Conductor562

"Say you had invested in another battery platform, say the M18 and you had the matching M18 jigsaw, would it be worth it to you to invest in the M12 jigsaw then?" That's a hard question to answer. Knowing what I know now about the control and overall awesomeness of the M12 then yes. I'd lay down that $140 all over again. However, if I had an M18 prior to that then I would have probably never saw the need for it. But yes, it's that cool. It has the best control of any saw I've ever used. It has a very low center of gravity and for cut outs and detailed applications there's no comparison. "If you already had a Fein Multi-tool, Crain jamb saw, and numerous Dremel tools? would it still be worth it for you to invest in 12v tools? Are they that much more convenient and would they be able to earn their keep versus using other possibly corded tools?" In regards to the multi-tool, probably not. It's convenient for sure, but if I'd already invested $300 in a Fein I'd have a hard time justifying the purchase. As for the rotary tool though, I prefer the cordless. I had a corded Dremel and after I got used to the Milwaukee I gave the Dremel to my neighbor. The M12 battery life is sufficient and I found the cord to be restrictive in a lot of cases.

"IF you have ever had to deal with any toxic environmental conditions, like having you or your family sickened by pollution, your attitude about the EPA may change." I have a little more of a direct connection to toxic environmental conditions than I care to remember. I grew up in the chemical valley. An area of West Virginia covering parts of 3 counties which are Putnam, Kanawha, and Jackson. Consequently, there are 13 superfund sites within a 25 minute radius of my home. There are 4 superfund sites in Nitro, WV alone which is 15 minutes from here. This is somewhat misleading because all 4 sites are basically the same place as all the plants were adjoining. Beginning toward the end of WWI Nitro was as much a chemical town as any. At any given time there 4 or 5 operating chemical plants there which during my lifetime were Monsanto, Fike, Artel, and Viscose. up until the early 1990's after a lot of clean-up had taken place, the entire town of Nitro smelled like rotten eggs. Anyone who'd ever as much as got off the interstate for gas could attest to the overwhelming odor that surrounded the town. My Mom grew up in Nitro and a lot of my family still lives there. When ordering her senior class ring the salesman at the local jewelry store advised her not to order pearl because they usually deteriorated fairly quick in the area. She ignored the warning and sure enough it's discolored and pitted to this day. Every car in town over 4 or 5 years old had paint peeling off of it. My Dad, his Dad, my Mom's dad, and pretty much all of my uncle's all worked at Fike or Monsanto. When dad hired in the very early 70's his first operating job was in a unit that produced the primary ingredient in Agent Orange and Agent Blue. Hell, I remember as a kid having Mason jars of Agent Orange in our garage. The real kicker was that all the bi-products were just dumped in the Kanawha river. Everyone around here knows someone who's caught a mutated fish. Just down river from Nitro in Eleanor there was a huge flat of property that cover several hundred acres and was probably the best piece of property in the state that wasn't owned by the school board or the power company. In the early 90's there was a lot of commercial interest in the property. Disney and Nascar both looked at it but a soil test confirmed that entire place was contaminated with Dioxin from the aforementioned dumping.They spent 11 years removing millions of cubic yards of soil and hauling it off to Louisiana for "disposal". Rather than add it as a superfund site they made it an army base. My grandpa died in 1988 at the age of 62. His whole body was ate up with cancer though he had no family history which the doctors attributed to his working environment. We also had several other chemical plants here. At one time Union Carbide alone employed 10,000 people in this valley. We had Dupont, FMC, Rhone Poulenc, and several other smaller companies. After Fike shut down dad went to work at Union Carbide and though it's now owned by Dow, he's still there to this day. From the original 2 dozen or so plants with thousands of employees we now have 4 very small plants with maybe 1000 total employees. The EPA did a fantastic job of cleaning up the mess the years of neglect created and it was totally necessary and I'll in no way dispute that. 25 minutes in the other direction we have Pt. Pleasant, WV. There is a superfund site the which is technically WV Ordinance but everyone around here knows it simply as TNT. During WWII they made TNT there for the war. They constructed a shit ton of little concrete igloos back in the woods to hide them from any air attack. After the war several companies leased them for storage and the area became popular as a local hangout for teenagers. This may sound familiar as it was the TNT site that gave birth to the Mothman legend in 1966. As information, the movie has not one damn thing to do with the real story. I could keep going but the point is I know all about polluted environments. The production of chemicals didn't pollute the environment, the negligence of the chemical companies did. The use of coal doesn't pollute the environment, the negligence of the people who burnt it does. We have no smog or air pollution problems because coal as been used more and more efficiently and the couple of areas we do have them has nothing to do with coal. China doesn't give a rats ass about the environment and at the end of the day their polluting the same environment we are. This doesn't make the shady tricks they've pulled on the coal industry ok. For those of us here it's all we've got left. After it's gone what's next? We can debate coal and the EPA from now until the end of time and neither one of us will ever change our mind, but the fact doesn't change that we need industry. You can't support a country the size of ours with Tech jobs. Obama is so well liked in WV that a prison inmate in Texas got 40% of the primary vote and actually won 9 counties. Our state senators (both Democrats) have stated publicly they will not vote for Obama. The point is that my view is the norm in this area. We've been beaten down in the name of the environment long enough. We're one of the poorest states in the nation based on per capita income. We don't need goverment regulations and liberal agendas, we need the jobs their trying to kill.

