Exiting times...I am looking to purchase my first ever power tool!
I am thinking of replacing all the doors on my kitchen units. This will mean drilling and fitting a lot of door handles (the exisiting units open using an edge flange).
Can anyone recommend an el cheapo mains-powered drill from one of the sheds. Suitable for light home DIY use, just wood drilling and the occasional wall plug into breezeblock.
Thanks Bruce
If this will be your first use of power tools, DO Practice on some scrap material first - they are different to that old Stanley hand drill!
Any non-SDS mains hammer power drill will suffice for those tasks.
Additional features you may find useful for other tasks:
Christian.
Wickes sell a 700w variable speed hammer drill for around £16 the last time I looked. The variable speed means you can use it for driving screws, with a bit of practice. Just the job. Most of the sheds sell plastic cases of drills and drivers for around £10-15
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Few mains drills have torque control. One Bosch does and it is not cheap. Better to buy a cheap 700w mains drill and a cheap drill/driver if torque is needed. A cheapo mains drill with a variable speed is fine for driving. Best pulse the trigger with your finger so as not to spin too much and ruin the crew head.
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screws, with
That sounds the basic model I need. I'll have a look round the sheds for 700W mains hammer drills.
Trouble is there are so many types of power tool nowadays ... I see you can even buy a little hand "mouse" sander. The sanding block + sandpaper is now redundant!
Soon we'll have robots to do all our DIY.
Bruce
For the light use that you will be putting it to I would say a cheap cordless would be better suited to your needs.
Mains powered tools are a god send if you are doing some heavy duty DIYing (eg drilling into brick) but you can't beat a cordless for its "just pick up and use" ability.
Even a cheap cordless will drill 30+ small holes* through 10mm sheets of wood on a single charge. As for drilling into breeze block you don't need hammer action for that as it's so soft (although most drills now come with hammer action anyway). I wouldn't worry to much about features at this point. Once you are hitting the limits of your first drill you will know what features you need.
Graham
I think a 700W mains drill will be so heavy, it would actually be easier to use a brace and bit just for chipboard. Cordless sounds a lot better.
john
In article , bruce snipped-for-privacy@my-deja.com writes
Avoid the PPro cheap ones from B&Q their absolute crap squared. If I were you I'd fork out a bit more and get a better one such as a Bosch well worth the extra. I've decided not to by cheap power tools again after some bad experiences, waste of money and resources....
The current 700w drills and small and not heavy. They will outlast any battery drill, far more power and the batteries don't eventually go duff. For occasional stuff around the house it is the only drill to buy. V cheap and does the job.
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Quite agree. I think your example of the sander is also worth noting because it does highlight that with any "brand" of tool, there is going to be good and not so good models. If you always shop on low price as a primary purchasing criteria, then you need to be prepared to invest more time finding the better ones.
In this case I think the OP would be well served with a mid range cordless drill driver.
I often find its the folks who buy a whole shed full of tools but then never use them, to be the worst offenders! Many of the top end tool makers do not even figure on some tool junkies radar, since they are not so readily available in the DIY shops. If you are going to brag about whatever you just bought there is little point in getting a festool, trend, metabo etc since most folks will just say "huh?"
A combi cordless can easily be as heavy, although they are often much better balanced for single handed use, the coredless drill/driver versions tend to be smaller and lighter.
I admit that some of the PPPro tools don't seem to be very well built and they are certainly not in the same league as Matika and De Walt, for example, but you get what you pay for. There is little point in paying £100 (or more) buying a top of the range professional drill if all you are ever going to do is hang pictures and attach door handles. There is unfortunately, I believe, a lot of snob value placed in certain brand names.
FWIW I own a PPPro orbital sander. It was about half the price of the average DIY brand names (Bosch, B+D etc) and a third or less the cost of the professional names. As it was so cheap I bought it expecting it to only last for the duration of the one (quite large) job I needed it for so I pushed it as hard as I could. Amazing it's still in tip top condition and I suspect it will last for many years more.
Graham
Power screwdriving (if you have not done much in the past) is like many things a skill that takes some learning. At first it will seem harder and more cumbersome than using a manual screw driver. However once it becomes second nature, you will never want to go back to the old way of doing it.
