jeffmcmillan

From my experience, the big difference with magnesium is how well the shoe holds up. For a beater saw either will get bent so it doesn't matter, and for a personal shop saw you're going to take care of neither should get bent and you can always true it up if it does once or twice. The big difference is for a workhorse saw that will be used heavily for years. Both will get bent over time, but magnesium you can straighten a little bit annually, whereas an aluminum shoe has to be hammered on ever morning to straighten it out. I'm guessing you're in the third situation so go with the magnesium saw and save yourself a lot of headaches.

I can't stand the Dewalt grinder style. The only way to do a one handed cut is to lock the trigger on with a rubber band and hold it by the auxiliary handle.

To put it nicely, Milwaukee demonstrates their tools in niche applications where they perform best. Every manufacturer does it and in a sense it's rigging the game, but marketing is paid to showcase their tools not give a honest comparison. Having a hammer tailored to the application is particularly important with rotary hammers which is why there are so many sizes. Let's go into some more detail on rotary hammers. Each impact breaks up a little concrete across the tip of the bit and the rotation scrapes that and some other concrete away. How much is broken at a given point on the tip is dependent on the impact energy per area of the bit tip. Of course this is not a linear function; there's a threshold under which you're not doing much, and one over which the marginal increase of chipping for an increase in impact energy drops off. Ideally you get over the second threshold and stop wasting extra power, but then you go up a bit size and it's under-powered. In addition to this, the chipped cement needs to be removed by the bit rotating, but for a large bit the average absolute speed of any given part of the bit is much higher for a given rotational speed is higher so larger bits can use a lower rotation speed. A small bit may not have enough rotational speed to effectively clear chips and the hammering will re-hit what it has already broken and waste energy. To top it all off, the angle modulation of impacts depends not only on the bit size, but the bit type. Essentially each impact should maximize the time since a previous hit on nearby areas over the whole area on which it's hitting (The math is complicated enough even I don't want to calculate it). For a large bit, the distance between the end of the carbide tip on impacts is going to be greater so the minimum angular spacing of hits needs to be closer. This all combines to mean in masonry drilling, unlike wood or metal, speed depends on many things besides power. It's quite possible that with less power that hammer won for a 1 inch hole, but that would probably be a different story for the max rated 1-9/16 inch hole. That said, I would actually class the tools designed to use the 9Ah battery with 36V tools rather than 18V. The 9Ah batteries seem to be Milwaukee's answer to Makita's 18X2 system, another way to get people into heavier tools without really leaving the 18V platform. I believe milwaukee's 9Ah battery actually has more power than the ego 56V, 2Ah battery.

Typically when they show cordless outperforming corded its against an old or cheap tool in a very specific application. Of course in some ranges of tools theres so much more refinement in the cordless tools that the best corded comparisons are junk. Pneumatic impact wrenches dominated so much that corded never developed, and non-cordless impact drivers are even rarer.

Have you tried tightening a nut to 200Nm with that torque wrench then seeing what torque it says is required to loosen the nut with the torque wrench?

I think Dewalt reciprocating saws are some of the worst as far as vibration but I have no idea what the problem is. Pressing the shoe against a stable workpiece with some dewalt saws feels like I'm cutting mid-blade and throwing my weight into another saw. The only good use for a cordless dewalt reciprocating saw is vibrating concrete forms.

For the life of me I cant think of a specific use for round nose pliers besides making loops in wires, yet when I'm working on electronics theyre the pliers I reach for almost as much as bent nose.

It's hard to take him seriously when his reviews sound more like infomercials.

I could see that price for a 10-inch cordless miter saw, but not this one. The price might come down once they start actually stocking it, but that seems unlikely as their ancient cordless miter saw is $540.

Looks like a great company. I'm sure you'll have plenty of time to break that belt in.

