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Tools

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corded drill. yes, everyone should own a cordless drill, but i bought a corded drill 2 years ago. i wish i bought one 20 years ago. it just never occurred to me to buy one.

awesome auger. easily breaks through Georgia clay. used it this past weekend with my corded drill. a number of bad reviews from people with wimpy drills, so don't use a wimpy drill.

http://www.amazon.com/Awesome-Auger-...=Awesome+Auger
 
zardthebuilder said:
corded drill. yes, everyone should own a cordless drill, but i bought a corded drill 2 years ago. i wish i bought one 20 years ago. it just never occurred to me to buy one.
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Yeah, I bought my Craftsman corded 3/8" drill in the middle 1970's and still have it. They didn't even have cordless drills at the time, IIRC. My first cordless was a Skill that I bought about 1977, and the battery system was not swappable, at least not without opening up the case! I did replace its rechargeable batteries more than once.

That Skill finally died. I have several cordless drills now and usually reach for one of those, but there are times when the corded one is the one to use, and I do. Those tougher jobs benefit from the extra torque and you don't have to worry about how much power is left in your batteries.
zardthebuilder said:
awesome auger. easily breaks through Georgia clay. used it this past weekend with my corded drill. a number of bad reviews from people with wimpy drills, so don't use a wimpy drill.

http://www.amazon.com/Awesome-Auger-...=Awesome+Auger
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Can you use that Awesome-Auger with a 3/8" corded drill?
 
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zardthebuilder said:
yes, my corded drill is a DEWALT 3/8". i rarely use my cordless drill anymore, because it requires me to plan ahead to charge the battery.
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That's the reason I bought 5 new Versapak batteries recently. It seems like 1/2 the time I reach for one of my Black and Decker cordless tools the batteries are all but dead. Hopefully they'll hold a charge longer than the old ones I've been using.

Self discharge is a big deal for me because I don't use my cordless tools very often. Ni-Cd are supposed to SD about 20%/month and NiMH about 30%/month, at least it used to be that way. I have Eneloop AA and AAA's, and they are NiMH with very slow SD rates, I love them, but I don't know that anything like them exists in the world of cordless tools with proprietary battery packs.

I hear that a lot of the new cordless tools have li-ion batteries. I figure those don't self discharge very much. Is that true?
 
zardthebuilder said:
awesome auger. easily breaks through Georgia clay. used it this past weekend with my corded drill. a number of bad reviews from people with wimpy drills, so don't use a wimpy drill.

http://www.amazon.com/Awesome-Auger-...=Awesome+Auger
Click to expand...
I bought this, was vacillating, it's an iffy proposition. It's one of those seen-on-TV things (I never did), and some of the offers included 18v cordless drills and many people experienced failure of the drill. Lots of folks got hammered by shipping costs. Some people (even at Amazon a few years ago), didn't get all items. The company has lifetime warranty policy on this but people say they are unresponsive to claims.

The current Amazon deal doesn't include a drill.

The hardware itself has mixed reviews. Some are very positive. The complaints (excluding the ones about the drill that comes/came with some offers) are:

Extension too short (have to bend over, ouch my aching back).
The metal is too thin, made in China, breaks too easily.
The welds are superficial and break too easily.
They are clearly not as robust as you might hope for, and that's an understatement. Some people have bought another after the first set broke.

I had some buyer's remorse last night while in bed but then realized that I probably have a great use for it, digging holes for poles to support my vegetable garden trellis systems. Tieing those systems to my neighbor's fence puts too much stress on the fence!
 
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i bought mine 5 years ago off ebay. i must have gotten lucky, because they have taken a beating over the years. slicing thru georgia red clay along with chunks of rocks. if someone got a bad one with thin metal or poor welding, i can see how they can break almost immediately.

i am not aware of too many alternatives for mechanized digging of a small area of rocky clay. i wish i owned these 30+ years ago. i do rent a tiller from home depot for large areas.
 
zardthebuilder said:
i bought mine 5 years ago off ebay. i must have gotten lucky, because they have taken a beating over the years. slicing thru georgia red clay along with chunks of rocks. if someone got a bad one with thin metal or poor welding, i can see how they can break almost immediately.

i am not aware of too many alternatives for mechanized digging of a small area of rocky clay. i wish i owned these 30+ years ago. i do rent a tiller from home depot for large areas.
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I suppose they may have changed them, sounds like the set you got was tougher than some others they've sold. Poking around some online I haven't found another tool like it. I found an interesting Youtube review of it. The review itself kind of sucks IMO, but it shows the tool pretty well and you can see it in action and you can get an idea of its potential uses:

Awesome Auger Review

Here's a cool tool I have. I got it at Grocery Outlet (at the time probably known as Canned Foods), a chain of quasi-supermarket stores that for the most part present cut-outs, stuff that other retailers wanted to get off their shelves for whatever reason. I've never seen a similar tool anywhere or in any store. Over the years I've seen and bought quite a bit of stuff at those markets. It's kind of random, you never know quite what you'll find when you go in there. A lot of the time I visit them (when I happen to be in the neighborhood), I'll stop in and look around and get nothing, or maybe a couple of items. It's mostly food, but they have other things and some hardware. I spotted this meta-rake, an ingenious invention that's really good for moving organic material, turning compost, dragging a pile of debris.

