Bosch GSH4 advice

[tom patton]

Hi all took down an inner wall recently 20 square metres single brick. I need to make several smallish but precise brick openings in the future. I found the 110v Bosch GSH 4 a superb wall remover I used a 1 1/2 inch chisel. I particurlarly liked the slide switch and its low noise level. It cost £15 for an overnight hire. I would prefer to buy a hammer but cannot justify spending £200 + on such a specialist tool. How do the cheapie SDS hammers compare eg the Ferm 1100 I take it the 2 kilo difference is quite a factor I found the 4 kilo Bosch very heavy after 20 minutes holding it.

[David Lang]

Hi Tom

Hire shops buy the heavy duty Bosch stuff for a variety of reasons, one of which is the extreme durability & long life in a very rough business.

IMO the el cheapo's are OK for DIY use. Depends on the prime use I suppose. A 4 kilo (or is it Newton) SDS is a very small breaker, a 2 kilo is a drilling machine.

Dave

[John Rumm]

For demolition they can be OK.

The downsides of the low end machines in this situation tend to be the weight of them (a 2kg SDS is much nicer to use for long periods), Lack of control - many don't have variable speed which can make the hammer rather brutal, and lack of chisel lock - some drill will not fix the chisel in position so it is still able to rotate - this makes chiselling straight lines difficult.

sure that the rotation selector has a locking mechanism so that it can't vibrate itself back to rotation mode. Having it decide to start spinning when you have the chisel well stuck into a wall, combined with no safety clutch can be less than fun!

[tom patton]