dwasifar

I don't do Facebook but I had a friend do that. He said they reached out to him thinking he was me. He gave them my email last week, they said they'd follow up, and so far nothing.

It's going to come in a big wooden crate stenciled with "Fragile" in Italian.

Good point. I hope he did, then. My wife used to work service desk at Home Depot, and she would tell me all sorts of stories about what people would try to return. They had a LOT of scammers, because the store policies were so lax. They'd have taken back your customer's abused tools. Now she works at Lowe's and they're a lot stricter. But if your customer was paying attention to what you told him, I bet he went home, cleaned them up, and returned them at a different Lowe's.

I didn't know what it was. I had to do a Google image search to find out it was a light. I had a bad sense of the scale of the thing from the picture and thought it was some kind of shop vac.

Just for you, I opened it up to take some pictures. Here's the switch. Prying up that tab on the lower edge allows you to slide the works out of the housing. At that point, if you're not careful, everything comes apart and you have to piece it back together. Typically I expect stab wiring to have a release, as both of you guys mentioned, but there's nothing on the bottom for that: Eventually I got it back together right, but it made me wonder if I was intended to just splice the new cord on with solder and heat-shrink tubing instead. Here are the exterior views, for Caterpillar: Manufacture date 93.01. Coming up on its 24th birthday. New cord on old drill. The key keeper lost its grip a long time ago, so I improvised a replacement with zip ties.

These have been my go-to multi screwdrivers for a long time: I've got a bunch of these in various places around the house and in toolboxes. They're pretty much the perfect multi-driver. #1 and #2 Phillips, 3/16" and 9/32" slotted, 1/4", 5/16", and 7/16" nut drivers. You can take the shaft out of the handle and chuck it into a drill. The handle is comfortable and well balanced, and gives good grip if you need a lot of force, while still being easy to control for delicate work. The hex shape at the base of the handle keeps it from rolling when you put it down. And the butt of the handle makes an excellent makeshift rubber mallet in a pinch. Of course, as perfect as they are, Crescent decided to stop making them. The new model is mediocre: If you run across any of the old ones, grab 'em.

Well, I didn't buy it today, but I just joined the forum, so I'll post my most recent purchases. Here's a Makita 5007MG circular saw: And here it is on its first project, a woodshed under construction in this pic: New Makita saw, meet 23-year-old Makita drill. During the course of that project I broke that orange framing square you see behind it, so I bought one of these to replace it: Funny thing is I set out to buy a Milwaukee saw, and actually did buy one, but returned it and got the Makita instead.

Recently I replaced the power cord on my old 6404 drill using a Makita OEM replacement. The original cord had tinned ends that stab-wired into the trigger switch. I disassembled the switch to get the stab-wired connections out, put it back together (after three tries), and stripped/tinned the ends of the new cord to connect it the same way. Seems to work fine, but was that how I was supposed to do it? Or is there some better way that doesn't involve taking the switch apart? BTW I am astonished that this almost quarter-century-old drill is still plugging along. It's pretty beat up cosmetically by now but it runs just like new.

Yeah, that was the reason I just didn't go to the store and exchange it for another one of the same. I got it at Home Depot, but not every HD carries the full line of Milwaukee tools. I tried to order one for local in-store delivery, but HD was having delivery problems, so I wound up driving to the closest stocking store - a 100+ mile round trip. Milwaukee couldn't be bothered to tell me if the noise was normal, so there was no way to know whether making that trip again to exchange it would be worthwhile. Say I get there and try another one and it makes the same sound, do I conclude that it's normal, or that they shipped a defective batch? I wouldn't rely on the aisle clerk to have the right answer. The only practical thing left to do was exchange it for something else at my local store.

...where they went right back on the shelf to be resold. I feel sorry for the poor SOB who bought them.

What has your experience been with Milwaukee support? I ask because they haven't impressed me recently. I wrote them asking if they could recommend an alternative replacement part for a jig saw shoe that showed in catalog as obsolete, and they sent me a reply that clearly showed they weren't paying attention. (The reply was, "There is no rip fence for this saw.") Shortly thereafter I bought a corded sidewinder 7-1/4" saw (going well out of my way for it); when I got it home and tested it, it was making an odd, ringing metal-on-metal noise. It didn't sound normal, but to be sure, I called their support line first thing the next morning; the agent couldn't explain it and I was transferred to the tech dept, which went to voice mail. Left a clear message, but no one called back all day, or ever. I needed a saw for the next day, so by the end of the day when I hadn't heard back, I took it back to the store and brought home a Makita instead. I sent Milwaukee an email complaining about the lack of support and never got a reply. Sent them a postal letter complaining about the failure to reply and got no response to that either. Are they riding on their reputation? Because it sure seems like they don't give a [bleep].