John Rumm wrote:
On 03/07/2020 09:01, wrote:
I'm tempted to spend some of the kid's inheritance on 18V tools (they'll
probably be less-than impressed to inherit used tools instead of cash -
kids today! ;-) ) and would like some advice from those who use Mak,
Ryobi, DeWalt, etcetera.
I've only just started looking and had expected that Ryobi would be
significantly cheaper, but the price difference is not so great. I've
had a Ryobi scroll saw and a chop saw for many years and both are best
described as "adequate", but the chop saw has recently died and the
Bosch replacement is hugely better (and hugely more expensive).
I have had a couple of combination line trimmer machines from Ryobi -
admittedly not battery, but the general experience has put me off the
rest of their stuff (short life due to poor design, and bad choice of
materials)
They vary. I have a collection of Ryobi 'Expand-it' tools and two
electric and two petrol power heads. The tool ends (brush cutter,
strimmer, hedge trimmer, rotavator) have all been pretty robust and
reliable. The strimmer and rotavator get quite heavy use (we have a 9
acre smallholding).
The power heads are more 'variable' shall we say. The 2-stroke petrol
power unit is awful, difficult to start when cold, impossible to start
when hot and it was like this from new. The 4-stroke petrol unit is
much better, easy to start hot or cold, runs relatively quietly etc.
It's not perfect, it's needed a bit of maintenance, in particular the
mixture adjustement tends to drift but it's easy to change with the
right tool so that's not a big issue.
The electric power heads are, again, not perfect but they're OK given
the amount of quite heavy work they get here. Looking back I see that
I bought my first bits of Expand-It back in 2008 so they're 12 years
old now, not too bad for fairly inexpensive hardware.
--
Chris Green
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