Kress drill (Attn Mr Medway!)

[Doctor Drivel]

A pleasant surprise.

[Doctor Drivel]

For the price and occassional use the Silverline may be worth it. 3 yr guarantee so easy to get your money back.

£99 for two drill and batts inc angle drill... Makita and Hitachi keyed chuck mains angle drill are powerful and get in real tight. The Makita I have seen for around £130. The prices vary a lot.

But what they ask for, which is basically an angle grinder body is ludicrous.

[Doctor Drivel]

Put a small length of plastic pipe using brass compression joint. Leave lost of slack. Or put and expansion bend in the copper pipe - without fittings on it.

[mike]

Quite right. Just good natured joshing.

They all used to be Kress but not any more. The other cordless drills are Italian - I forget the name of the manufacturer but it ain't Kress.

They used to call them "DIY" which in their minds is presumably the antithesis of "Professional". In the last catalogue, they were called "Power tools" to differentiate them from "Trade power tools".

Last time I was in Arnold Laver, I picked up a copy of a free magazine called "Professional Builder". I'm not sure whether that's a tautology or an oxymoron. Certainly, there was no sign of any sister publications called "Amateur Builder" or "Cowboy Builder".

Inside there was an article about manufacturers widening their range of safety gear to include sizes for women. On the opposite page was an advertisement for routers featuring a woman in a bikini. Joined-up thinking, eh?

[mike]

It's about 30 quid on eBay isn't it? Then a tenner for postage. Then a tenner for postage to send it back if it goes wrong, and it starts looking a bit more expensive.

Agree. It's a shame there aren't other OEMs making decent angle drills.

[mike]

Yeah, I accept that a sample of one is not statistically significant and maybe I just had the Friday afternoon one. But the truth is it's just not great. It's a different body shape to any other mains angle drill for no obvious or good reason. Seems quite large and long in comparison which partly defeats the object of an angle drill.

It's got a keyless chuck but the back part of the chuck is covered by a shroud to stop you touching it. Instead you have to use a manual spindle lock button on the top of the drill, and waggle the front end of the chuck until the lock engages. Either the keyless chuck alone or an auto spindle lock would be fine. But what's the point of this perverse arrangement?

It's never sounded particularly smooth-running from the get-go.

And B&Q (and GMC who supplied them) have both discontinued them.

Yup.

That's a reasonable assumption and one that I made too. So far, it's proved not to be true.

I rung customer services at B&Q's head office. They scoffed at the idea of getting it repaired but gave me a number for GMC's UK office.

I phoned GMC who said the service dept would call me back.

I phoned GMC twice more each time asking to speak to the service dept, each time being told they'd call me back.

The fourth time I phoned, I got ratty with them. This did have the effect of getting the "service dept" to call back. It also revealed why I couldn't be put through to the service dept. There is no service dept. What GMC do is get your local B&Q to ring you back and tell you (surprise, surprise) that they don't and never have kept spares.

What a f*cking farce.

If you look at the forum on GMC's website you'll see similar stories of GMC's customer service, several from their home country of Australia --- so it's not just the satellite operation that's crap.

I took the switch in to Maplin but it's all pre-moulded and sealed and they couldn't help. On another thread, someone actually explained to me how he'd carved the switch of a similar product apart and replaced the innards but that it's probably easier to find another knackered tool (knackered in another way, that is), salvage the switch from that and botch it into this...... which I'd do if I had another variable spped mains tool that was knackered.

The only option I haven't explored is phoning Silverline about spares (although there's no mention of spares on their website). And to be honest, if it were available and it cost more than a couple of quid inc P&P, i'm not sure I'd do it 'cause I'd essentially be spending money to repair something that wasn't that good to start with.

Well, it's not Dewalt - it just looks like one.

[Doctor Drivel]

At £30ish and 3 yr guarabntee it can't be that bad. The next price up for a mains angle drill is £112 or so.

The Makita and Hitachi mains angle angle drills are great for getting in tight - £170 minimum I see. Shock! :-0

That was over £50 or so. This is a lot cheaper.

Silverline may be different. I have seen their tools in trade only outlets so some sort of backup may be in place.

Worth a try.

Oh yes. I wonder who makes it. Sparky stuff is rebadged a lot, it may be their angle drill. Sparky is decent pro stuff and well priced. The core drill is very cheap and many tradesmen are using it.

The Trend Impact Driver is made by Sparky and costs twice the price - Sparky is £99 from Screwfix. And Trend sell all the spare parts too, as I'm sure Sparky do for their products.

The Sparky

[Doctor Drivel]

I have seen them in shops - Senco sell them. Amazon do too.

If this Silverline takes off others may follow on. It is sold in many outlets and just about every web mail order place sells it too. A cheapo angle for £15 would sell very well.

[Doctor Drivel]

The SDS drills and this drill/driver/angle drill are made by Kress and many other Wickes "grey" professional tools. The info desk sometimes will tell you who makes the tool, otherwise look at the Kress website and the Wickes web site and compare the looks. If they look the same they will be the same.

[Fred]

Why do you say that?

Is it because the battery will be flat when you come to use it?

I had a read of the Kress pdf given in an earlier reply (thanks) and it says of lithium ion batteries:

"Minimal self discharge ensures that the cordless screwdriver is ready to use any time even over a longer period."

Does this mean DIYers can use leave the drill on the shelf for a month and still find it holding charge?

[mike]

Looks like the OEMs are coming out with their own versions of the Kress-type cordless angle drill at least.

Hope this link works. Scroll down about halfway to the thing that looks like ED-209 from RoboCop:

[Fred]

just visited the wickes web site: "This product is not available to view." ;(

[mike]

NiCads go flat if left for a while.

Yes, with Lithium Ion... which the Kress version in the pdf has.

But the version that Wickes sell has the older NiCad batteries, as far as I know. They are good quality NiCads though.

If you want the Li version, you might have to import it and it seems to be at a premium price at the mo'.

[Doctor Drivel]

There is a little pic of it. It is now only £79. If so that is a great buy. It may be for purchase at the stores only.

[Doctor Drivel]

[mike]

Who are Senco? Not the people who make the screwguns?

[Fred]

[snip]

I have a battery screwdriver which never works. It's a few years old so I thought the battery had died. Perhaps it's just discharged as I haven't used it for a while; for some reason I have been doing it by hand. I will have to keep it permanently plugged in and see what happens. I have a feeling I tried that before and it didn't hold the charge though.

That's why I would like to kill two birds with one stone and get a drill that doubles as a driver, which this does. From what I can see on the Wickes web site I think you are right about them being nicads, so I guess I will have to plan ahead and charge the batteries the day before I need them!

This particular drill is 15.6v. Is this an unusual voltage? How easy will it be to get replacement batteries if those supplied eventually fail, or does it work out cheaper to buy a new drill than new batteries?

From what I can see, most of the others in the range are 18v. I think some of the 18v ones are hammer action but I don't think the 15.6v is. I guess the angle attachment would be more use than the hammer action though.

[Fred]

Just to add to my own post: perhaps the lack of hammer action is deliberate to stop you damaging the attachment?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Don't you read my posts? It *has* got hammer action.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Not so - good NiCads keep their charge for ages. A couple of months doesn't seem to make that much difference with mine.

If they do eventually fail they can be re-celled. But it's got a good charger and good quality batteries so I'd expect them to do 500 cycles. So with two provided that will be years of occasional use.

Dribble says it's now 80 quid - I thought it good value at 110. Could be it's until stocks are exhausted. My local branch doesn't have them in stock anymore.