If anyone needs a nice little drill that will do 90% of daily work chores, Ridgid has a stupid cheap drill on sale. The total price is cheaper than t he console by itself, the battery by itself, or the charge by itself. Toug h to screw the deal up if you need a drill.
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I have had this drill before, and it is a sweetheart. Lightweight, good po wer, charges fast, comes with a case. Lifetime warranty. It is easy to han dle when assembling projects, taking apart door hardware, and on an on.
Yes, one battery, but it is amazingly strong. You can drive a couple of hu ndred 1 1/4 sheetrock screws or more with no pilot hole on one charge. I h ave heavier drills for bigger tasks, but this one will be the go to. Its c ompact design reminds me of my favorite old DeWalt that they quit making ye ars ago.
And yes, the battery is covered in the lifetime warranty as long as it is p urchased at the same time as the tool.
-MIKE- wrote in news:pc07rh$oc6$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
Look at those dark clouds and over my nice line of floats too! :-)
I got whatever drill came with the LCT300W combo kit about 10 years ago. It's still going strong, but the chuck isn't as good as it used to be. I probably did post a review some time ago... Nice bit of kit and worth every penny, even the flashlight.
My Ridgid tools (lots of them) have served me very well over the years. I believe I've posted many articles in here praising Ridgid cordless tools.
However, I recently partnered on a couple deck replacement jobs with a fellow craftsman and he had a DeWalt 20 volt (18, 20, tomato-tomato) impact driver that drove 3" exterior screws into PT lumber in the blink of an eye. He could drive 3-4 screws in the time my Ridgid drove one.
I had been looking at getting the Makita for a while, but this experience was the kicker. It's not like I'm trowing out my Ridgid drills and drivers. No, I love them. But when I need some serious horse power to kick @$$, I'm using my Makita.
Obviously, you get what you pay for. The Makita is 3-4x the cost of the similar Ridgid impact driver, but also 3-4x as fast and strong. It was rated as the No.1 cordless impact driver on more than 1/2 dozen contractor/trade websites, so I knew I'd probably be satisfied. I just didn't think I'd be blown away by it... and I was. Totally.
It's also the shortest impact driver on the market, which means a lot in the real world. I had to drive some 3" screws between joists to insert a gate post and no other drivers would've fit in between the joists where I needed to drive those screws. That was real money saved in a lot of time it would've taken to work around that scenario.
We drove probably 3000 3" screws on that job and the time the Makita saved me over my Ridgid may actually have paid for itself. It also has some pretty seriously cool features that help keep you from stripping out the heads of screws. Not much of an issue on Torx heads, but it really paid off on the Philips head screws I drove on the gate hinges.
Like I said, I still love the Ridgid stuff, especially for the price and warranty. FWIW, all my Ridgid batts are still running like new.
But when time is money and I need speed and horse power, you can guess which case I'm opening. :-)
Hardly an "apples to apples" comparison to look at a medium weight $59 dril l/driver and compare it to a impact driver. But...
As me and my bones have gotten older, I have come to appreciate the idea of having just enough to get the job done. I have some ultra heavy duty dril ls (the kind you mix mortar/paint with) down to my little 12V I use when I am rehabbing cabinets.
I used to buy the DeWalt version of this drill and found it quite handy. I have a dental clinic I have just signed, and I will be replacing 4 doors. Same jambs, so 24 screws each door to pull and reinstall, bore 3 for latch sets, one for lock and deadbolt. That little drill did all of that with ea se. I LOVED that I could hang it on my belt or even drop it in my tool bag s. My other drill with 3X the power were much heavier and not as nimble, a nd didn't have as fine a "feel" to them. So for me, this tool has a place.
I have just about banned any impact drivers on the job as the guys love the m due to their size and power. But I have to show each one of my fellow wo od choppers that the impact drivers don't spin concentrically, so they are of almost no use as a drill. That doesn't stop them; they use those impact s on anything they can, from countersinking holes to drilling metal flashin gs. Of course, if they are doing rough work and using their own tools, I ju st let it go.
I switched to Ridgid about 10 months ago, as my friends in commercial had b een telling me for years that DeWalt makes some good performing tools, but out on the jobs they just don't last. So they warned me off the brand. My buddy that does municipal buildings and big county jobs told me that they b uy the best DeWalts they can, and the drills/drivers/impact drivers/small h ammer drills last them about 9 - 10 months in //daily// use. They buy DeWal t because their union workers want something that has a least a smattering of USA parts or labor in it, so they are stuck with the brand. My personal friends that are DeWalt loyal have told me that they get about two years of good work (sometimes more) out of the DeWalt tools, but they are moving to Ridgid or Makita due to quality of build issues.
If you get a chance, you might take a look at the newest offering from Ridg id. This is snippet of a review that I found online (I know, but I checked up on the numbers to make sure they got them right) before I purchased:
"The impact driver of the Makita offers 1,460 in. lbs. of max torque while the Ridgid gives you 2,000 in. lbs.
The hammer drill gives you 780 in. lbs. with the Ridgid and only 480 in. lb s. with the Makita. Finally, the reciprocating saw with the Makita gives yo u up to 2,800 strokes per minute while the Ridgid has 3,000 strokes per min ute."
With the new Ridgid impact driver I can easily drive a 3" screw into 3" of a yellow pine hardwood knot. More power than I would have believed could b e put into a small tool. The drill is a big, heavy beast, but on "drill" m ode it will stir a 5 of paint like my biggest drill. The downside is that the drill is a heavy beast, but I can drill 3/4" holes in concrete now with a battery powered tool. I don't use that one much as I also have the smal ler version that is brushless (remember... for me lighter is better) that d oes just fine for its normal duties of drilling 1/4 to 1/2 holes for concre te/tile/masonry anchors. I hope you review your new Makita and post the results here! I did it with my new brushless Ridgid impact driver but only sent it to my buddies as th eir was more interest about where to park your RV here than in woodworking.
As a sidebar, I haven't screwed a deck together in years. I went to a cont ractor demo put on by Bostitch, and I bought their monster nailer. At 110 l bs of pressure, it will drive a 3 1/2" heavy gauge spiral shank hot dipped nail flush in treated yellow pine. My other framing nailers (Hitachi and a nother Bostitch) won't do that, but this gun was made for it. I pop a line , then nail away at an installed fastener per second. I give a one year war ranty on my decks, and have never had a warranty call because of a "popped" board or nail.
a guy made a backup battery using discarded cells from laptops he charges it at off peak rates and then uses that during peak periods for household stuff
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