Like printer cartridges where replacement a couple of times can can
cost as much as a new printer! Replacement battery packs for cordless
tools cost almost as much/more than a new tool!

Have accumulated and been given several cordless drills with worn out
batteries, and even if one has newer cordless tools the batteries even
of the same manufacture don't fit. We must have five (at least)
different style battery packs!

We have rebuilt (maybe re-celling is the right term, but it's lot of
work repacking and then connecting together the new cells within each
battery pack) a couple of Bosch drill batteries because we liked the
drill, but then the charger into which only that battery pack will
fit, failed and a new charger is around $70!

So of course we got another, cheaper, cordless drill and it with it's
particular style of battery pack and charger works well enough for a
do-it-yourself-er; and we have other, older, 115 and 230 volt drills
anyway. One of them a Wolf drill bought in 1953 for really heavy work!

But thinking of a couple of strategies to make use of the drills,
which given batteries still work; still have working key-less chucks
etc.

1) Rig up an external connection from other chargers of the right
voltage etc.

2) Use a completely external power supplies from the AC supply to
power each drill (sans batteries although they'd probably be retained
in place for proper balance and use these drills on various work
benches (we have 3 benches in various locations) and retain the
cordless and 'regular' plug in drills for other work.

With bench work it's sometimes useful to have a second drill at hand
to avoid frequent swapping of bits etc. There is also, as the amount
of salvaged and saved 'junk' in my basement attests, a wish to not
just throw away somethings that still work! It's called recycling
these days AIUI?

BTW an ancillary question.

3) How does one remove a key-less chuck from a drill? Cos could put
one on an older corded drill that has a too-small chuck which is also
getting a bit 'past it' and doesn't tighten well even with the correct
chuck-key.

Comments advice, rants, criticism welcomed.