Power Tools

Don Carlos

Hi all,

I'm loking to buy some power tools (namely Drill and Circular Saw) and I was wondering if anyone could suggest a make thats good or are they all in and around the same quality? I see Bosch, Black and Decker, Makita and Ryobi but cant decide who to choose.
Any suggestions?

Thanks

RKQ

Personal choice, price and amount of use will dictate whats best for you.
Makita are used by professionals, as are bosch while black & decker are high end DIY and Ryobi are also DIY.

Battery charge time is important for cordless drills, 1 hour preferable. Two batteries are a good idea.

Challange range are cheap and strong for DIY use, at Argos. Most tools are fairly reliable these days and have 12 month guarantee.

Don Carlos

RKQ wrote: »

Personal choice, price and amount of use will dictate whats best for you.
Makita are used by professionals, as are bosch while black & decker are high end DIY and Ryobi are also DIY.

Battery charge time is important for cordless drills, 1 hour preferable. Two batteries are a good idea.

Challange range are cheap and strong for DIY use, at Argos. Most tools are fairly reliable these days and have 12 month guarantee.

Thanks RKO

gman2k

I have some of the Ryobi +one range, and in general they are not great. The circular saw in particular is rubbish.
Makita is a very good make, most site personnel will use makita.
The usual mantra, if the price is low, so is the quality.

CJhaughey

I would not consider B&D they are plain rubbish IMO

Bosch have two ranges Blue and green
Green= DIY
Blue = Pro
Ryobi are cheap but won't stand serious abuse that more expensive brands will.
Dewalt is good, owned by B&D Parts are available but the good stuff is still expensive.
Hitachi are Good
Makita are good and the Maktec range is excellent value for money.

For my personal opinion FWIW
I would spend money on a good 18v or 14.4v Cordless drill probably Dewalt or Makita, and 3 Batteries.
This will cover most jobs that you will do and if you need bigger -hire one.
3 batteries will allow you to have at least 2 fully charged at all times crucial if you are doing a lot of screwing;)
Try and get a fairly good charger with your drill, I have a dewalt jobsite radio that doubles as a charger and find it great with 1hr charging.

The circular saw is a hard one, are you doing a lot of straight chops or do you actually need one for ripping sheets of ply etc?
A chop saw is a handy way of getting perfectly square crosscuts all the time and a sliding mitre is even better, but as always you get what you pay for.
I have a Makita 190mm circular saw and it is great but limited for some uses, I also have a 305mm dewalt sliding mitre saw and it is a fantastic bit of kit.
I don't know your intended usage so can't really comment.

dardevle

would agree with the above suggestions,

one thing that has'nt got a mention is the batteries

ni-cad vs lithium ion... big price difference and performance.

311

If you can afford to buy makita ,but it. I used a makita circular saw last week ,that my dad bought over 20 years ago.

Tucks are great for parts for makita aswell ,http://www.tucks.ie/

sakigrant

Dewalt for value for money everytime. Fantastic product, nice to use and extremely reliable. Makita are excellent but pricey. A website in the UK are doing a promo on Makita drills at the moment....

311

People keep recommending dewalt ,I don't know why.
I know a guy who had a full set of dewalt tools and he swore he'd never touch them again.
Their cordless drill chasis get very loose after a bit of use.

CJhaughey

311 wrote: »

People keep recommending dewalt ,I don't know why.
I know a guy who had a full set of dewalt tools and he swore he'd never touch them again.
Their cordless drill chasis get very loose after a bit of use.

There is two models of Dewalt, the home range and the XRP range which is all metal gearbox, heavy but very very strong.
Maybe your mate had the cheap version?

311

CJhaughey wrote: »

There is two models of Dewalt, the home range and the XRP range which is all metal gearbox, heavy but very very strong.
Maybe your mate had the cheap version?

I don't think so ,he had the percipitating saw ,large sds drill ,light and cordless drill. Also the radio charger.

He doesn't use any of them anymore.

311

Milwaukee is a good brand aswell ,used to be atlas copco.
As far as I know ,their powertool range isn't very expensive.
Their cordless stuff is though.

I've an sds drill from them that I've used everyday for the last twelve years and it's never let me down.
http://www.milwaukeetool.co.uk/int/uk/uk_site.nsf/frmIndex?ReadForm