades, by two large industrial holdings, of two recognizable American power-tool names. On paper, the same playbook. In practice, the first one made the brand bigger and better. The second one made it smaller and worse. The receipts for both are public. What TTI did Techtronic Industries bought Milwaukee and, by every visible indicator, left it alone in the ways that mattered. The R&D group stayed in Brookfield, Wisconsin. The engineering team stayed in place.…