Even the best mains drills tend to be poor at screw driving (unless they are specialy designed for it like dry wall drivers). Often they are too long, which makes the task of getting the bit in the screw one handed difficult (having the main hand hold at the back of the drill does not help either). The delivery of torque from an AC motor is never as smooth as that from a DC motor with a good speed controller, and, as has been mentioned, a torque limiter is usually missing.
A mid range battery drill driver sounds like it would be better suited. More than enough power for the job (even a 9V model will sink 2" 10 guage screws straight into softwood without a pilot hole). A 12V or
14.4V one will cope with most other jobs unless you want to turn things like hole saws etc. (don't get too carried away with the numbers though, a good quality 12V drill will perform as well or better than a nasty 18V one).
Just got a Worx 710W corded drill from Homebase reduced to £14.99. Can't fault it at the price, however for driving screws into kitchen cabinets essential to have torque control, not normally available on corded drills. Normal advice is to get a corded drill first but consider a cordless drill driver. A good cheap cordless, 14.4V say, will do all your kitchen cabinet work, less or no good into masonry. Suggest you go for two quick charge batteries as this is the weakest part of any cheapo. I'm sure I have seen a Bosch corded/cordless combo on offer in B&Q recently. Ideal for someone purchasing their first power tools.
Jim A
I've just seen some PPro corded drill packages in B&Q. Including cheapo tools such as hacksaw, saw, pliers, spirit level etc. Reduced from =A330 to =A320. A bargain, but the only problem is, the drills are quite heavy (2.2kg), as an earlier poster noted.
They also have PPro cordless at =A330.
Isn't the weight of a cordless + battery nearly equal to weight of corded drill, anyway?
Bruce
The Worx sounds similar to the B&Q PPro range.
I don't need a screwdriving facility, really -- I just need to drill holes in kitchen cabinet doors prior to fitting handles etc. Or in breezeblock for hanging pictures and shelving. Or through tiles, maybe.
Bruce
Once you start putting in screws with a drill you will never want to go back to putting them in by hand. If you have drill with torque control (which I believe is the case for the vast majority of cordless drills) it is so simple and quick you will wonder what a screwdriver is for.
Before you drill tiles for the first time make sure that you are familiar with the variable speed control of your drill and get yourself some proper tile drilling bits. Slow and steady is the key.
One drill I used a while ago had a small dial on the trigger which could be used to limit the speed. I found that to be a useful feature but it doesn't seem to be very common now.
Graham
Personally I tend to avoid packs of tools as you can end up with a lot of items you wont use and when you price up the parts (like for like) there is often little difference to buying them separately. More importantly, when you do come to buy a tool that would have been included in the kit you have the choice to go for a better version if you need / want to.
I wouldn't say that 2.2kg is very heavy for a drill. The cordless drill/driver combos tend to be well balanced which has the effect of making the tool appear lighter in the hand. You also don't tend to hold the drill for that long so, unless there is a reason we don't know about, I wouldn't use weight as a deciding factor.
In my early DIY days, when I was poor, I bought an extra-bargain-basement junior hacksaw (the type that is just a bent metal bar). I used it till the teeth fell off the blade that came with it. Being a little richer at that point I decided to upgrade and bought one that had a comfy rubberised handle and that you could change the blade on. Well I got it home and started working with it and noticed that my cuts always seemed to be wonky. I tried tightening the blade. I tried holding it differently nothing worked my cuts were always wonky. Exasperated I took my life into my own hands and changed the blade on the cheep junior hacksaw (yes you can change the blade if you really struggle) and continued work. Turns out the slot that holds the blade holder was very slightly twisted which was causing the blade to be ever so slightly bent, hence the wonky cuts. I never did get round to taking it back but I have always felt ripped off. I still use the cheap hacksaw now. Thanks for listening. I feel much better for getting that off my chest.
suited.
Thanks, John. I'm starting to think of the possible jobs I may need a drill/driver for sometime in the future...when I get round to it.
For the sake of argument, lets say I want to drill through a breezeblock internal wall ( to spur off an electrical socket in an adjacent room). Would this job wreck a 12V cordless drill? I reckon I would need a corded drill for such a job. Or, better still, get an electrician in!
Bruce
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