paulengr

I would tend to agree somewhat and it’s annoying. Random orbit sanders though are really finishing or edge tools, not large area. If you try to use a random orbit sander over a large area for say stripping, you get a much less even surface. That’s where the belt sander shines. But you won’t find much if anything cordless when it comes to belt sanding or say large grinders for good reason. With a grinder or a random orbit sander (I do mostly metal work) there are lots of small quick jobs where I might need the tool for maybe a minute or two like cleaning up the rough edges after sawing. And some jobs are just better cordless. Like hitting a painted metal surface where I’m attaching an electrical ground. But for large areas or say beveling an edge prepping it for welding even with three chargers I can’t recharge batteries fast enough to keep up. That’s why I reach for the corded tool on bigger jobs. But I’m not a finish carpenter or cabinet maker so to me a belt sander is not an every day tool compared to a random orbit sander or grinder that I use every day. Plus back in the day belt sanders were cheap and what the average homeowner bought. Random orbit sanders were purely professional grade tools. Random orbit sanders have come down in price and the skill level is almost zero so that’s what homeowners get these days.

Dust collection is asking a LOT of a cordless tool. Cordless vacuums last just long enough to get the job done...about 10-15 minutes. The extra torque/power of a sander with a vacuum gives you maybe 3-5 minutes run time if that. Plus where would you fit a reasonable size canister? Face it vacuum attachment makes the most sense and keeps it a student project. Might want to look at frameless motors. For your application best would be a motor where the belt rides on the outside and the center is fixed (stator and rotor are swapped) which you can get in a frameless style motor but requires you supply bearings and similar parts. In conveyors you can buy a motor roller which is similar except it also has a planetary gearbox inside the roller. Fixed speed. In a belt sander you don’t cary this. Look at First Robotics for parts. REV Robotics sells a nice inexpensive small 12 VDC brushed or brushless motor controller. For testing we rig them to run fixed speed or off a pot (program everything via USB and a small setup program on your laptop). Look to Panasonic for Li-ion batteries from say Digi Key. Power Tool manufacturers (Makita, Dewalt, Milwaukee) use 5-15 cells in their battery packs. 5 cells in series is 18-20 V. You need more like 2-4 cells but to start with I’d recommend a small NP12 which is a sealed 12 V lead acid battery common in alarm systems for instance, cheap with decent Ah ratings, and can be charged with a common car charger. Step it up to Li-ion once you have a working prototype. That gets you quickly to a working prototype.

As to combo kits IF you need all the tools they make sense and you can save money. Like buying a kit with say a drill/driver, a charger, two batteries, and another tool such as a saw. Then you can add on others as needed. But pay attention to what’s in it. Often the tools are the weaker or older versions or stupid useless tools like really clunky flashlights. If you add up everything count the “junk” tools as $0 when figuring your savings. So those huge $500 combo kits are often stuffed with crappy tools or tools you don’t want or need. Even premium Dewalt and Milwaukee kits are that way. But smaller kits make sense. When you look at modern tool batteries that cost around $100 each and the bare tools are around $100 if you find say a drill and 2 batteries for $200 thats like buying batteries and getting the tool for free. All the manufacturers offer these “starter kits”. After you buy one set though additional combos usually only make sense if you need more batteries. Also look at the available tools down the road. If you expect to eventually need a certain tool that should affect your buying decision. If you buy say the Rigid set you can’t expect to expand later with a vacuum or a tower light. What you don’t want to do is have 3 different brand/voltage batteries that are not compatible because you overspend on batteries. Choose your tool platform to minimize batteries. I have 2 drills, 2 impacts, a couple saws, grinder, vacuum, and job site lights on one battery. My crimper and several meters are all on different batteries. Just keeping them all charged us a lot of extra work. It would have been much worse if I didn’t standardize on one battery platform. Also don’t overlook corded tools. Certain tools like grinders, table saws, and air compressors are available cordless but the corded version is much better. I have both corded and cordless grinders. Yesterday I easily got inside a box to strip the paint where I needed a grounded electrical connection with a cordless grinders but putting a bevel on a piece for welding would quickly drain the battery and the corded one is more powerful and faster.

