On Jan 27, 10:43*am, BDBConstruction
wrote:

But it has seen its last
rebuild. *

Thats one that should go on the top shelf of your shop with a glass
box around it. Hehe.

OK... you are gonna laugh.. so sit down. I get REALLY attached to
some of my old tools that have served me faithfully for years without
complaint, requireing only simple maintenance. So you bet your butt
that saw is in the shop to stay, and it has it own little shelf. The
red plastic is so old and weathered that it turned purple!

I also have an old Sears router that has 1,000,000 miles on it.
Before we could buy "ploughed" or "dadoed" fascia, we had to make our
on on site when framing houses. I used that thing as the only safe
grooving tool pushing those miserable steel bits for about 3 years.
It still runs, and it too is over thirty years old!

I still have my old all metal cased Rockwell 346 circular saw; I don't
know how old it is because I got it used somewhere around 1977. It
runs to this day.

I have an old Milwaukee "super 3/8 holeshooter" that I got in 1976
when they put me on a commercial framing crew. I didn't need a
circular saw, just some good snips and a screwshooter. I used this
drill to frame and hang commercial sheetrock for years. I never did
anything to it but put in brushes and blow it out on tool cleaning
day. It still runs as well, and sometimes I still use it in the shop.

We will never see the likes of those old tools again. That old
Milwaukee drill has BRONZE gears in it! No wonder they never worked
loose or got sloppy.

But everyone seems to be on the "don't bother to rebuild" bandwagon.
Have you taken a tool in for repair lately? Our best local small
power tool repair shop (and authrized dealer for all the big names)
charges $65 to bench the tool, and will apply that to the labor charge
if you want to have them perform the repairs.

I just put a new trigger in an old variable speed/reversible drill.
The trigger was $54 plus tax, which put it at about $60. Add in their
$65 bench fee, and it would have cost me the same as I paid for the
drill a couple of years ago, $125. When I told that to the guy at the
shop, he said, "then why would you have it fixed?" It should be noted
that those guys do a booming business in used tools that are never
claimed once the owners find out what the repairs cost.

I shudder to think what the trigger replacement would have actually
cost as this trigger was as close as they could get, but not an EXACT
match. I had to cut the leads to the trigger, put on new lugs, and
file off a small piece of plastic that was molded into the handle as a
guide for the original trigger.

It sure shouldn't be that way, but it is. And I shudder to think what
one of these German/Swedish/Finnish wonderments will cost when they
break. Ouch!

Robert