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Milwaukee 18V cordless sawzall + their skip-tooth "demo" blade. It's called "the Axe" or something. This combo will cut all the way through 5' tall stacks of pallets all day without dying.
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Apr 21, 2011 20:45
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My friend just bought a house, and through some trick of financing, got all his earnest money back at closing. So instead of getting all porter-cable power tools, he got Festool. He now has a Festool track saw, HEPA 3 vacuum, router, cordless drill, and some attachments. They all pack into systainers that clip into the vacuum. Neat pieces of kit. I hesitate to ask what he spent on it all, but using these tools is amazing. We did some quick dimensioning cuts with the saw then finished to size with the router just as a sanity "do I really not need a table saw and jointer now?" No dust anywhere, and the wood pieces have a near sucking fit. Amazing what good tools can do for careful craftsmen. I would have no problem building cabinets in my living room with this setup and not worrying about mess.
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Jun 26, 2011 16:02
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Iskariot posted:I like the concept with the new ratchets but I have no personal experience. It seems like clever development. I have personal experience, and this post is spot on. There are converters to 3/8, 1/4, 1/2 drive, but they're spotty. These ratchets really shine for making trapezes out of all-thread, and not a lot else, really. If you don't know what an all-thread trapeze is, you probably don't need a through-head ratchet all that much.
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Nov 30, 2011 05:19
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Reggie Died posted:This is a little off topic, but...; Magnets. Unless they're aluminum tubes.
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Dec 2, 2011 19:23
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mugrim posted:How's that poo poo work? I have a chain wrench that I accidentally let someone use as a tire iron for taking the tire off the rim of a work truck. No damage, and it's still straight. Their chain wrenches rock. I broke a set of their side-cutting lineman's pliers after about 40 minutes of cutting #2 bare copper wire. Hinge snapped. Replaced them, and broke the second set less than an hour later. Junk. I hear equally bad things about their pipe pliers, diagonal-cutting pliers, and needle-nose pliers. Screwdrivers are screwdrivers, but I've broken a fair pile of their flathead screwdrivers using them as chisels; not chipped the tips, but broken at the shank where it meets the handle. I've also stripped the tips off a set of their #2 philips screwdrivers. In short, no more harbor freight hand tools, except chain wrenches.
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Dec 2, 2011 23:06
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The carpenter at my current jobsite abuses the everloving crap out of that precise Bosch set. 1 1/4" forstner bits into 2x4s for mortising door locks, for four to six hours every day. He loves it, and only recently got a third battery, since the laborer has been stealing the drill for paint busting with a wire cup. Yup, he's using the driver for 1 1/4" drilling, and does it for nearly a full work day on one battery. That being said, all of his other power tools are Bosch. Contractor's saw, chop saw, circular saw, reciprocating saw, hammer drill, corded drill, laser, laser level, other laser, and rotating laser. You'd think the Bosch rep buys him vacations at this point.
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Dec 17, 2011 03:44
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stubblyhead posted:I'd like to get one of those bladed head replacements for my string trimmer. I have an electric though, and the ones I've seen say they'll work with most gas trimmers. Is it ok to use these with an electric, or is there a model that is? I used a Grass Gator in a Ryobi electric. It worked fine until it stripped the square drive in the motor section of the ez-link coupling. That was quite annoying to replace. The motor had the torque for it, and it didn't seem to overheat, but the drive shaft wasn't up to it. The trimmer head itself had been mounted on a Troy-bilt gas trimmer that I was using at the same time with a tiller attachment.
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May 12, 2012 23:55
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Their chain wrenches are also badass. However, I snapped the handle off of some wire cutters, then needle-nose pliers, then lineman's pliers in about an hour or so. Just cutting 12/3 romex, and the handle broke on all three just below the joint. I've also broken their slip-joint pliers on the jaw side of the lower jaw next to the joint. Their metal is either really brittle, or I'm just some kind of beast with vise-like hands. I've never broken any of the Craftsman, Klein, Ideal, Kobalt, or Husky equivalents, though, doing the same kind of work.