Ryobi is an HD house brand. Amazon can’t really be an authorized distributor by definition. That is just retailers reselling HD stock. Kind of like buying it on EBay. So good luck on warranty claims and watch out on Amazon on impossibly cheap deals especially battery scams. But it depends on what it is. I have no issues about buying off Amazon or Ebay but it’s buyer beware territory. If you are looking at other retailers CPO Outlets is normally authorized on refurbished and discontinued tools and so the warranty is good. The big thing is Ryobi is meant for the homeowner/DIY market. So don’t expect the best torque or the best batteries or long tool life as a “daily driver”. HD is selling it cheap for a reason and that’s the problem with it. It’s kind of like power tools from Harbor Freight. They are cheap but you are just asking for a world of problems and issues. If you try to return they will just up sell you. If you are looking for inexpensive weekend work or a disposable one time use tool it’s not as bad as say Harbor Freight. But you can do much better. When it comes to tools function should be your first concern (after safety). Color shouldn’t be a concern. I would steer you towards the Rigid or the Milwaukee M12 tools for two reasons. You get better torque, better batteries, and longer life without the huge premium on the M18 or Dewalt 20V tools. The Rigid set is a very nice 18 V set with a value price. If those 4 tools is what you need great. That’s the big limitation...very short tool lineup. Metabo/HPT is very similar to Rigid. In this instance Rigid is an HD house brand too (they are independent) but Metabo is independent. So you get the 18 V tools at a decent price. The M12 line especially is used extensively by tradesmen as a secondary tool. Milwaukee has supported it for years. Many M12 tools aren’t even available in M18. As in I can carry a tiny impact gun, lighter drill/driver, and save a lot of money when I don’t need the 18/20 V tools. The little portaband and the reciprocating saw for instance are perfect for residential electrical work. I mostly have 18 V tools only because my customers are mostly industrial so the stubby M12 impact won’t do much on a 1-1/8” nut. Only reason I don’t recommend the Dewalt 12 V line is they never continue to support it so if you buy today don’t expect it to be there tomorrow. And Makita is overpriced. Plus if you are worried about appearance Dewalt, Milwaukee, and Makita are instantly recognized and used on construction sites and in maintenance shops everywhere as professional grade tools. Nobody is going to question those or even Metabo. But if you show up with a Ryobi tool it’s like wearing a pink hard hat...nobody will take you seriously. Not even your neighbors.

Are you trolling? Stanley Black and Decker owns the Dewalt brand and brands their premium tools with it. By definition it is going to be a bit better than Stanley. The exception might be they have made a name for the Fatmax tape measure brand as a premium. It is sold as a cheap brand so it is positioned to be somewhere at the bottom end such as tools made for distribution by Walmart. SBD has other brands but currently they are marketing Craftsman as their mid grade. Husky is the HD house brand just like Kobalt is the Lowe’s house brand. The various tools are made by various companies and HD occasionally rotates manufacturers. So it’s a bit of a crap shoot but usually similar to the Craftsman brand but positioned to siphon off a few dollars of SBD royalty money. There is a list of “who owns who” on the toolguyd web site that explains the relations of Chervon , TTI, SBD, Snapon, etc. It’s easy to compare tools made by the same company. They don’t hide their good/better/best. It’s much harder to compare say Dewalt to Milwaukee. For instance years ago SBD sold a great impact screwdriver set under the Stanley name then discontinued it. In the last couple years it reappeared branded Dewalt. Recently Milwaukee offered a set for a couple more bucks and I like it even better. These are good for two things. First if you have a rusty or stripped screw hit the screwdriver with a hammer to knock the rust off and cut new slots. Second they are good as beater screwdrivers...you know doing things with them that you are not supposed to do to screwdrivers like pry bars. Milwaukee has better tips. But both are pretty good and much better than a lot of what’s out there.