Rake%2B%26%2BContainer.JPG
 
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My dewalt cordless burnt up about 8 years ago.. just been making it work with my corded Milwaukee and Makita drills I've had since the 80's and my vintage AEG hammer drill from Germany that can't seem to be stopped.. finally just broke down and got the 18v Brushless fuel Milwaukee deal Homedepot was running.

Got the drill/driver/hammer, the impact drill and the 6 1/2" circular saw since my brother in-law borrowed my 7 1/4 Skill saw I've had since the 80's and I don't know if I'll ever see it again.

The cordless def makes some tasks so much faster not having to break out the extensions. I missed that for years, but I've just been too cheap and I've hated the quality of cordless for a long time. I hope these brushless don't let me down, I wanted a Festool but my god those are $$$$.
 
My Awesome Auger seems OK. It's actually better constructed than I anticipated from reviews. I took it to my tool lending library and they said I should be careful not to burn out my corded Craftsman drill when using it. He said I could make a series of 6" holes, pour water in them and then deepen them to minimize strain on the drill. I've already used it to remove/control invasive bamboo that continuously comes up in my yard from under my neighbor's fence. I hadn't thought of that when buying it, but it's an obvious use. I have to be careful not to get the corded drill's cord tangled when using it. The drill has a lock-on button, and if it's locked-on it could be a disaster... the cord could be cut by the bit. Also, the drill could burn out when the motor stalls and releasing your finger from the trigger does not shut off the drill if the lock button has been slid into the handle, and that often happens by accident. It happened to me a few times already. Big big caveat.

One of my great tool buys was my Porter Cable Saw Boss. It's lighter/easier to handle than your basic 7 1/4" Skill Saw or equivalent, and you can do 90+% of anything you'd want to do with one. IIRC it uses a 6" blade or smaller.

Maybe my coolest tool, though, is one I made from a motor I bought for $5. It was from a clothes dryer, so they said. From wood I had lying around and parts I bought in hardware stores I constructed a grinder. The motor shaft sticks out on both ends, and on the side opposite the grinding wheel I have a removable arbor to which I can attach various things. With the arbor I can attach drill bits and it works as a horizontal drill press in conjunction with a device I made that keeps the work perpendicular to the bit. Without the arbor I can attach circle saw blades, buffing wheels, circular wire brushes, etc. I constructed an adjustable wooden platform (well varnished!) to use in conjunction with the saw blades that allows me to use this to cut wood, make wooden slats of any dimensions. I made a drill bit sharpener that works with the grinding wheel. This was my first power tool and sits in my work room. Sometimes I take it out into the yard (it has rubber feet on the base) for wood cutting sessions. The motor got to the point where it wouldn't start from a dead stop, so I tug on the grinding wheel to give it some RPM before flicking down the start switch. It works and it is fun to use.
 
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TheSlamma said:
My dewalt cordless burnt up about 8 years ago.. -snip-

I've hated the quality of cordless for a long time.
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I have a couple Dewalt 9.6v cordless drills, I like the way they feel in the hand. The second one I bought is definitely not up the quality of the first, though. They were obviously cutting corners on the more recent ones. The batteries (for the two drills, 4 in total) don't have the capacity they once did but have held up way better than the batteries in my Panasonic EY6406 12v drill/driver, which I bought because of the rave reviews I saw online. I've gotten 10x better service from the Dewalt 9.6v, though, it also feels so much nicer in the hand. The Panasonic batteries hold a tiny fraction of the charge that they are supposed to, but I don't want to be gouged for batteries, so haven't bought replacements.
 
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Muse said:
I have a couple Dewalt 9.6v cordless drills, I like the way they feel in the hand. The second one I bought is definitely not up the quality of the first, though. They were obviously cutting corners on the more recent ones. The batteries (for the two drills, 4 in total) don't have the capacity they once did but have held up way better than the batteries in my Panasonic EY6406 12v drill/driver, which I bought because of the rave reviews I saw online. I've gotten 10x better service from the Dewalt 9.6v, though, it also feels so much nicer in the hand. The Panasonic batteries hold a tiny fraction of the charge that they are supposed to, but I don't want to be gouged for batteries, so haven't bought replacements.
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you are not kidding about battery cost.. this new setup I got has a 3 year warranty on the batteries.. better be considering they are $99 for each one 😱
 
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