Home DIY

I stand by green Bosch for diy use

@musa The drill may not be up to much heavy abuse, but will be fine for DIY jobs or light work and if you use the driver for most heavy duty screws and nuts, it'll take a good chunk of the abuse.

I bought the equivalent set about 4 years ago for DIY and now have them slung in my tool bag for work for the past two years. The batteries didn't have the charge indication on them, but the drill was effectively the next model up nowadays. The batteries still last ages.

Makita have recently invested loads on their LXT lineup and technology and it's going to be about for a while, but the old vacuum cleaner makes it worth going with Makita.
Just replace the drill body if it breaks in the future.

Makita 18v are what I have for work, and I definitely recommend them. It’s just that particular combi drill is duff.
I’m having a search around, but annoyingly I can’t find another set of comparable price.

Makita have a slightly different approach as they standardised the voltage of their batteries and use doubles or quads to power the bigger stuff like leaf blowers or lawn mowers. So for battery compatibility across the range they are probably most consistent. Amperage can vary of course.

Bosch seem to be the battery of choice for alternative use power like electric bikes. Not sure why that is but you could have a battery that powers your tools and bike in the future.

I still stand by the Festool TXS recommendation, that or the Mafell A10M which is a rebadged Metabo but allows you to avoid the centrotec system. Buy the best tool you can afford, quality is remembered after the price is forgotten etc.

I have 12 and 10 year old drills from the Festool range that are still in daily use with their original batteries. Nothing I had in the years before that came even close, battery performance has improved but the ever increasing voltage numbers game aspect of it is bs mostly.

Mafell A10M

Any reason you'd go Mafell over Bosch, Metabo, Milwaukee? They've all got 10.8~v drivers with that chuck system now. I've got a Mafell track saw, but I'm not sure I'd want to commit to their 10.8v platform.

As a sidearm that can live in a (tiny) bag or pocket it's appealing. For me the fact that you can use the centrotec system easily with it if you want it is appealing. That probably puts it over the edge for me.

Bear in mind I'm mostly joinery and property maintenance so my use case is quite close to diy but not quite as rough and ready as carpentry or full on electrics and well clear of the state most builders get themselves into! I don't need to put up scaffolding with it, just need it to hang gracefully and reliably from my holster pocket as I pop a door on its hinges. The small Festool has amazing slow control too, so handling smaller screws is easily possible. Torque control is real and reliable which comes in handy if you don't want to ruin your elbow.

I'm also piloting almost any new screw holes since that's best practice by far. I can understand there are times when you want to percussion drive 100 10" bolt head screws bare back into a sleeper but that's not my style and the finish quality wouldn't pass muster on my jobs.

For larger holes like door lock body mortices etc. I use a hand powered drill with some ancient forsteners you can pick up on Ebay in sets for silly money. It's much easier to control the results and fast enough.

Ok thanks I’ll have a look around the makita and Milwaukee are pretty much at the same price point including the drills bits etc

One thing that's been annoying me ever so slightly with the lock I fitted yesterday is that I scribed round the outside of the facing plates with a new Stanley blade, then chiselled the recesses out very neatly, but I didn't drill pilot holes for the screws and drove them straight in with the drill - which of course meant that they went in slightly off centre and my plates are very slightly misaligned now.

Knock a matchstick into the hole and start again.

Ideally you have a hinge drill of the correct size :-

https://www.screwfix.com/p/hinge-drill-bit-set-3-pieces/6163v

Always helps when you are piloting through a metal plate.

I suppose you could make a good argument for buying 3 different drills for the same money since that would speed up any job more than having just one drill. Then you have to store 3 drills and most people seem to struggle to find space for a toolkit.

hinge drill

My fucking guy right here. Barely anyone knows about these!

That's interesting. Our jobs sound similar - tool demand wise. I've been eyeing a 10.8 system for ages but just haven't bought the bullet. I do a lot of assembly/light duty stuff, and having a handy and lightweight drill with a selection of chucks would be super useful. But I'm over buying new tools and try and only make essential purchases.

the finish quality wouldn't pass muster on my jobs.

Can you come do building maintenance where I work please? We're always joking about how shit building services are (the company, not the trade). Pay peanuts, get monkeys etc.

good argument for buying 3 different drills

My main drill is the Makita DTP141, a very handy 4 in 1 - drill, driver, impact and percussion. It's obviously a light duty tool, but very handy only needing one thing when bashing a frame together with 4 inch 10s - pilot, bang screws in, and then drill small holes in masonry.