I didn't even mention my M12 multi-tool and rotary tools. They're both plenty sufficient in terms of power. I can trim 3 or 4 door jambs on a single charge for tile work which is what I bought it for. It want a corded model for any lengthy chore, but it nice for its intended purpose. You can pop a battery in and be done almost as quick as you can unroll and plug in a corded model.

I've got several Milwaukee M12 tools and some of them have become indespensable. The inspection camera is awesome and runs for hours on a charge. My M12 jig saw is on of the favorite tools I own. It's small, lite, and the control you get from the handle design is amazing. It's perfect for a lot of jobs I require a jig saw for. I use the M12 compact driver as much as any tool I own. It's awesome for assembly work. I do not own a 12V recip saw but we used my buddies Bosch a lot during his plumbing project in tight area where a full size would have been to big. The design of the Milwaukee and Bosch is perfect, but to me the Dewalt and Makita designs take to much away from the compact benefit to justify themselves. I don't mean to suggest that 12V is a sufficient platform for all job, but there are a lot of jobs that is plenty sufficient.

CPO Milwaukee carries refurbished models but never have more than 2 or 3 in stock. Ohio Power Tool doesn't carry them. Tool Barn, Tool King, or Tools Plus doesn't have them, and Ace Tool has them sometimes (at their typically rediculious prices). None of the 3 HD's in my area carry them. You can usually find the 6021-21 orbital, but rarely a 6020-21. You can find them, but you have to hunt for them. They just don't seem as available as the rest.

Kowa Seiki? Never heard of them. Where do the come from?

Now that you mention it, I bumped into that site when I was researching that Lakeside pipe wrench. Meant to go back and browse around but I forgot about it. Guess I'll have to check it out.

Very good point Wayne. The great reduction in heat generated is a big plus though.

I tend to buy strictly Milwaukee because that is my favorite brand and they've never let me down. However, I don't even pretend to believe they make the best everything. The Bosch Bulldog Xtreme is superior to the comparable Milwaukee that I have, no question about it. As far as the head to head video reviews go, take them with a grain of salt as Wayne said. I saw a video on YouTube title Dewalt vs. Milwaukee. The Dewalt drilled 3 times the holes the Milwaukee did even though it was equipped with the RedLithium XC. The Milwaukee struggled to stick a 1" spade bit through 2X's and crapped out after just a few holes. The fact is that between the models tested, any real test would have been fairly close. The Dewalt is faster, the Milwaukee has more torque. In my mind with Red Lithium XC's give the Milwaukee the advantage (but I am a little biased). If the Dewalt were to somehow manage to beat out the Milwaukee it wouldn't have been by a 75% landslide as this video wanted you to believe. The performance difference between pro caliber tools is usually fairly marginal. 10% - 15% is a big difference in most statistical categories. If it smells like shit, it's probably shit.

I've been eyeing this saw for awhile now. Anyone got any first hand experience with it? Likes or dislikes? I found it about $20 cheaper than normal so I'm thinking now might be the time to go for it.

Ya know, I just realized we all commented on a post that in all likelyhood was made by some dude or dudette with a name that contains at least 3 X's in some far off Chinese province getting paid 25¢ a day by some chino marketing firm that apparently holds contracts with Makita and an undetermined drill press manufacturer to paste things that vaguely resemble advertisements on tool forums using a dial up Internet connection and a dictionary printed during the Truman administration with missing pages. I have to admit that their getting better though as they've finally discovered adjectives. Whatever gets the forum going is a good thing I guess.

I love all these British phrases like "sick to the back teeth" and such. Amazon UK said the pipe grip "usually DISPATCHES" within 2 days. Man, I need some British neighbors. Where I'm from y'all is a proper noun.

I've bought several Milwaukee accessorie sets and they've all been good. Their spade bit set is nice and their thunderbolt bits are great. I've been eyeing the 14 pc. Cobalt set but don't know of anyone who has them. Scored the 13 pc. Ice Hardened hole saw kit 50% off on Black Friday last year at HD.

LOL

During my last tile project I used my M18 Hammer to mix the grout and it never broke a sweat. I didn't have the nuts to try the thin set thought. Last winter I had to drill about 80 holes in 1X's with a 7/8 spade bit making snowmen decorations. I finished up with 2 bars left on the gauge. I still had 3 bars until very late in the project. Impressed the hell out of me.

I got a set of the Milwaukee Shockwave impact duty bits over a year ago. They are awesome as well.

