"RBM" wrote in :


wrote in message
...
I think old power tools will increase in value as time passes. It's
not the antique value, but rather the fact that they no longer make
affordable decent power tools. For example, have you tried to find a
power drill that stiill uses a key in the chuck lately? Good luck,
they almost all have those hand tightened chucks. Try to drill thru
a piece of heavy steel with one of those, and you'll soon find that
you can not do it. You'll wear the flesh off your hand trying to
tighten that damn chuck, and will finally be forced to borrow or rent
an OLD drill with a key, or take the job to a metal shop. Those hand
tightened chucks are a complete joke adn are useless. Personally, I
consider these so called "tools" are really nothing more than TOYS.

On the positive side, you can still buy keyed chuck drills, but be
prepared to spend a fortune. The top name brands such as "Milwaukee
Tools" still are made with keyed chucks, but they are pricey. For a
professional, they are worth the cost, but not for the average
homeowner doing a few repairs. This means that you must either find
an old drill at a garage sale, or just rent a drill from a local tool
rental place.

And these battery powered tools are even worse. In fact I refuse to
call these things "Tools". They are and always will be nothing more
than "TOYS". They work great for a 12 year old kid wanting to build
a birdhouse. Try to use these on a serious home repair project and
you will likely do what I did with mine, which is toss the goddamn
thing in the garbage. If there's anything more frustrating than
trying to finish a job and the damn tool runs out of battery power,
please let me know. Unless you have at least 3 batteries for each
tool, and the desire to keep running to a power source to recharge
batteries, forget them. They're worthless. You may as well just run
a cord from the power source and use a plug in tool to begin. I dont
care if they are a 6 volt or a 24 volt tool, they all lack power and
all need constant battery recharging. And prepare to go broke buying
batteries. The batteries normally cost nearly as much as the whole
tool. Sure, they are handy when you have to go across the road to
attach your rural mailbox to a post and it's too far to run an
extension cord, but face it, you're putting in four screws. Try to
put in 400 screws and you'll be running back to the house at least
ten times to recharge batteries. Worse yet, you will NOT find a
battery drill with a keyed chuck, period.

It seems that each and every day I am learning to appreciate the old
power tools from the 1960's thru 80's more and more. I do my best to
keep them in good condition, because in the future they will become
more and more valuable as the supply vanishes from garage sales and
auctions. When all the junk tools from the 1990's and 2000s are long
buried in garbage dumps, those of us with the older tools will be
lucky to still own them.

OMG, I guess I have to break out the old Thor D handle. I don't think
so. There is more to a drill than just being built like a tank. Pound
for pound I'll take a new commercial quality drill any day over those
old anchors. As far as cordless driver drills, they're the best thing
since sliced bread, and although I only get about two years out of
one, they get used EVERY day and have plenty of power. I just bought a
new Makita lithium, really compact driver drill. Can't wait to use it,
but I still have some life left in my current Dewalt, which I have to
put out to pasture first.





why not just buy a replacement keyed chuck for your drill/driver?

I'd also have battery packs rebuilt with new cells if I really liked the
tool and it still worked well other than the battery packs.

a little survey on battery packs;
how are the NiMH packs doing?
Do they hold up well?
(fast-charged packs,1 hr charge time,not the cheapo slow charger setups)

any one replace their NiCD packs with NiMH packs,and if so,how did that
work out?

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com