Harry Bloomfield wrote:
For what you pay for the hire, you could buy an SDS drill. The cheap
ones can be had for £20 - £30 and are perfectly usable.
I think the biggest problem with the cheap ones is that the gangsters
making them, skimp on the quality of the materials used in them. It's
the sort of penny pinching English manufacturing was once famous for.
And still is.
The over the top pricey ones are usually given top quality parts but
the actual business of putting them together costs the same which-ever
tool. So for the sake of a few pennies the Chinese could put Makita,
Hitatchi, Dewalt and the rest of them out of business.
I just can't see them doing it. It's a psychological thing. Some
nationalities never miss an opportunity to feck-up big time.
Like Britain coming up with a sweet fast easily produced motorcycle
engine and putting it in a chrome stallion and the world can't get
enough of them. So what do they do?
Fill the order books with shoddy parts. And turn them out worse and
worse every year until Japan pulls the rug out from under them. Triumph
were still using 20 and 30 year old machines in the late 60's after 15
or 20 years of producing the Bonneville.
Same with the RangeRover. 10 or 20 years before the rest of the world
produce anything like the saloon off roadster and what happens?
20 year waiting lists.
So one day someone is going to produce decent SDS drills that last a
long time and are fairly cheap. Probably the Innuit.
Anyway, what to look for whatever you get. Obviously lightness. It's no
good having a cheap occasional SDS if the next time you use it -in
maybe 4 or 5 years, you need to hold it up over your head for 10 or 20
minutes while you stretch out on a ladder.
Whatever else you need, a reverse is next on the list.
If it jams in a deep hole it is a real pain to get out with no reverse.
After that there is just the other controls: hammer only, drill only...
stuff like that. You may only need the thing once but it will be a big
regret not having it.
Then there is the USA:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4890204.stm
Was Britain that bad when it had an empire?