Farewell, Green Bosch, you lasted long

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Drilling a round of holes in a 2' thick stone wall, for a 5" flue and the Bosch went phut with a flash, a puff of smoke, an acrid smell and a "Bastard!", as it happened near my head. It lasted amazingly well; eight years of heavy use drilling and chiselling, with only a set of brushes needed two years ago. The model was a PBH 2200RE, green body, but behaved like a blue'un.

Ho-hum, I had to dig out the standby; an old SDS 110V AEG badged as Atlas Copco, but which doesn't have rotary stop. Tough old thing, though; it carried on drilling the holes. Annoyingly, my 650mm 12mm SDS bit got well and truly stuck in an 'ole and I called it quits for the day, leaving it sticking out. Sod it, it can wait until I chisel the plug out of the middle.

On the way home I dropped into my local hardware/farm store and picked up a nice shiny Makita HR2470 SDS rotary stop drill with some bits and chisel (only normal, these days) thrown in the case.

I love new power tools :)

[PeterC]

Did you have to!? I've only just got the Makita drill/driver/impact set and, for 12V, it's bloody good! At the time of purchase, I was fondling a Makita SDS - as one does - but couldn't justify it :-(

[Andy Burns]

Annoyingly, I got three identical sets of drills (plus the chisel) with mine, I can understand a couple of the smaller sizes which are more likely to snap, but I'm sure everyone would prefer a larger range of bits ...

[Spamlet]

Don't forget to keep the chuck when you dispose of the rest.

S >

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Spamlet" saying something like:

I'm starting a collection of them, now.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I had a B&D drill for about 15 years which I rather liked, and it had a very nicely made chuck. Gearbox on the drill failed though. Anyway, just dug out the chuck and gave it to my dad, who had a similar B&D drill, but with a less well made chuck which wore out. These chucks have a 10mm threaded shaft to screw into the drill (with a finer pitch than a standard M10 bolt), and don't seem that easy to find anymore.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember [e-mail] (Andrew Gabriel) saying something like:

I have a couple of decent old Jacobs chucks fitted with SDS adapters - very useful from time to time and much better than many of the more modern items for build quality. They're still around if you look in bootsales, etc, much like finding a sought-after lens on a Praktica.

[<me9]

I've still got a black and decker model 1 going. I inherited it from my father. I've the original receipt somewhere for about £1/9/11 (£1.50) It has a 1/4" chuck locked by an allen key, and is very short but not very powerful

250w?). It's main use is getting into confined spaces, but I seem to find more modern items for that these days. days.

[Mike Clarke]

I've got one of those too, it was the first power drill I ever had and it must be over 50 years old now. According to the rating plate it's 220 watts but seems much less than that now. The allen key chuck was its greatest weakness - very difficult to get it to grip tight and stay tight. I ended up ditching the chuck in favour of a 1/4" Jacobs one which was a great improvement. Those were the days, you had just one power drill and could get lots of different attachments to turn it into all sorts of different tools - orbital sander, portable saw, bench saw, drill press, jigsaw, hedge trimmer, lathe, floor polisher etc.

[Tony Bryer]

And those wonderful ads in the Saturday papers offering a 'free' 122 piece tool kit with each drill as a way round resale price maintenance.

[Tim Lamb]

You missed finger jointer:-)

regards

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