Mark wrote:

What iterates me and it appears others is the insistence that only
professional/industrial quality tools are a worthwhile purchase without any
regard to the end users real requirements.

I certainly don't believe this, and (while I can't speak for him) I
don't get the impression that Andy feels this way either.

The tools I own range from NuTool/Ferm grade stuff, though green Bosch
and Ryobi, to blue Bosch, Makita and DeWalt. If I could afford it, all
my tools would be from the last category. But I can't, so they aren't.

Some tools you can get a perfectly reasonable result with
cheap/intermediate products. However, I believe the point that has been
made time and again is that cordless drills tend to be a special case.
This is because they have a set of components which are inherently quite
expensive - low volt high power DC motors, batteries, chargers and speed
controllers.

I've owned cheap drills (I have a NuTool and a Clarke sitting in a box
in the garage), intermediate drills (green Bosch, Ryobi, PPPro,
Axminster White, Erbauer) and a Makita.

I worked my way up the price scale for cordless drills because I
repeatedly found that the drill I was using was in some way or another
'not good enough' for my needs. Reasons included low torque, poor
battery capacity, poor chuck, and short life. I ended up with the
Makita, which has so far served me very well.

If all I ever wanted to use my cordless drill for is drilling small
holes in wood, and screwdriving, I think the Erbauer would probably
still be with me.

I haven't felt the same about other tools. For instance, my sliding chop
saw is a 10" NuTool. It cost £140. The accuracy I can achieve with it is
not great, but it is just about good enough for my needs. The depth of
cut is also sufficient. Because of this, I can't justify buying a Makita
at £500, which would outperform it by miles, and be much nicer to use.

There is another tool which falls into the 'special case' category - SDS
drills. The reasons are slightly different than for cordless drills. In
this case, it's a simple case of manufacturing tolerances.

My first SDS was a NuTool. This broke. The replacement also broke. I
decided to get a DeWalt. This not only performed much better, but was
also much lighter and easier to use.




Coupled with the insistence that anything sold in the likes of Lidl/aldy is
pikie rubbish

Well....erm...I do think that this is largely true.


which also implies your quality of workmanship must therefor
be substandard.

No, I don't think so - I think it imples that it is generally more
difficult (and sometimes impossible) to achieve the same result with a
sub-standard tool.


--
Grunff