khariV

Or the LED flood light. That thing eats 4.0 batteries. No whole day of work on high right now.

One thing to keep in mind is that some of the cheaper / used tile saws are little table saws without the safety features / blade guards of big table saws. While tile saws with abrasive blades won't cut your fingers off quite like a table saw will, they will ruin your day if you slip into it. So, be sure to wear good gloves/goggles and look for a tile saw that has a sliding tray or fence for the work piece rather than trying to slide it across a piece of hard plastic and keep it straight manually.

Woot has a decent deal on a Milwaukee M18 battery starter kit with a 4.0 AH battery and a multi-voltage charger. It's a decent deal if you need another battery/charger or are just getting started with the M18 line. HD sells the same setup for $149, which is crazy expensive. http://tools.woot.com/offers/m18-xc-4-0-starter-kit-2?ref=cnt_wp_4_1

I'm with you on not wanting to have a bunch of different platforms for cordless tools. Batteries are too expensive and chargers take up too much room to have 5 different battery types. If all you care about is drills and impacts, I think any of the big cordless platforms will work well for you. Like someone else said in a different post on cordless platforms, you should evaluate the platform based on the availability of some of the more specific tools that you may need down the road. Need a cordless framing nailer? Dewalt is the only game in town. Really want a cordless inflator, spiral saw and misting fan - go Ryobi. Need to be surrounded by cutting edge red awesomeness... Milwaukee is in your future. Want smaller power tools that still have great power - you've got a choice of Milwaukee M12 or Bosch. So, it just depends on what tools you are looking to buy now and in the future but I think you've come to the right place.

The usual assortment of screw bits (phillips, square, torx, posi), countersink bits, drill bit stops and a sharpee so I don't have to use the stops (mark the drill bit and drill slowly )

As much as I agree with this sentiment, and I do love my M12 Fuel screwdriver, it really probably is overkill for this situation. Hanging pictures and screwing together the odd piece of furniture is probably not worth the $200 investment unless you've already bought into the M12 line and have batteries and chargers or want an excuse to! I'm probably not the best person to talk as I bought an M12 drill on sale to use with a drillbrush to scrub out my shower, but that's just me. I have tried the Dewalt gyroscopic screwdriver. I could never get used to the magic switch that turned on when I twisted it one way or the other. I guess I'm just old fashioned and want a trigger to pull or a button to press. I've played with the Ryobi screwdriver that DR linked above and it seems quite nice. LiOn batteries mean it won't drain if it sits in a drawer for months on end and for $30, it's not a huge investment. Best of all, for me at least, it has a trigger!

My father lives in an old guest house in a historic part of Philadelphia. The "guest house" is around 6000 sq. ft., so I can only imagine how big the main house was before it burned down at the turn of the century. The first part of the house was built sometime in the 1700's and has been expanded slowly over the past couple of hundred years. The house is a curious mix of old time craftsmanship, two foot thick stone walls and crappy recent additions / changes that owners have made in the 50s and 60s. He's fixing it slowly but surely, but the big "oh crap" fixes obviously get priority over stripping paint and refinishing flooring. Back to the project at hand: the handrail on the main staircase was getting looser and looser and was at the point where hitting it hard would likely cause it to fail completely. My dad was having some balance issues and this needed fixing ASAP, so I volunteered to see what I could do. My first attempt at fixing it, stabilizing the newel post with 6" lag screws helped, but didn't address at all the larger problem that the handrail itself was quite wobbly. The spindles of the handrail weren't secured to the stair treads and were made with trapezoidal tenons that were just banged into the tread. Over time these had loosened and even securing them with screws didn't provide the necessary rigidity. Bring on the steel! I ended up making stabilizing braces from 1/8" steel bars. I had to cut and finish the pieces by hand as I wasn't planning on doing this particular job; the only tools I brought were my drill and impact driver. Luckily my dad did have a bench vise and a drill press or it would have taken even longer. The side molding of the stairs was attached with hand-made nails, so it came off pretty easily. In fact, most of it was already loose, which I am sure contributed to the problem. So, after removing the nose molding of the stair treads (is that even the right name?), I attached and secured the braces with cabinet screws. I then cut out notches in the molding with a spiral saw and screwed them back in with finishing screws. I didn't have time to finish up the wood puttying / painting, but the project worked. It's not the prettiest fix, but the handrail is rock solid now and looks a lot better than the alternative of replacing it with new hand rail. Once it's painted, it should be minimally ugly. You can see from the pics that I really need more practice with the spiral saw to be able to control it better. Every time I get one out, the centrifugal force of the bit ends up walking and making the cut go where I really don't want it to to. Just as a side note, everyone raves about the Makita Gold impact bits. The stair treads and spindles are made out of some incredibly hard, very old wood. I think it might be oak or mahogany. Anyway, I was pre-drilling the holes for both the finishing and cabinet screws and I still ended up shattering 2 of the T15 Makita gold bits with the impact driver. I gave up and went and bought some Milwaukee bits and those managed to last me the duration. Here are some pics of the project in progress and my trusty red drills - go go Fuel.

