In alt.home.repair, on Tue, 20 Apr 2021 04:45:33 -0700 (PDT), TimR
wrote:

So is there a point to the keyless chuck anyway?

I found 3 keyless chucks in the dumpster at a Black & Decker store,
about 20 years ago.

I put them on two of my drills. I like them. They're "geared" so they
can be tightened tight enough with just my hand. Not only that, on a
3/8" drill, I could not make the previous chuck small enought for the
smallest bit (1/64th?), but these will handle it.

It started off innocent enough. I was buying something at the counter
but he was still talking to the guy in front of me. He said, "Your
drill is not worth fixing. Do you want it back?" and the guy said No,
so I said, "If he doesn't want it, can I have it?" and the guy at the
counter said Sure, and handed it to me. When I got home it took a
half-hour to fix it, just by putting a washer on the armature. I still
have it. I still use it. 3/8" reversing.

Next time I was there I think I threw something in the B&D (Don't take
that the wrong way) dumpster and realized I shouldn't have, and when I
went to retrieve it I saw some broken tool that was easy to repair.
Then next time I was there I looked again, etc. Later, if I was
nearby, I stopped to look even if I didn't need anything in the store,
especially if it was after 6.

Ended up over the years with 10 or more things, including some that I
repaired, some that didn't even need repair, and some that they had
broken to stop people like me from re-using them.

The belt sander didn't need any repair, nor did the leaf-blower**, nor
the variable-speed sabre saw (better than the 2-speed one I had bought
new.) It's "a crime" that they just threw them away.

Two weed wackers had their aluminum tubes bent, on purpose, but I bought
some tubing and copied what they had looked like. They have a good
design for line-feed and I still use one of them.

Hedge trimmers, some good and some had the lexan housing with a hole
smashed in it. One hole wasn't bad enough to make it not work well, and
if I had needed the others, I would have fashioned some patch for the
hole, but they were things I had.

There were a bunch of other tools, but I'd have to look in the basement
to be reminded what they were.

Eventually I stopped because the branch with real privacy closed, the
other branch shared space with several other stores, and everything had
started to repeat itself, at most. Too many consumer appliances, too
few tools. None that I didn't already have.

**I hate leaf-blowers. I'd rather use a broom, or nothing at all.

I have one on a cheap Harbor Freight tool i bought for one project, and it doesn't save any time and isn't easy to use.

My only guess is that maybe it's not as good as the Black and Decker
version.

I was fine using the key on all my other tools. If you lose it buy two more.

I agree the key is not much of an inconvenience, but once I found them,
I wanted to use them. If I had had to pay, knowing what I know now, I
probably would not have.