"Simon Pleasants" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 17:34:03 +0100, Broadback
wrote:

I guess it depends on what you call cheap. I bought a bungalow four
years ago and spent over two years refurbishing it. I had a "cheap"
drill. About a year ago I decided to spend a little more and purchased
a Bosch SDS drill. How I wish I had done so when I started, I would
have saved money on drill bits and taken a fraction of the time to drill
holes in concrete lintels and "Staffordshire" brick!

20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing!

Well put it this way, I was borrowing a cheap Skil impact drill. When
it was returned to its owner I bought a Bosch 700RES from B&Q. Nice
drill, light, comfortable, but the chuck was wonky and tended to slip
on the bit when worked hard. So it went back.

I replaced it with an 850W Performance Power impact drill for half the
cost. No kit box, slightly heavier, but the keyless chuck was far
better than the Bosch. All tasks to date have been no hardship for
it.

Ultimately, if it blows up grinding through the umpteenth concrete
block in our garage I've lost £30 or so. No big deal.

I guess the question is, was I wrong to replace the Bosch with a
cheapo model or would there have been real benefits to me simply
swapping it for another (working) Bosch?

One of my favorites elec drills is a power devil one is it because it has
bags of torque no will it drill into brick and concrete like a knife
through butter SDS no is it the superior build quality certainly not . The
reason i like it so is because it is short put a forstner bit in it and it
will fit between narror spaced joists a treat so much easier to draw cables
through if all the holes line up and are not drilled at angles

Its not the drill i would choice if was was to have just the one and yes in
an ideal world would have a right angled one but it works for me for doing
that job

Talking of cheap drills i see that argos are knocking out a power devil 12v
cordless for just a fiver at that price got to be worth getting one even if
it spends its life with just the counter sink bit in it which is probably
not the exact limit of it but close and will save time changing bits.
On that vein anyone know of a combined drill/counter sink bit that actually
works? tried a few over the years and either the drill bit comes loose or
the countersink does

Steve