No such thing. Never used electrics. Too gimmicky and either doesn’t hold up or doesn’t last all day. Do it the way we do in Northern Michigan: two gloves! Or actually gloves and mittens. Use a decent liner glove first. The knit industrial gloves are perfect. The kind you might use in fall or spring. The outer mitten is worn over the liner glove. Think snowmobile mittens. The warmer the better. And don’t be afraid of wearing the “kiddie” string with the clips to hold the mittens. Or wear a Carhartt style “chore coat” or a belt with large pockets to hold the mittens. When doing “rough” things like slinging a hammer or handling lumber you will be warm in the mittens. Then for detailed work get everything ready first. Drop the mittens and work quickly. Usually you can get a good 20 minutes before your hands are too stiff and the mittens go back on. It takes about twice as long though to warm up as it does to cool down. Also make sure to have at least two sets. The insulation value of anything that gets wet is zero so need to be able to swap out and have a dry pair at all times. I stuff them in my upper bib overall pocket so they are already warm when I need them. The whole key to insulation is dead air. So when you wear two gloves the air space between them adds to the insulation value even more than the gloves themselves.

They already have a 3/4” 1400/700 ft-lb impact. We use the bushing style adapters to fit the 1” socket tools.

Just as an end user I prefer the Dewalt corded grinders for the combination of power and ergonomics. They have a cheap crappy 4-5” but their midrange 4-5” and 7” are top notch. That’s why a lot of welders use them. The Flexvolt idea is all wet on small hand tools. The larger batteries are 10 or 15 cell. They are adding extra contacts so you can run say 2 or 3 strings of 5 in parallel or one string of 10 or 15 cells. It is a simple modification to a standard battery pack. If we start with an 18 V motor and we want more power out as we increase current we get more power but heat scales with the square of current so we quickly lose that battle. If we increase the voltage we can add windings to the existing coils making the motors fatter especially as we go to higher voltage insulation so the gain is not as much as you’d expect and definitely not linear. The alternative is more coils...double stacked rotor for instance. Same diameter motor but twice the length, twice the power, and twice the current with no voltage increase and beating the voltage game. Milwaukee has been down this road before with a 28 V line. Dewalt here is following Milwaukee but with their 28 V vs at the time 14.4 V experience obviously they figured out stacking beats voltage at these sizes. So far Flexvolt seems like a waste of money over 20V Max. In outdoor power tools where space is less of an issue this is where 60 V tools make sense but 5 Ah Flexvolt batteries are just way too small over say the Ego batteries, When it comes to cordless 4-5” the M18 Fuel is equal to corded in power but cordless. I’m not going to attempt to strip paint on a large area or grind welds all day but for a cutoff tool or knocking out sheet metal cutouts or cleaning up rough edges, it’s so much easier than messing with cords and wins the power race. As to drill/drivers in low gear I have bruised my wrist with a M18 drill jammed in a piece of steel on a Gen 3 Fuel drill. I have no doubts if I clutch the drill with my thumb wrapped around it I will break it. Done that before on a corded Milwaukee D handle 20 years ago. It’s a common mechanic injury. In high speed gear it beats out the Dewalt drill driver my buddy has in both speed and torque. The only thing I didn’t like about them was the poor chucks but now they buy Rohm just like Dewalt and others. You could accuse them of copying but Rohm is used by just about everybody. I’m partial to Morse from doing machinist work but I don’t think Morse has a decent keyless design. The only complaint I’ve heard about the Gen 3s is poor battery life but if you have more power you should expect less battery life on a 5 cell. They’re coming out with the larger Panasonic batteries (HO) though that fixes this albeit there are some packaging issues because the form factor has grown and for instance it doesn’t fit the M18 Rover as well.