All the brands with the exception of Ridgid have a shorter warranty on their batteries. Most are 2 years, some are 3. Ridgid has a non-transferable lifetime warranty on their tools sold after a certain day in 2005. My father in-laws company just switched over to Ridgid stuff just for the warranty. They seem to be pretty happy with them so far. My wet saw is an awesome little saw for 3 or 4 times a year I end up laying tile. I've got the Ridgid Tri-Stack air compressor that I've been very happy with, but it only came with a 3 year warranty. Even if the specs are a little lower than the true professional brands a lifetime warranty makes Ridgid worth a hard look.

I can tell you that Milwaukee warranties go 5 years from the date of purchase if you can provide proof of purchase or the date of manufacture if you can't. I registered all my tools using the "My Toolbox" feature on the Milwaukee website which asks for a date of purchase. Would they honor that date without a bill of sale? Good question, I've wondered that myself. I've never had to make a warranty claim on any of them so I can't provide any feedback on that. On my Ridgid wet saw (lifetime warranty) I went online and it made me print out a form that I had to send in with a copy of the bill of sale and the proof of purchase from the box. Dewalt works pretty much the same as Milwaukee only it's a 3 year warranty. The added benefit for Dewalt is that there is a service center about 30 minutes from my house. Makita has a weird warranty system. I believe that on most tools it's 2 years but I've heard they've started offering 3 on some of their new stuff.

I still have my old Dewalt recip saw that's been completely trouble free, and my Makita 12" compound miter is a great saw, so I'm not totally biassed.

Well....I grew up around Dewalt stuff, almost exclusively Dewalt, and when my dad started buying me tools for birthdays and Christmases, he bought me Dewalt. By all conventional schools of thought I should have carried on the trend but when I got my first Union construction job (before I started jockeying coal trains) they provided me with a Milwaukee Sawzall and drill. The drill was nice but it was the Sawzall that really won me over. Now for the sake of fairness the Dewalt I had was a $99 base model while the Milwaukee I had been issued was a 15 amp Cadillac but at that point in my life I didn't pay any more attention to that than I did the tires I continually burnt off my car. When I outgrew those starter tools and some began to wear out I remembered the awesomeness of that Sawzall and gave Milwaukee a hard look. I didn't just jump in and drop 2 or 3 grand in a leap of faith, I did my research and based on my past experience and the market conditions at the time Milwaukee seemed like the safest bet. To be honest, I never really considered Bosch. I had no significant prior hands on experience with them, the availability was extremely limited in my area, and I didn't much care for that retro "upward angle" design of their drills. Makita intrigued me for a moment. I really liked the visual appeal of their stuff, they had a reputation for quality, and there was enough of a selection locally for me to play with them before I bought them. What eventually turned me off to Makita was the absence of a significant 12V line and they seemed to be in a Lithium/NiMh transition which made me a little nervous. By this point I pretty much had it narrowed down to Dewalt or Milwaukee. Dewalt was just in the early days of launching the 20V Max line and the 12V Max line consisted of a drill and a driver. There didn't seem to be any buzz about new tools coming and most Dewalt guys seemed to be a little confused themselves with the fact that they launched a new line that contained enough tools to track on one hand, and they were still releasing more antiquated NiCad tools. Milwaukee however had just released the Red Lithium battery and it was the hot topic on all the tool sites and gathered awesome reviews. Their 12V line was by far the most extensive and was the only line that offered all the tools I was interested in. They were releasing really innovative tools like the copper tubing cutter and Propex expansion tools and they had an awesome battery platform that they were totally committed to. All that coupled with my past experience and the 5 year warranty and I was sold. Every tool I got I liked just enough to buy another, and another, and another, and I was never disappointed. Even my dad who'd been strictly Dewalt since the dawn of Dewalt said if he were to start fresh he'd have a really tough decision to make. I do not use my tools daily, but I do use them quite regularly and I've been nothing but happy with them. No matter what kind of tool I've used, I've never reconsidered my decision for a moment. Dropped my M18 Hammer drill off my roof on the sidewalk, barley marred the rubber overmold. Dropped my M12 driver out of my attic on the garage floor, popped the battery back in and it never missed a beat. Other then the shitty paper clamp on my sander I can't say a cross word about any of the 15 Milwaukee tools I own. I'm hooked.

Sorry about that Wayne, I was directing that question @ Joan.

I did forget to mention that their insulated tools are made in Germany. Other than that is all American!

Is it an Impact Driver?

Hey guys just looking to drum up some interesting conversation so I come forth with this question: What is your favorite brand of power tools and why? If you aren't loyal to one particular brand, why not? I'm mostly curious as to what makes people tick. None of this "because they're the best" crap. Tell us why they're the best. Besides, everyone knows Milwaukee is the best anyway! lol

I know I'm a tad late on this but.....If he wants to cut angles (and your prepared to spend the extra $50) for $199 you could get him a nice quality 10" Ridgid brand compound miter saw from Home Depot. Very versatile tool and a must have for anyone wishing to do any real quality wood projects.