dwasifar

I don't think there's a whole lot of difference. Where was yours made?

That same DWD112 model? I see DWD110s still available for sale out there at the same price; it looks like the difference is they upgraded the chuck and chucked the storage case.

Well, my old Makita 6404 is getting flaky on me, and although I will probably repair it, I'm going to keep it as a backup and get something new for a primary corded drill. What do you guys like? Here's what I'm considering: Dewalt DWD112. Advantages: Everyone seems to like it, even the keyless chuck. More power than almost anything else I'm looking at. Bubble level in the casing. 3-year warranty. Disadvantages: No lock-on button. Made in China, although apparently a few are made in Mexico too. Kinda heavy at 4.1lb. Bosch 1006VSR. Advantages: Pretty light weight at 3.4lb. Made in Malaysia. Disadvantages: Not as powerful as the DeWalt. Variable speed apparently doesn't go down to very slow speeds. 1-year warranty. Makita 6407/6408. Advantages: Choice of keyed or keyless chuck. Good experience with Makita in the past. Made in USA (!!). Available with case. Lightweight at 3.1lb. Disadvantages: Less powerful than the others. Kinda pricey for what you get. Some reviewers say it bogs and breaks under load. 1-year warranty. Milwaukee 0240-20. Advantages: Equal in power to the DeWalt. 5-year warranty. Disadvantages: Heaviest of the bunch at 4.25lb. Considerably more expensive than the DeWalt. Made in China. Plus I'm still a little pissed off at Milwaukee. Hitachi D10VH. Advantages: Stupid cheap at under $30. Lightweight at 3.1lb. Moderate power. Comes with case. 5-year warranty. Disadvantages: Seems like more of a homeowner drill. Lots of complaints about broken chucks, although at this price I could replace the chuck and still come out ahead. Can't find where they're made. Opinions? Thanks.

Well, the switch failed on me the other day, probably the result of being taken apart and put back together. So now I have a decision to make. I already put $17 into replacing the power cord. Now it'll be $22 to replace the switch. If I knew going in that I was going to be putting $39 in parts & shipping into this drill when a new one can be had for $74, I probably would not have done it. What say you? Is a switch replacement good money after bad? The drill is strong, it's just that the switch is flaky.

Level D, I think.

Suddenly I want a new level: Actually I was looking at levels, that's how I found this. But I can't justify why I should want a new one. I have a perfectly serviceable USA-made Craftsman heavy duty 48" aluminum level, and an American Level 48" model made out of mahogany and brass. Both of them seem totally accurate, as far as I can tell by casual testing. The wooden one is a thing of beauty but I rarely use it, because the Craftsman is lighter. But I might as well ask what kind you guys like.

Around here you see it this way in non-bearing partitions. In this particular building, headers in bearing walls are 2x12s sandwiched with plywood as you describe: In this shot you can see three different headers; non-bearing at the far left, bearing next to it, and farther back you can see a big honkin' engineered piece that supports about a 15' span.

I saw it in that Atlanta project. I understand why they like it, but it's a giant pain in the butt.

Yes. The EMT and metal boxes mark this as Chicago area, the only place left in America as far as I know where metallic conduit is still required by code in residential work. In Cook County and the collar counties (Lake, Dupage, I think Kane, etc.) everything is metal. I've never heard those boxes called bell boxes; they're just called square electrical boxes as far as I know. That particular box holds the wall switch you see in the room-side view. For new work they have stud brackets attached: And you top them off with a 1-gang or 2-gang "electrical box cover" which everyone calls a mud ring: I've spent most of my life in this area, so it feels like I've always known how to bend conduit and pull wire through. I did a remodeling project in Atlanta once, and that was all Romex. Seemed weird not to be able to color-code, and to have to deal with the bare ground wire. The other weird thing here compared to the rest of the country is that we mount our outlets horizontally. No one knows for sure why, as far as I've been able to find.

Nobody?

These: A little out of focus, apparently, but you can see what they are. Also these, which were not handy for the picture: All this is in the course of a classic "more trouble than it's worth" project, in which I install a pocket door on a walk-in closet without disturbing the drywall on the room side: The builder's drywall hangers were conscientious enough to glue each sheet in place, which caused me problems taking those studs out; and the mud and tape guys floated the corners out so far that my replacement rock was probably 1/8" lower than the cut pieces, requiring me to float out a lot too. But I did get the studs out without having to break them up, in reusable condition after a quick pass through the table saw to clear off the construction adhesive. One is now a jack stud and the other's part of the new header. There is another jack stud on the far end of that header, but it and the header are only 2" wide at that point due to the electrical box, so I doubled up a pair of jack studs at the end of the slider. Experts in building codes can probably tell what region I live in from the second and third construction shot.

It offends my sensibilities to see perfectly good brand-new tools destroyed like this. Maybe it's because of how I was brought up by frugal Depression-era parents, but I can't help being bothered by it.

That's a shame. Some people ruin it for everyone.

Pop rivets? That's actually a pretty good idea. She already uses steel washers over the fiber ones. (Didn't mention that before because I didn't want to add confusion.)

I'm not sure I understand the second part of your question, but as for the first part, it's just like you see in the first photo. The curls are made by gripping the cotter pin with the very tips of the needle nose, so they're pretty tight. The fiber discs in the picture are maybe half-dollar sized, which should give you an idea of the scale.

