I need a new cordless drill and being pretty hopeless at DIY I don't have a clue which one to buy. Any ideas? I don't want to spend a great deal of money. It's only for odd-jobs around the house. One with a screwdriver facility sounds good. And maybe a hammer drill.
Are there particular features I should look-out for?
Where's the best place to buy one?
Cheers.
Bobby
B&Q are doing some good deals on these types of tools at the moment.
Are you sure you need cordless? For most jobs around the house, a variable speed mains hammer drill is both cheaper and more capable. Add an extension flex, and the jobs that you need the battery one for are really quite limited.
Don't bother with hammer. You really need a mains drill for that. A cheap 15 quid job would be fine for knocking in occasional rawl plug holes.
Features that are useful:
I'd recommend 12V minimum, more for cheap brands, as their volts aren't as good as brand names.
Christian.
I'm not sure how scientific this is, but pick up the battery. Compare its weight to a brand-name battery. If it's substantially lighter I think that you can assume that it will hold correspondingly less charge.
Heh heh - I've not noticed any difference in weight between cheap and good Ni-Cads.
Not directly relevent, I've noticed this on 'D' type cells. Looking at the specs, some manufacturers just produce the innards of a 'C' type in a 'D' type case.
Christian.
They'll all surely be pretty well the same weight, good or bad, won't they.
Ah yes, but that's quite different game. Just about all cordless tools have C cells and this is one of the reasons they are cheap, a huge market. Hence many D sized cases have C cells stuck in them, it's pretty obvious however because of the *much* lower capacity (usually around 2Ah) as opposed to real D cells which have a capacity of 4Ah or more.
Being a pedant, they're not C cells, but so called industrial sizes, sub-C.
A C cell is bigger.
What difference does the voltage make?
Because the cells are all standard sizes they have a maximum capacity in amp hours. Increase the voltage and everything else being equal, the amps drop so the battery lasts longer.
Another point ot consider based on the above is just how much are you going to use it. NiCds don't like not being used - sitting around doing nothing deteriorates them and they lose their capability to hold a decent charge. There's a lot to be said in buying a cheap one to begin with to see how much work you are going to do with it and then get something betterwhen it falls over due to over work !!
Rob
Except that cheap brands use lower quality cells and lower quality, less efficient motors, so, IME, a 12V brand name performs like a 18V cheapie.
Christian.
Indeed. That's why I put 'everything else being equal' ;-)
There are awesome battery hammer drills out there. Expensive though.
And heavy.
I doubt the OP is interested in spending hundreds on a 24/32V professional job, which you need to do if you actually want hammer action rather than just curious wobble action.
Christian.
True. The one I saw was about twice as good as my 9.99 mains one from Focus. I have a 12V 9.99 focus rechargable drill.
The rechargable drill is handy for the occasional hole, or driving many screws. (a tiny pot of grease will dramatically extend battery life if used on screwheads) Sharp drills are also vital.
For hammer, the mains one is actually lighter than the battery drill, and extension flexes are cheap if it won't plug in.
The nice variable speed mains drill gets pulled out if more than a hundred screws need screwed in, or if many big holes need drilled.
And the cheap SDS gets pulled out if I need a meter long hole in something.
It's got to the point where my old mains drill is only used to stir cement. The battery drill does everything, except things reserved for my SDS drill, such as removing tiles, general demolition and anything to do with masonry.
Rather than buy a pack of 7 conventional masonry bits every few months, just because you need the 7mm (I only use brown plugs, period) and it is the same price as a single, I've bought a single 7mm SDS drill bit. It can be attached in a second or two and is very distinctive in the box, particularly as it is the only small SDS bit I own. SDS bits tend to last much longer than conventional ones, too.
I'll condede I used the old mains drill the other day, though, for screwing down the plywood floor in the kitchen. The battery drill could have done it, but I'd have got through about 10 batteries trying.
Christian.
You don't really mean on screwheads do you?
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