Makita has the parts breakdown separate from the manual on their website for all their tools. http://makitatools.com/en-us/Assets/Output/ProductFileHandler.ashx?Filename=RT0701C_PB.pdf&Url=http://cdn.makita.com/apps/cms/doc/prod/RT0/47600d7c-b81d-4d19-a955-31f2782c4284_RT0701C_PB.pdf You should be looking for an M4 screw.

That sounds great, BMack. I'll definitely be getting a pair of the lineman style. I'm definitely pretty tough of my pliers, but they never seem to hold up well. Milwaukee pliers in particular seem almost as soft as the shockwave bits, which is really annoying since I like their designs.

How does the joint hold up? A lot of pliers flex in the joint and end up loose and wobbly if you put too much twisting force the way these are meant to work.

There's a good reason knockoff batteries are so much cheaper than oem batteries. Many skimp on the control circuitry, use unreliable cells, lie about the specs, or all three. They have almost no incentive to produce a good, reliable product. If one of these batteries catches fire and ruins a tool (knockoff batteries catching fire is actually quite common) there's nothing you can do, whereas Makita is facing a class action lawsuit just because some batteries stopped holding a charge prematurely (mostly for safety reasons). I would switch to a cheaper brand of tools like ryobi before buying knockoff batteries.

From my experience, yes. I had two older batteries that worked fine and within months of when I started keeping them on tools one bricked and the other stopped holding a charge particularly well. Since I stopped keeping them on the tools the remaning one hasnt degraded any more. The problem seems to be reduced for the newer batteries though.

Makita definitely has some lemons. They seem to release a half dozen for every top-of-its-class tool, in fact I've heard the brushless rotary hammer is superior to the 18v2 (same design as the older 36V one) in almost every way.

I think this issue comes up with Dewalt more because some of the tools have different type numbers. Those can make it look like Dewalt is trying to screw people when they're just doing a silent upgrade of the tool.

Either Makita really improved their recip blades or that's an incredibly powerful saw. Imagine doing that with a carbide blade.

If you really want compact, wrap a bunch of tubes with a bungee cord. The trick is to use a spent tube to push a new one out of the bundle so it stays the same size. As much as I like to keep things compact though, that crate has style.

Wow, you don't see 8-1/4 inch saws much any more.

How quickly does it stop when you release the trigger? If it feels like a braking grinder, grinding down whatever it's catching on and/or greasing the bearings should do the trick. If you've ever hit the wheel lock on a grinder right after shutting it off, you'll notice the nut loosens and sometimes files off along with the wheel. This is the principle for some tool free grinders because it loosens the nut, but those have a notch in the nut and spindle so it doesn't spin all the way off, just loosens. I'm guessing the brake on the new milwaukee grinder is part of the reason it can use the tool-free nut, because if you've ever tried to remove a grinding wheel that's been worn down without changing you know that little twist handle won't cut it. Slowing quickly isn't so much of a problem if it is smooth, but if the spindle or motor or anything is catching somewhere it acts sort of like an impact driver to loosen the nut. That was a lot more rambling than I expected. tldr: Slowing down reverses the force of speeding up and can loosen the nut instead of tightening it.

Thanks for the information guys. I should have specified cold chisels in the title, now I have a sudden urge to get new wood chisels too. I'm pleasantly surprised by the price of Mayhew chisels. I was expecting to pay and arm and a leg for something good. Plus it saves the trouble of trying to figure out the difference between Stanley, Stanley-Proto, Proto, and Proto-Blackhawk branded tools.

That is very strange. I wouldn't expect the P107 to power your tools with only 8.2V. Usually anything under 15V won't take a charge or power tools well.

Whoops, I misunderstood which pictures were which batteries. What is the P107 voltage between negative and positive? The center is probably a control voltage that would likely vary between different model batteries so the charger can distinguish between them. Unfortunately I don't actually own any newer Ryobi tools so I can't tell you what the voltage should be.

I'm with you. It's been painful watching tool after brushless tool when, for one of my favorite tools, I'm stuck with a cord or a painfully outdated cordless tool. At least I'm not invested in Dewalt waiting for anything to go brushless.