Charging Chordless Drills & Power Tools

[keelhauled]

I have to throw my hat in the Ryobi ring. I lived in Costa Rica for nearly four years doing natural building - timber framing, cob, etc., and making furniture. I built a house, basically a big tree house, for a friend of mine there. I brought down one of the Ryobi contractor kist - drill, impact, sawzall, circ saw, jig saw - on sale at HD for $179 (Christmas sale). We also had a Makita drill and some dewalt hand drills, and a cheap Sears planer - the Delta model with sears stickers on it.

The Ryobi kit held up under the abuse admiralty - I more than once dropped the impact from 40 feet trying to screw in some perlins out on the edge of an 8-foot overhang, and too lazy to extend the lanyard.... I drilled more 3x1" mortises into teak trees that I can count with the drill. Those in-cads held up pretty well in place we used to joke was where electronics came to die (the old iPods could be guaranteed to die in three months).

Having worked at many building job sites and 6 yeas as a yacht joiner, I have to wonder if some of the 'you won't see those cheap tools on a jobsite' mentality is a bit of macho bravado. Yes, older versions of the big names had a great advantage, but now so much seems to be coming out of the same factory in China. Ever since B&D bought up Dewalt, PC, and Delta, they've all become the same ingredients with different packaging.

I used the Milwaulkee M12 for a gig with the doing some boat wiring on support boats for a major sailboat race. I like that the drill has an all-metal gearbox, but the impact driver had a sensitive trigger that at times would start, stop, and hen go full bore. Not fun with tiny screws. And with the handle style, there's no way to attach a lanyard for going aloft.

I just bought the new Ryobi Li kit at HD. So far, I love the Li batteries, and the fuel gauge on them. They fit my hand well, the circ saw has the blade on the left side where I can see the line to cut, and the impact driver's collet is spring loaded - simply push in the bit and it clicks in,, and to release, pull back the collet and a spring ejects the bit ( with a bot of force - the first time it shot a couple feet across the table...)

I think the biggest test is going to be what feels good in your hand.

Now, how to make a prop shaft that I can hook into the drill..... ;-)

[Matt sachs]

I use the crap out of all my Dewalt cordless stuff. I use the drill, impact, jig saw and sawsall every day. The Dewalt planer, circular saw and table saw are good quality too but they have this pesky cord dangling out the back......

[Steve Bean]

I have an old DeWalt 14.4v drill that I found on the road some years ago. I bought an additional battery and a 12v charger that I keep in my truck. It will also charge the 18v batteries that my boss uses. I have since rigged it for boat use by opening up an old battery pack, discarding the batteries, and wiring it from boat 12v system. It works fine, with about 20 feet of cord. I got this idea from Sailfar.net.

[Celestialsailor]

I use to have a 12v Mikita drill that lasted for 10 years...10 YEARS!!! To replace it after I smoked it, I felt would have been too costly. So I bought a Rigid 12 volt...JUNK! Lasted 6 months and was way heavy. So I bought a $99 Ryobi kit with circular saw, drill, flashlight, 2 batteries, charger and nice zip-up canvas bag. After 5 years the batteries started going south. I had used the circular saw to cut 1/4" FG and ruined it. So I bought another kit for $89 this time, last Christmas. Now I have 2 drills, 1 circular saw, 2 flashlights, 2 chargers and 2 new batteries. For me, this is the way to go. It's always best to wait until Christmas and a little known fact is Home Depot honors other stores discounts. So when HD has the Ryobi kit on sale for $99, you can get a Harbor Freight 10% discount coupon and take it to HD for an additional discount...