Registration doesn't affect or start the warranty. For Milwaukee tools, the warranty period is calculated based on your purchase receipt from an authorized Milwaukee dealer. If you didn't buy from an auth. dealer or you can't find the receipt, the warranty period is calculated from the manufacture date code embedded in the serial number. The moral of this story is: save and / or scan your receipts.

That's a great story. My daughter (she's 3 now) still reminds me that I don't need any more tools every time we wander into the tool aisle. In the other hand, she's fascinated by my tool box and always pulling out hand tools to ask what they do. We got her a wooden tool set with wooden bolts and tools for her 3rd birthday that she loves. I figure that'll tide her over until she starts using the real things.

Look up DrillBrush. I use one of the harder / stiffer brushes with baking soda and steam and it gets just about everything out.

Was the concrete removed - yes. Did he use the tool t do it - yes. Mission accomplished.

My vote is go for the floor model. I love when you can pick up floor models for cheap. It's exactly the model you want and at a killer price. Use the extra money to buy a chopmaster blade and you'll have a beast.

Correct about the blade being in the right side. All depends on your preference I guess. I like the right side blade. The prices I quoted were in USD- didn't know we were talking loonies and toonies. You might try KMS if you are near one. They have had some killer deals in the past in the 7 1/4" Fuel saw.

Haha thanks. The thing is she LOVES going to the depot, but I can count on her ratting me out if I stray from the list even to look at the new toys.

I'm not a pro and some of my power tools will often find themselves sitting in my garage for months at a time. Yes, it's sad, but I just don't need to use my recip saw all that much but when I do, I'll use it nonstop for several days on end tearing apart old decking, etc. Personally, I like the fact that Milwaukee has a 5 year warranty. If a tool can survive daily abuse for 5 years on a jobsite, I feel comfortable that it'll work when I need it to. I've spent way too much money on disposable power tools that fail when you really need them. So there it is - my 2 cents are for team red. I won't dispute that they're more expensive and you can get a lot more bang for your buck with the Dewalt - oh yeah, and that 20v miter saw is really tempting... Honestly I don't think you would go wrong picking either brand.

The $99 saw is the brushed 6 1/2" model. The fuel 6 1/2" is $199 and the fuel 7 1/4" is $229. Personally I think the big fuel saw is the way to go. It cuts amazingly and has a ton of power. 7 1/4" blades are also a lot easier to find and cheaper than 6 1/2" blades.

I learned the hard way that I needed to put the handle on when I was using spade bits to counter sink bold heads in 2x4s with my 2604. Also just a quick heads up FYI in case anyone else wants to try drilling a 1/2" hole with a spade bit in a powerful hand held drill - make really sure you've got the work piece WELL clamped down. After I put the handle on my drill and was able to keep it from spinning around, I discovered that my half-assed clamping wasn't up to the torque that was now being transferred to the 2x4. I had a pretty nasty looking bruise on my leg for about a week after learning this particular lesson.

