Power Tools

Its better to get the tools when you need them. Its really no use just going out and buying all this crap if you are not going to use it. In fact I would approach all tool purchases like this, buy them when you need them, and then you will be building up your own arsenal of tools that you use and need.

Example, some people dont want to do their own plumbing. Granted its a shitty job, but the basics you should be able to do on your own, unless you like paying plumbers $$$ for stupid shit like a sink is leaking or a trap gets busted and leaks. And this shit usually happens on a Sunday night, plumbers best payday, lol. Well you buy the parts and replace them. Then you find out that you might need a pipe cutter or some larger channel locks that can fit around 2 1/4" pipes. So you go and get the shit and then you have it for next time.

Some shit its just better to rent as well. Like say you do some tile work or something and you need a wet saw. Or you're working on a deck or something and you need a table saw for some rips.

Some people just hire everything out as well and have shit for tools because they dont need them. It really depends on how you take care of shit.

Edit: reading back, Cutlery pretty much covered the above.

BrutulTM_sl said:

What he said is that when Dewalt got bought by black and decker they went cheap and started using plastic gears, cheap parts etc.

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I honestly don't know about that, maybe maybe not. I had an 18v cordless drill/hammerdrill from ~1998 that I had absolutely beat to hell and abused, finally have sparks and flame shoot out from the motor while drilling up through roof decking into an RTU (and I got lucky that when I dropped it - because it got super hot - that it landed on the scissor lift and not the buildings floor). So I'd def be on the side that prior to recently their stuff has lasted nigh forever. And this was a drill that I'd forgotten and left on a rooftop over the weekend and it rained and rusted, dropped a bajillion times, used with bits that it was way too small for, etc.

My new cordless set, I didn't get a hammerdrill option (most employers supply spline hammerdrills anymore) but what I did get I'm still mostly happy with. Particularly with the cordless impact - it's very nice when I have to put 100 sheet metal screws into steel studs or something similar, as opposed to a standard cordless drill. It is also much lighter, so I can stuff it into my tool belt/harness (which is usually already way too heavy) without feeling like I put a cinderblock in there. My only complaint so far was with the cordless drill chuck. I guess it is an improvement over the old metal dewalt chucks in that the old metal ones were a bitch to get tight and they would tend to come loose, but this new one with plastic....well, it wasn't long before I was drilling in a tight spot and I started melting the outer plastic on the chuck itself from the chuck spinning up against something.

Someone mentioned Milwaukee and Milwaukee sawzalls earlier, and I have to agree. If you have the cash, and need a sawzall, that's a top choice. If you are going to use it once a year, maybe not, but from a contractor viewpoint I prefer those over everything else. It's hard to describe, but they just...cut....better. Maybe it's a speed thing, maybe it's something else, but to me they seem to bind less often and cut quicker. And I own a corded DeWalt sawzall that I but rarely use (usually when a jobsite is missing a sawzall) - I got it on sale, but it's mostly plastic, has few of the refinements an actual Milwaukee sawzall has, the speed control feels worse and for some reason if the blade binds it will shake the bejeesus out of you.

Milwaukee is also probably my top choice for serious drills. This is prob way beyond the homeowner level, but as an electrician we normally preferred the "Hole Hawg" drills while it seemed that a lot of plumbers preferred the right angle drills. The Hole Hawgs were great because you could just put them in high gear and the torque would be low enough that if you hit a nail it wouldn't really kick like it would in low speed, plus the high speed was much faster than on a lot of the right angle drills. So when you have a few hundred 3/4"-1 1/4" holes to drill through studs, you could drill them with a hawg much much faster. I suppose plumbers preferred the right angle type with the higher torque and slower speeds since they normally drill larger holes (often through more shit framing, stacked wood, etc) and normally use forstner type bits or standard hole saws while most electricians use what are called "ship bits" (long borer bits that they used to drill in wooden ship frames forever ago). Now if I had to drill a ton of 2" holes for example then I'd prob go with the standard right angle drill, which is what we did whenever we would install in-house vac systems. The 3rd pic some people like but I detest...that kind of series seems adequate for homeowners or occasional jobsite drilling (maybe for tiny holes), but I've burned several out myself.

4th and 5th pic...bandsaws. Who doesn't fucking love bandsaws? If you have to cut a lot of allthread, unistrut, rebar, conduit/pipe etc then you want a bandsaw not a sawzall. Or to be more precise a Porta-Band. The old standby with/cord version I went looking for a pic of, and found...Adam Savage? (I guess that's a hell of an endorsement lolhttp://kk.org/cooltools/archives/6812). But what blew my mind over the last few years were the CORDLESS bandsaws that started coming out. In a lot of situations in the past you would use a sawzall, but sawzalls cans shake you right off your ladder at times. Bandsaw? Like in the last pic, having to cut down allthread suspended from beam clamps. Imagine having to install ~100 of those for lights on a sloped roof, using a laser to cut them off at the same height with a sawzall. With a sawzall the allthread is going to want to go every which way since a sawzall blade reciprocates. But with a cordless bandsaw...it's a million times easier, quicker and more precise.

^^^
Porter Cable tools are good shit, definitely high quality. I have a couple of their routers. a small 1/2 hp stationary one and a bigger 3/4 horse plunge type. But they are expensive too. their nail guns are supposed to be good shit too but I do not own one.


Im no pro or anything, but I have a couple of Rigid tools and they seem to be decent quality. Not sure who makes them for Home Depot but I have their table saw which Ive had for the past 10 yrs or so and its good quality shit. Ive only had to readjust it once to get it true again. Recently I bought their sawzall and cannot be happier with it for the shit I used it for so far.