Just to follow that up in the US we tariff imports not exports by law, THEN sales tax on top of that no matter the source (depending on state laws), and then tax the US manufacturer. So the current tax avoidance scheme practiced by Apple is they make iPhones by Apple HK. They “charge” Apple USA around $950 for a phone they sell for $750. So Apple USA “loses” money on every iPhone they sell and conveniently moves some AppStore profit overseas too so that they pay $0 corporate tax to USA for years. Tariffs put a stop to that nonsense because they tax imports rather than corporate profit. We did it to ourselves by slowly moving from import taxes to mostly income taxes. Now that is reversing the incentive is going away. There are obvious ways around this. You can make the parts in Asia then assemble it in the US but this only avoids the import tariff but corporate taxes still apply. Aside from the artificial tax implications, labor costs are about 1/3rd in Asia compared to North America but don’t stop there. Shipping is a major cost too. So that effectively kills moving production to Asia for any products that weigh a lot. Cell phones and computers can be made anywhere but say gear boxes are not so easily made and imported. By way of example small electric motors sold by Westinghouse under say 50 HP are made in Korea and imported. Large ones are still made in Round Mountain, TX. Second issue is automation. Highly automated production actually favors North America. The reason is simple. Sure the value of cheap labor goes away. But if tech breaks in the US you can get a tech on it in a few hours and parts generally within 24 hours before it is back up and running. In Asia first the tech takes 36+ hours to fly from the US then identifies the issue and it’s another 36+ hours for the parts to arrive so realistically downtime is around 5 days on every breakdown compared to 1-2 days in the US. Even though the part might actually be made in Asia! Plus there are tons of problems with quality control, decision making, you name it. Take for example there is a small worm gear box that the entire solar panel sits on top of in a solar farm that costs about $150. They are made by the thousands and it’s very cut throat so shaving even a couple dollars off the cost is a big deal. The panels are assembled on site. Once the panel is built replacement however is basically crazy costly because a crane is needed to lift the now assembled solar panel. There are often hundreds per solar field. An Asian manufacturer screwed up the seals when they translated the dimensions from Imperial to metric and now thousands of gear boxes have to be inspected and repaired because of this mistake, to the tune of hundreds of thousands per year that basically killed the cost savings in outsourcing it. And this is just one example of a simple legitimate mistake without even getting into IP theft, fraud, and other criminal activity. This all greatly increases the risk and costs of global manufacturing supply chains. I’ve been involved in doing outsourcing just once. It was a total flop that cost the company millions to set up and millions more in write offs to undo it. Don’t think for a minute that TTI doesn’t factor all this in. There is not nearly as much value in outsourcing as people think and not done as much as people think for that reason. Foxconn (Apple iPhone plant) is the exception not the rule.

Agreed about PC but I was trying to avoid brand specific arguments. When it comes to tool box systems if you can live with the smaller selection of Rigid it’s a better value than most others. Packout is certainly the most expensive but I can buy twice the Toughsystem boxes for the money and the general size of the Packouts especially internal dimensions is not very good. I’m now in a van. If I started there then all tool box systems are on the table. At the time working from a truck the boxes were going to be outside most of the time so it came down to Rigid, Packout, or Toughsystem. At twice the price, Packouts nest features are not enough to win me over. Rigid is just the opposite...too limited so Toughsystem won for me too. I’ve got about a dozen Toughsystem boxes that hold almost half of my on the road tools.

Milwaukee has always been the world’s machine shop. You’ve got two huge mining equipment companies, a major gear box company, an electrical parts company, plus countless smaller ones. I love visiting there. Brewer stadium is nice too. The only thing close to it is Stihl in Virginia Beach that occupies multiple city blocks and makes not only their own stuff but a lot of other brands too.

Probably power supply failure. Electronics has hundreds to thousands of connections. It just takes one to cause trouble. But sounds like power supply. So open up and hopefully find a failed connection if you are lucky. Sometimes it’s a bad connection from the factory if you are (un)lucky and easy to spot. Power supplies typically also use electrolytic capacitors. You can easily spot these on a circuit board because they are the large can looking devices. They are made by tightly winding up 2 strips of aluminum foil and some paper soaked in an electrolyte (glycol has been used) stuffed in the can and here’s the important detail crimped shut. They normally last about 8-10 years. Usually the electrolyte dries out. Once this happens first the electrical properties drift and eventually it shorts out internally. If you have the proper equipment they can be changed out but we are down to component level failures. Without a schematic (that nobody shares except in very old or military hardware) it is almost impossible to repair. Even manufacturers typically toss the failed boards instead of fixing them. The boards are built by fully automated machinery (photo chemical etching and stenciling, pick and place robots, ovens or wave soldering). Nobody touches them until testing. Less picky locals might dig them out of the dumpsters and fix the ones that can be fixed. These become “grey market” equipment that shows up on E-Bay, flea markets, questionable Amazon retailers with no reputation, etc. If there is nothing obvious then do as the manufacturer does and recycle it. By the way leaving something on a charger is as bad as letting it die. Off charger it loses typically 1-2% charge per day. At zero (true zero) when you recharge sometimes you get cell reversal (battery cell flips polarity) which is fatal. On charger it constantly produces hydrogen gas or ions that are reabsorbed over and over in a chemical process but it’s a chemical process...some hydrogen is lost over time which kills the batteries faster than doing nothing. The best way for long term survival of batteries is to fully charge them leave them off the charger until they are nearly dead (60-90 days) then recharge fully again repeating every 60-90 days. Or take your chances letting them go to zero. The jury is still out on that strategy and when the cycling approach is better (chance of failure vs. long cycles).