After watching the TIA review of the Klein NCVT3 voltage tester and, since I could use a new voltage tester, I went ahead and picked one up at the depot. I'm not sure what the deal with this tester is but it was more or less useless. It would light up and start beeping when you got anywhere near a live outlet. You might say that's what it's supposed to do, but by near I mean 3'. That's feet. Point it at my battery chargers... BEEP. Point it at the overhead fluorescent light ... BEEP. Point it at my leg ... BEEP. Shake it ... BEEP. I can't imagine relying on it to tell me a live circuit if it thinks that my leg is. 110v line. So, back to the depot it went. The one I exchanged it for basically did the same thing. Back to the depot yet again. This time I checked 3 more hanging in the store. Guess what - every one basically acted in the same way. They'd beep when shaken, pointed at body parts, touched to be metal shelves and basically left me with zero confidence that they were working. The older NCVT2 in HD didn't have any of these problems. Is the NCVT3 just a bad design? I've looked at these in 2 separate stores and they all act the same so I don't think at it always just a bad shipment. I'd expect this from a cheap HF tool, not Klein. I guess I'll stick with my five year old tester until they iron out the kinks. Has anyone else had any experience with these?

Update: The TSTAKs were a huge hit! They're just what she needs for hauling her stuff around and she was super excited. The only problem, she said, was that we'd have to figure out some way to distinguish her TSTAKs from mine. I nodded in agreement and promised to find stickers to mark hers so that she didn't end up taking my tools to a training. What I may have failed to mention to her was that I didn't actually have any TSTAKs to be confused. So now when a bunch of them magically show up in the garage, they won't raise suspicions as she already thinks I've got them

I used to have a plastic tub with a similar rolled rim that kept cracking. I solved my problem by strengthening the rim with 1/8" steel attached to the underside of the rolled rim with FiberFix tape. I'm not sure how you'd get the steel curved to match the rim of your bucket, but it might be an interesting weekend project to figure it out or you could adapt the concept - reenforce with metal instead of just filling with epoxy.

The thing to remember is that the only difference between the compact and the XC batteries is runtime (well, size too). You'll need thr 4.0s or 5.0s if you're working all day building a deck, building a shed or putting together a swing set. Other than that, the compact batteries will last plenty long enough. I just built a TV mount out of 2x12s that included driving a bunch of 5" lags and about a dozen tapcons into a brick wall. The whole project took several hours and my 4.0 batteries were still at 3 bars in both the impact and the hammer drill so I am sure that I could have used 2.0 batteries instead. Long story short - go for the compacts for now. You can always add high cap batteries later if you need the runtime.

Hmm - I see that the Milwaukee toolboxes are listed as "Special Buy." The last thing that I remember tagged as Special Buy was the DW782 Miter saw that disappeared after the holidays. Think these will similarly be a short term offer and vanish, never to be heard from again?

So, I'm either in trouble or I'll score major points. Let me 'splain. My wife does a lot of training for the public school system and hauls around a ton of training materials (books, print outs, doo-dads) to and from various offices and facilities. She regularly kills fold-a-crates and has taken to using reusable grocery bags, beach totes, boxes and anything else she can cram her stuff into without having it collapse. As I am the one that is pressed into service to load and unload the jeep, I've been threatening to get her an organizational system. Well, her birthday is coming up and Dewalt is having their annual $20 off $100 sale so.... TSTAKs it is! What do you think? Has anyone else attempted to get their SO to buy into TSTAKs/Systainers/etc.? I'm thinking once she sees how cool they are, I might even have a few show up for my own use. I figure, worst case scenario, I end up with a few TSTAKs and I'll have to make a really nice dinner.

Mine has the older 51.48 for 29 - still not a bad deal. I think they're clearing out the old stock to make room for the E2G models. The 48 inch E2G is still $49. I honestly don't know what the difference is between the older series and the new E2Gs and if they're worth the $$$. Anyone know?

I picked up one cheap on eBay - like $6 with free shipping. I put it on my m18 fuel impact driver. I wouldn't use it to store bits permanently, but it comes in handy for swapping back and forth between two or three bits on a project.