Paid £147 bare, brand new second hand. Spendy, but paid for itself no worries. It also has the advantage that because the impact mechanism is smaller than a dedicated impact driver, it's a lot quieter.

Would be interested to see how long it lasts or how much work it does as that's the only way to really understand the value proposition. I had a Festool CXS for 10 years and it took me a year or 2 to decide to buy a TXS which I did a few months ago. If I started listing the drills I have it would be embarrassing.

Regarding the quality of work that goes on in property maintenance, I've got used to looking at other peoples work and thinking about all the tools they must not have had available when they did the job. I get it when you are working on a 4th floor flat in Chelsea and the tools in in the van parked 2 streets away and you don't want to spend a fortune on parking just to go and get something from the van. I don't work that way but it does mean I'm not attractive for some jobs.

I've been putting together some running around bags that I can carry on the Brompton and the Mafell A10 was on my list for that reason. I enjoy making up 'ultimate' lightweight toolboxes and trying them out in the real world but it's rare you have everything in those cases.

I've had the 4 in 1 for 6 years and used it as my main drill/driver for work in all that time. Light duty as I say, but 6 years service and it still works completely fine. It isn't particularly lightweight as a single unit, and if I'm working overhead all day I'll curse not buying a 10.8 system, but never enough to buy something. It is lighter than carrying an impact driver and combi drill though.

Lots of my colleagues use the CXS drivers, always singing their praises.

I enjoy making up 'ultimate' lightweight toolboxes and trying them out in the real world but it's rare you have everything in those cases.

I know what you mean. On the jobs that it's not easy to roll my stack of systainers in, I try and just bung my driver, charger and a spare battery in a rucksack, and take a single thin Bosch Lbox filled with hand tools. It's a small box, but filled to the brim it feels like it weighs about 20kg! But it's a nightmare to rationalise what goes in the box - everything has a case for being in there. Used to sit comfortably on my bike rack when I lived in Amsterdam tho.

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Bought the wife a 10v makita set for round the house, and they are great, so light and have had no issues drilling breeze blocks etc. Has allowed me to buy a 481 for heavy duty use, which is a monster but would not want to be using it all the time.

I've managed to fuck up a bit the floors I've worked really hard on.

I hadn't had great success with resin-based filler and sawdust mix, mainly because I'd wasted it previously by mixing it badly after long days sanding, so I just used Ronseal "natural" wood filler, which I'd also used before for minor repairs.

Anyway, it's turned out quite a stark contrast to the rest of the boards, and it looks a bit shit - see below (this is after one coat of satin Polyx Rapid).

I want to try to make it look a bit better, and there are three options I've considered that are at my disposal:

1. Use some wood stain I have. I can't see this working as there's already oil on the filler and I don't know whether this would do anything.

2. "Paint" the wood filler with Amber tint Polyx I have and hope it darkens up a little.

3. Sharpie - orange and/or brown because fuck it, it's only a floor and it might still look better.

Are any of these likely to result in acceptable outcomes?
Are there any other relatively easy fixes I could consider?

We might end up putting a runner on there eventually anyway so this might all be moot.

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Ha, time for me to wade in. Seems to me that DIY battery stuff sit around doing nothing for ages so the batteries lose capacity while the ones used all the time survive longer. Have disposed of bosch drill as the replacement battery prices were so high. Also from things like my trend router, it has an amount of servicing such as replacing sealed bearings at the top and bottom of the motor with cheap brands don't have.

I've taken to buying tools with from lidl/aldi as they are 3 years guaranteed (even the batteries) and they are usually made by the big tool manufacturers. There is a aldi/lidl spare parts page that list the manufacturer and spare parts if they break. As I'm not using them every day I don't need the vibration dampening nor silence of the professionals. Have also bought clas olsen tools brand cocraft multi tool as they came with a 5 year guarantee. Though it would be destroyed by floor scraping lifting stuck lino and tiles but did fine and tho noisier than a workers cordless makita multitool similar levels of vibration.

And now for something completely different.

Need to replace this switch on a set of scales (pictured). Measures 6x6mm, and this looks like a suitable replacement. but postage is £12.

Any idea if that’s the right thing, and where I could get one cheaper?

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Amazon?

And you reckon that's the right thing? Don't really know owt about electronics!

They're fairly standard, maybe check the dimensions to be sure but looks right to me.

Aye, 6 x 6 x 4.3mm according to callipers. Cheers lads! Cheapo ebay shite for £1.59 delivered it is!

Definitely the right thing but beware that the order is from China. Don't expect it before the end of May...