The best value for money for a high quality SDS drill (ideally but not essentially) with a "breaker" chisel action as well

[rowing]

I am looking for not necessarily the cheapest but the best value for money in terms of reliability and good action for a drill that will be used to dr ill mortar, hard stone etc for installation of chemical DPCs and occasional ly for breaking up concrete such as, say, a 6" deep concrete floor or simil ar. Ease of changing brushes (if present), handling (weight distribution), rugg edness etc all to be considered not to mention good quality servicing back up and guarantees. Your opinions sought! Chris G

[The Medway Handyman]

Makita.

[Andy Burns]

SDS drills are good, but IME not /that/ good at hacking through 6" concrete, to get a cable under my garage floor I hired a 'Kango-class' breaker ...

[tony sayer]

+1 best tool I ever bought :))..

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've often wondered which would last longer in practice - one Makita type SDS, or however many Aldi etc ones you could buy for the same money?

IMHO, you tend to need different types of SDS anyway - depending on the job. If chasing into walls you need one of the lighter weight models. For breaking concrete paths or whatever, the heavier the better.

[dennis]

If you are breaking concrete you will find it much quicker if you get someone with a long lever under the edge to lift it a tiny bit off the ground and then hit it with a sledge hammer. Without the ground to support it they just break. Obviously there is a limit to what you can lift with a ten foot scaffold.

>

[newshound]

• 1 on both counts. I have had a budget 4kg job for about 10 years and it shows no sign of age. Not really heavy enough for breaking concrete, a bit of a handful for chasing, but *wonderful* for drilling stone and concrete.

[Roger Chapman]

I started off years ago with a Blackspur which Dribble confidently predicted would fail very quickly and which, like much of what he said proved completely wrong. I eventually bought a Matita as well which was lighter and much more sophisticated as well and relegated the Blackspur to rough work where its greater weight was a help. However when it came to breaking up my concrete floor I let the Blackspur get so hot that it shed a commutator segment and, not wanting to risk the Matika borrowed a much larger drill (I think it might have been a Hilti) which was designed for such work but I still found the most effective way (as Dennis suggested) was to use the drill to break the floor up into sections which could then be levered up and propped prior to breaking up with a sledge hammer.

Incidentally what has become of Dribble? I don't look in very often these days but I don't recall seeing any sign of him in recent years.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

+2, although I have a gripe about the safety clutch being over-sensitive on mine - might see if it's adjustable. The second-best SDS drill I ever bought is a 110V AEG (with an Atlas Copco badge) - that bugger won't die, but it's lacking the bells and whistles - it's only an SDS drill, nothing else. Otoh, the Concrete Killer green Bosch SDS I bought in ~2001 gave a solid decade's professional service before the armature got very sparky. New brushes cured it for a while, but it's awaiting repair and probably won't be worth it.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

They took away his PC.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Grimly Curmudgeon writes

Safety clutch likewise on my Dewalt. Makes core drilling a pain.