battery tools are crap

I used to have problems on flats complexes fixing aerials onto masonry (8 holes per aerial) when I was working my way along a row of small blocks. Used to recharge from the van. Sort of OK.

Yes but you can't be selective about the work you have to do. And even fairly light jobs (say drilling 10mm holes in wood) is quicker with a mains drill.

I agree that battery is OK for really light jobs (polishing a little dog's nails in a poodle parlour, that sort of thing).

Well, it's always good to have power in reserve, and anyway I'm really talking more about bigger tools.I mean, frinstance I have a little dremel and it slows down if you work it hard. It would be better if it didn't.

Bill

I was quite happy with my pair of Bosch battery SDS drills until I bought the same tool but mains powered. Jeez what a difference! Thrice the watts of course.

Bill

I've just bought a mains Makita recip saw and I think it's great. Really good design, especially blade changing.

Bill

I can counter everything you've just said :)

36V Bosch garden tools are equal in calibre to mains tools of a similar size - hedge cutter, lawn mower and strimmer.

Now these do really require you have 2 batteries of the same size (there are 2-3 different sizes IIRC, big for mower and small or medium for hand held tools. With 2 batteries, the charging process *nearly* keeps up and I can do my whole garden on 2 charges, sometimes 3 if the grass is long.

As you can put a small battery in a big tool and vice versa, I do sometimes finish the hedge with a mower battery.

The convenience, lightness compared to petrol and lack of a damn cable makes it totally worth while.

Now a contractor doing a large tough hedge would be better off with a heavy petrol strimmer. But for my hawthorn and most fluffy hedges the

I have never seen the owner of battery Makita kit moan :)

The bloke who fitted our kitchen did it entirely with battery tools, including most impressively, core drilling a 110mm ventilation duct through a 9" brick wall with a battery drill.

Don't worry - Bill doesn't know anything about anything other than being a racist bigot.

Batteries, both of them.

I regularly use my battery powered drill whereas my mains powered drill gets little use. Today I drilled two holes in soft brick with the battery drill in less time than it will have taken me to get the mains extension cord out.

Just have:-(

Over £1000 quids worth.

Point noted about the fact you meant the bigger tools so there is no need to mention a 110V impact driver:-).

I now have a very nice and very new 36V Makita SDS and a very nice and very new 2kg 110V DeWalt SDS.

If I am going to be on site for a while then the 110V drill is my first choice.

I also chose the 110V angle grinder and the 110V circular saw but I chose the 18V jigsaw (I can use one of the firms 110V ones if needed for bigger jobs). My main use for the jigsaw is cutting the case on a CU swap and power is usually off when I do that.

Cordless is so much easier for a small job, saving getting the extension lead out and running it to where you need it - prehaps supporting it half-way up a ladder and then you get up the ladder and find that the socket feeding the reel is turned off!

Mains, as you say, has the grunt to get the job done though.

I mainly have mains, but with a few cordless (particularly a drill) for convenience - and you can't beat a cordless strimmer for a quick tidy-up on a visit to a family grave.

SteveW

I happened to drive past a guy removing a wheel-clamp with a petrol powered grinder last night :)

SteveW

Indeed. I used my cordless drill as a contractor and mainly for using it as a screw driver, it was never too very wonderful even as a screwdriver. The one before that cost about ?70 in 1999. Looking back (and I can) I must have used it on 3000 screws and it never let me down. I gave it away to a pillock who could not work out to use it ......ffs. I rather think that I was unlucky with the Bosh. Got to admit that in 1999 I used this huge very heavy Bosh cordless drill. Cost ?400 apparently. I was informed that if I lost it I would be beaten up. It was Magnificent! It had these lights that came on when it was being used. I felt like Arnold Schwarzenegger when I used it. Me and him look very similar.

What, old, grizzled, and past it? ;-)

SDS certainly used to be case where the mains one was twice the power, and it made a noticeable difference.

These days you can get the 36V cordless ones (which use two 18V batts) and they will do 1200 RPM and hit with 2.5 Joules, which is pretty much on par for a basic 2kg mains SDS.

e.g.

I bought an 18V makita recip saw (to use with the batteries I already have) and also think it's great.

If I'd only used it for the intended job of removing window frames I'd have been happy, but it's chopped a couple of small trees and some oak sleepers too.

The fact that you did not go to the faff of taking a mains drill and extension lead up there, suggests that the overall experience with the cordless was still preferable though?

Rotation speed on a conventional mains drill might be higher (although not if its a SDS), but the torque available on the cordless is often higher...

Look at something like:

Compare with say:

Depends on what you call "light jobs" really. I use my 18V cordless as the go to tool for most drilling operations. Perhaps my mains drills are poor compared to some, but I find my twin speed bosch (green) mains hammer drill was no better than the 18V makita on masonry. Both are outclassed by the SDS for hard stuff though. Perhaps if I were doing something repetitive like multiple 32mm spade bit holes the mains drill would be worth getting out.

I would call jobs like sticking a 110mm dry diamond core through 11" of masonry, or chasing out 30m of wall for conduit or pipes "heavy work", and there I agree that the cordless stuff would not be my first choice.

I have some 10.8V kit[1] for light work, and that's great for working in cabinets etc, general screw driving etc. However even that would do a few dozen 7mm holes in brick for rawlplugs without any great difficulty. (its also so small and light that I can take a bag with drill and ID, spare batts, charger, and a selection of fixings out to a job site for the same weight and size as a traditional mains drill)

Very light and manoeuvrable.

Yup sure for stuff that is traditionally 500W plus in mains form, its going to be better. This is something that the cordless tool makers are looking to change though... Makita with their 36V gear, dewalt with their flexvolt stuff etc.

The other class of mains tool that is hard to beat is for things that you can speed very long run times on (like sanders, routers etc)

This was in 1999. These days I am still a man of steel.