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Jun 23, 2012 17:10
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iForge posted:Bosch sells one for $399.99 that should fit the bill just fine, and they have a thing right now that if you spend over $400, you get 20% of your total purchase price in free accessories/bits. Probably gonna do that and buy one cheap bit to put me over the $400 mark. Hopefully not too late, but the HF hammer drill we had vomited its gearbox after about two hours of drilling 3/4" holes in a 6" concrete slab. The replacement did the same, as did its replacement. That time, we returned the thing entirely and got a Bosch, and it worked great all the way up to 2" dry core bits for a few years until it got left in the back of the truck and submerged for about a week. Now it makes a funny noise, but works just fine.
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Jun 30, 2013 16:43
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ShadowStalker posted:Anybody have the festool track saw? I'm looking at adding one to my arsenal. I know a guy who does. IT's totally badass. He made several sets of shelves, cabinets, and tables with it before getting a table saw.
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Jul 15, 2013 16:20
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angryrobots posted:No idea if my experience is typical, but I have used the absolute crap out of my HF Portland for like 3 years, and it goes on sale for $80. Add a second anecdote-point to this. I have had the same HF Portland for three years and my experience matches. I even left mine outside all winter without draining it and it doesn't seem to have broken. Works great for washing cars and decks. Not so great on siding. Takes a very long time on sidewalks; would not recommend except for blasting the weeds and grass out of the cracks.
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Apr 6, 2021 17:48
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Let's swing this back to liquid metals, please? Verman posted:Thankfully all my years of shop class and what not I never saw a kid chop off a finger or anything too severe. In our foundry section of shop class, my cast pouring partner hosed up and dropped the crucible of molten aluminum on the floor. That was cool watching liquid aluminum move across the floor lighting everything on fire but also super sketchy since I had to jump up onto a table to not get burned. I was helping someone pour silver; I was holding the mold and they the crucible. I saw the glowing silver filling up the little pool at the top and said "full." They kept pouring. I tried to keep it level, but a drop rolled off the top and fell directly onto their shoe. They pulled their foot away and there was a shiny spot of steaming silver on the concrete floor. Shucked the shoe off, and there's a hole through the top, through the sock, through the foot. They went to the hospital, who said "didn't hit any bones or anything; keep it dressed and let us know if it gets infected. Healed up just fine with a neat-looking scar.
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Apr 14, 2021 23:00
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Motronic posted:If you think their miter saws are scary let me tell you about all of the HF angle grinders I've got! I munged two angle grinders from HF; third one's a beast. I did this song-and-dance on all three, and I 100% agree. I only paid for one grinder (minus the half-ish hour for the rebuild and two trips to the store). It's been going for ten years now: I'm actually on my second set of brushes.
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Apr 20, 2021 02:25
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Motronic posted:Good ones are also made out of a LOT of metal with high quality drawer slides that will hand the weight of the tools they are used to hold. Then you get into tool truck brands where they cost a million dollars because tool trucks don't actually sell tools and boxes, they sell financing. Stay away from those. Get a HF toolbox. Assemble. If you're missing parts or it's bent or something (or the caster is locked solid), just drop it off on their porch and they'll hand you a new one. Do this at most twice and you'll have a high-quality product. The hassle is the price for you doing their QC. Once that's done, clean the slides meticulously with good degreaser and put real grease in them. I did the above steps and have gotten a decade out of my lists-for-$100-but-I-paid-$45-with-coupons 3-drawer. Actual use in a real mechanic's shop full of snap-on and mac and matco stuff, with the tool trucks showing up weekly.
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Jul 18, 2021 19:34
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I found a pair of channel-lock 426 pliers on a job way back in 2006. They were a bit rusty, so I sprayed them with WD-40 and then proceeded to use them pretty much every working day for five years, then "frequently" after that. Last week, I was attempting to remove some stainless steel fittings that someone had done something stupid to and broke the pliers. Pieces came off of the grooves on both pieces of the plier. I was pretty surprised. I put them in a box and mailed them to ChannelLock. Yesterday, I received a brand new pair of 426 pliers by UPS. They're good tools, and the warranty really works! Here's hoping that 2021 metallurgy and build quality is comparable to that of the mid-2000s; I'll get another pair sometime in the 2050s.
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Jul 30, 2021 22:58
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DoubleT2172 posted:I got a metal edger and HATE IT because all my edges are next to concrete, and my sprinkler heads are touching the concrete, and that thing does not like concrete and will easily chew threw the top of the sprinklers. I don't know what i was expecting but i majorly regret buying it Get the nylon blade for the edger.
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May 21, 2022 16:56
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