Which drill?

[Martin Bonner]

My faithful Black and Decker hammer drill has given up the ghost after many years of use by me and my father before me.

I've just moved into a new house, and the cheap (also B&D) electric drill driver we bought from Argos as an a more powerful screwdriver when fitting decking is just not up to all the screw holes I need to fit.

My requirements:

- SDS would be nice, but I'm only drilling Cambridge Whites, so its not /essential/.

- Not too heavy (which probably means mains powered)

- I don't do all THAT much DIY (I don't have the time), so it doesn't need an infinite life span).

- If I go for SDS, I know I want: - safety clutch - roto-stop - drill-stop - chuck converter (I have a lot of wood drills I don't want to replace) - SDS drill set + chisel

- I don't want to spend a huge amount of money

What drill does the panel recommend?

[anon]

Not sure what Cambridge Whites are - are they anything like Maris Piper :-)

2 of the best DIY tools I've bought are:

SDS dril (JCB from Argos, 2 yr waranty, chissels, SDS drill bits & standard chuck). Takes seconds to drill 8mm through Waingrove Red Brick

- previously I had to do in stages depending on how hard the brick was i.e. 4mm / 6mm / 8mm

Cordless Drill - buy the best and highest voltage you can afford - make sure you have a spare battery

[Christian McArdle]

Personally, I don't think you can get all you want from one drill. An SDS drill with chuck converter is pretty useless. I'd buy the SDS you need and then top it up with a cheap as chips standard mains drill with forward/reverse and touch sensitive trigger.

Christian.

[Chris Bacon]

An "ordinary" mains drill of almost any sort, it's more versatile for simply drilling holes in things. Buy an SDS if you need it for a particular purpose - don't use a conventional chuck in an SDS on any small drills, they'll be bent in short order. You could buy a cordless drill driver too, preferably with two batteries/1 hour charger, but if you're not going to give it a lot of use it's a bit of a faff to have a battery operated tool. It'll be flat every time you want to use it, unless you think to charge it every so often when you're not using it.

[RedOnRed]

Not necessarily the best idea to buy the highest voltage cordless drill around as it depends what you're using it for. For example, if you're going up a ladder drilling then you may not want the highest voltage cordless drill as it will be too heavy.

[Al, Cambridge, UK]

Cambridge Whites are particularly ugly yellow/white bricks, which are often pretty hard with flint inclusions lurking to knock your drill completely off-course. Cambridge city has a lot of Victorian terraced houses built out of them, but most of the later semis have whites for side & back walls with very soft reds (possibly Peterborough?) as a facing on the front. My wife calls them "bog-bricks", but I don't know if that's a general term or just her little joke.

Now all new buildings going up around the city seem to be made of bright yellow bricks - where do those come from? Legoland?

Al.

[anon]

You're quite right I'd gone off at a bit of a tangent.... talking about drills, but thinking of combined drill / screwdrivers - definately wouldnt go for a low voltage screwdriver.

[Martin Bonner]

Thanks to everybody for the advice. I've gone for the cheap-as-chips standard mains drill for the moment, (in fact a =A310 job from Homebase). Yes, I know it isn't going to last as long as the old Black and Decker; but at that price I can just get another one. It was also one of the most comfortable.

Why do they insist on putting the drill handle right at the back (rather than underneath the moter)? It makes it almost impossible to hold the drill in one hand, and the vacuum cleaner in the other.

The SDS is a luxury which I am just not going to use enough to justify (and the cheaper ones weight a TON).

[Guy King]

The message from "Martin Bonner" contains these words:

So when you push hard you thrust in line with the chuck. If it were underneath you'd exert a narsty torque.

[Pete C]

Hi,

If you're still interested in SDS this might be worth a look:

cheers, Pete.

[Doctor Drivel]

I would buy an SDS drill. Wickes do a nice one around £100 or so (a rebadged German Kress). Argos do a £40 2kg one which many here say is fine. Then for driving and drilling in wood get yourself a Ryobi 18v ONE+ Impact Driver. These are usually about £200. The Ryobi is £70 and the battery charger and batteries are extra, which makes £130 with two batteries. The ONE+ range you only buy the tool without a batteries so all the tools are interchangable with the same battery.

[Doctor Drivel]

They look OK until the British climate does its work on them, which is usually quicker than you think. Look at London with its London Yellow bricks. Not a nice sight. Many new houses and apartment blocks are a mixture of red and yellow bricks.

Brick colour in the UK was predominately a regional thing, with the south east of England being predominantly yellow, while most of the rest had better wearing in colour, red. Many terraced houses in some cities, Liverpool still has a lot of them, had glazed red bricks on the front. These looked good and never went dirty quickly when the country emitted coal smoke by the billions of tons.

[Doctor Drivel]

Thanks to everybody for the advice. I've gone for the cheap-as-chips standard mains drill for the moment, (in fact a £10 job from Homebase). Yes, I know it isn't going to last as long as the old Black and Decker; but at that price I can just get another one. It was also one of the most comfortable.

Why do they insist on putting the drill handle right at the back (rather than underneath the moter)? It makes it almost impossible to hold the drill in one hand, and the vacuum cleaner in the other.

The SDS is a luxury which I am just not going to use enough to justify (and the cheaper ones weight a TON).

[anon]

They also sell Maris Piper - nice to go full circle!

[Doctor Drivel]

They also sell Maris Piper - nice to go full circle!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Don't bother with an SDS with ordinary chuck convertor for wood etc. The combination is often unwieldy, and SDS drills run at too slow a speed. Get a cheap basic mains drill for wood.