My wife makes teddy bears with jointed limbs. They go together with cotter pins and fiber discs, like this: One disc is in the limb and the other is in the body; the cotter pin keeps pressure between them to provide friction for the joint. She curls up the ends of the pin, as shown, with a needle nose pliers, twisting until she gets the correct tension. She uses fairly firm pins so that the joints don't loosen with time. The problem is that this is really hard on pliers. It takes a fair amount of force to curl those pins, and needle nose plier jaws are not designed to be torqued that way. She's already broken two pairs of Husky needle nose pliers doing this. I bought her a Greenlee plier, which is holding up better, but it's still difficult for her. I'm considering getting her a small pair of long nose locking pliers for this: The nose is still too blunt, though; not pointy enough to make the tight curl required. So I would have to grind it down a bit, and I'm not sure it would hold up. The obvious solution is to not use cotter pins. Screws and nylon-insert locknuts do work, but they're cost-prohibitive; the margins on the bears are already slim. So, throwing it open. Any suggestions, guys? Different tool, different hardware?

As it turns out, though, the Bosch AGM batteries are made by Exide. They're rebranded US-made Exide Edge batteries. So we'll see how it does. The buzz on AGM batteries in general is pretty good.

That's interesting. I'm accustomed to battery failures happening on very cold days, but it's been ages since I actually had one fail on me in any season, because I don't let them go that long. When it comes to batteries, the second to last thing I want happening is to be wandering around a parking lot looking for someone to give me a jump start; the LAST thing I would want would be for my wife to be in that situation. What region of the country were you working in when you saw this pattern?

Well, I'm about to find out. I've seen good reviews on it, but I've never had a Bosch battery that I know of. Might have had an OEM in a German car at some point, but who knows. Typically I buy the private-branded Johnson Controls batteries they sell at Advance Auto Parts as AutoCraft Gold or at AutoZone as Duralast Gold. Those are next-to-top of the line for each store, and it's a big jump in price to go from them to the "Platinum," the top of the line AGM designs. If the Gold is $130, the Platinum will be pushing $200, and I never wanted to spend that much on a battery because, as I said, I replace them before end of life anyway. I was all set to buy another one of those, and then I found that Pep Boys was having an online coupon sale on this Bosch AGM battery, which is a nice step up from what I usually buy, and the 25% coupon brought it in at only about $20 more. From what I've read, Optima is not what it used to be. They moved their manufacturing, and now a lot of people are reporting inconsistent quality. DieHard has been a go-to brand for a lot of people for decades, and they generally get good ratings from Consumer Reports, but I have zero confidence that Sears will be around to honor the warranty if I ever need it. I spent longer than I needed to out there changing it. Took out the tray and the insulating box and cleaned them in the sink along with the hold down strap and bolts, oiled the nuts for ease of future disassembly, greased the terminal connections once they were tight. Ran zip ties around the insulation to keep it snug. Filled the washer tank while I was there. It's my wife's car and I like to add the little detail touches. Subaru was smart about fasteners; the terminal bolts, the hold-downs, and the harness strap are all 10mm, so you only need one tool.

One more today: I replace these from time to time just because they get gunked up and full of corrosion and deposits that you scrape off the terminals. Today it's because I also bought this: This is for my wife's car. She heard me telling my friend that I replace batteries every three or four years whether they need it or not, as preventive maintenance, and she said, "But my battery is five years old." And she's right. I knew Subaru had given her a free battery when the car was still under warranty but I had kind of lost track of time and didn't realize it had been that long. Any time I thought about it, it was "Oh, she got a new battery from Subaru, she's fine for a while." Given that we've been in the single-digit temperatures for the last couple weeks, I am hustling to rectify this oversight.

Here is the wrench post-dip: I wanted each successive dip to be a little deeper, for a clean finish, but the wrench bottomed out in the can on the second dip as the product got used up and the fluid level dropped. Archimedes and I solved the problem by sticking a couple pieces of wood into the can to raise the level.

Well, five, actually. I forgot about the Stanley combination square that wasn't actually square. The point is that aside from the Husky pliers my wife ruined, and maybe the Craftsman lineman pliers, nothing was wrecked; they were manufacturing defects.

That was my dad. He would buy stuff like 29¢ screwdrivers from the bin on the hardware store counter. Of course the tools wouldn't last long; the screwdriver tips would round off, the saw blades would go dull, the cheap flashlights would come apart. But he kept doing it, and my whole childhood I thought there was something wrong with me that I couldn't get decent results using his tools for anything. "It's a poor workman who blames his tools," he would tell me, and it took a few years after I was out on my own to realize that was only true down to a point. I stopped buying the same shitty tools I had seen my dad buy, and started buying quality and taking good care of them. In all the decades since, I have only ever had to warranty out four hand tools: a Craftsman lineman pliers that would not quite close, a pair of Craftsman dikes that were sticky right out of the box, a pair of Husky needle nose pliers that my wife destroyed making teddy bears, and a Stanley tape measure with a touchy lock. I've never broken a quality ratchet, socket, wrench, screwdriver, etc., because I take care of the tools and don't use them past their design limits. However: one day not too long ago, I was torquing down some lug nuts and twisted the end off of a socket extension. On close inspection it turned out not to be part of my USA Craftsman set, but rather a junky old one that probably came in a Kmart set. I haven't bought junk hand tools like that in probably 35 years, so that extension was somehow hiding in with my sockets all that time.

Hanging out with you guys is bad for my wallet. Here's today: KnarlyCarl bought the TurboShear at Menards and I immediately said to myself "How have I lived without this device?" So I also bought one at Menards' bag sale. While there I picked up a Channellock 8" adjustable wrench purely because BMack37 recommended it. It was $30 for the Wide-Azz version with "Code Blue" grip, or $16 for the one you see here, so I bought the cheaper one and a thing of Plasti Dip to cushion the handle. Finally we have an el cheapo ratcheting band clamp from Horror Fright. For $7 I will give it a try before I move up to name brand clamps costing three and four times as much.