I have lived from some time with a cheap and cheerless 18v portable drill. Pretty good when the battery was charged, but the battery didn't last very long, and I drained a battery just doing the floor of my "boat shed".
Then I came across this Makita cordless impact driver set
. It's a world apart from my old toy cordless. The quality is obvious in just handling it. The impact driver easily belts screws into solid oak without any of the usual ruining of the screw heads. And I got it up in the US for less than half the price of buying it in Europe. Add a €20 transformer and off you go.By the way - why are power tools so much cheaper in the US? Who's making a small fortune on the ones sold here in Ireland?
Hey Dave... Nice toy. This might sound a little odd at first but, when I only had my first cordless drill, a Ryobi 14.4 volt, I thought I was in heaven (sort of speak). After I really started getting involved in the drill, countersink, drive screw process, I became impatient pretty fast with having to drill, change bit, drive screw, change bit again, drill, change bit... one screw at a time to make sure that everything would line up properly (the holes). I went shopping for another drill and bought the Ryobi 18 volt cordless model. Now, one driver loaded with a drill and countersink bit and the other loaded with what ever bit I'm using to drive my screws and I'm off.... two drivers side by side... just set one down and grab the other one... work goes a lot faster and I'm not developing blisters from re-chucking a different bit every 30 seconds. And I got it on sale at Home Depot (a common home repair store here in the states) for $ 39.00 dollars U.S. and it even came with the charger and an 18 volt 5 1/4" circular saw too.
ReplyDeleteNice Boat Shed too ! I built one of those once... not so nice though. Looking forward to more pic's and notes on your boat... see ya ;)
I was fist introduced to makita back in the 80's when I worked in theatre. even the "7" volt batteries then meant hours of good solid work and reliability! I still have it. Alas I need to find a source for the old batteries, otherwise I use a 14.4v black and decker currently. The impact aspect of the makita you bought sounds good for those oak frames. I am sure having more than one drill gun will be very handy when I eventually get around to boat building!
ReplyDeleteGreg, I came across a web site a while back for a company that takes apart power tool batteries and replaces the cells inside with new high quality cells.
ReplyDeleteMight be worth scouring the net for such a company if you still have the old battery and it's just worn out...
D
I'll have to do a google search this weekend!
ReplyDelete