No inserts unless you make them or buy two and move the bins from one to the other. Personally I’m not a big fan of T-Stak. If you need one big bin Keter is cheaper for mostly indoor less demanding environments still with good seals like T-Staks. You get a lot more room in a Keter box. Lots of mechanics use them for their bolt bins. Great price comparatively. So this is good if you are on a job and just need say 4-10 bolts, nuts, and washers. One box can easily handle an assortment from 1/4-1/2” with various lengths. If you need rugged then I would go with Toughsystem DS150s or Packouts. Both are “nail duty”. Instead of dividers each compartment is a removable bin. You don’t have the problem of nails getting under the dividers and you can pull out just the bins you need for a job. These are about the heaviest boxes out there. I kept them in the bed of a pickup for a couple years. All my parts and tools stayed dry, rust free, and was easy to grab just the stuff I needed for a job, and locked together for transport on highways. Perfect size for larger bolts, entire boxes of nails, etc. Not sure what to do with T-Stak. Bins won’t hold an entire box of nails and you don’t get much space with the small size. The drill box is OK for drills but no option for say a Sawzall. For small electrical parts I like the Tough Organizers that are very cheap, stack like the others, and fit easily inside Toughsystem boxes like the dolly. I think the whole concept of T-Stak is for say CATV techs. They need sort of midrange organizers that handle smaller tools and parts but very few larger bolts and nails I guess. They don’t need framer grade boxes or huge assortments of parts like electricians. Personally I fall somewhere in between. I’m a motor service tech. So I might work on say a 1000 HP motor. The base bolts are say 1/2” and lugs are 4/0 with 3/8” bolted connections plus tape, termination kits. All obviously Tough System or Packout or Keter size bins. There are usually a bunch of small sensor wires, heaters with Stakons which fit best in Tough Organizers (lots of small parts). Same situation in the panel or drive. I could use T-Stak for some in between sizes but since none of these systems are cross compatible it does me no good.

Output is constant and maxed out. Either the driver transistor has shorted out or a sensor on the control board failed. Replace boards in it but frankly with prices what they are it’s scrap. Normally the control board limits and controls voltage/current so it will crank it up if it gets loaded down then back off when it is up to speed. In your case it’s not doing this anymore.

I think he means a drill/driver. Dewalt, Metabo, and Makita target the builder market. Hands down if you are working in wood they are the go tos for tools. Usually the top tool ends up Dewalt or sometimes Makita. In some tools like a corded grinder Dewalt beats out Milwaukee. But as an overall tool line Milwaukee is more of specialists tools. They have a lot more tools specifically for plumbers, electricians, and mechanics. Most of my wood working tools are Dewalt or Metabo but those stay at home. No space on the van for all of it. I load them only when needed. The M12 stubby impact will work on a lag bolt but it’s meant for automotive mechanics. It’s light but I don’t see much point on a builder site when I would be drilling almost as much as shooting screws and tightening nuts and bolts, and cramped space is usually not a factor like working under the hood. The 1400 foot pound impact will probably tighten a lag bolt too without snapping it off and stripping out sheet metal screws instantly if you turn it way down but we use it for fasteners over 3/4”. And the M18 Fuel drill/driver is slower than the Dewalt on high speed for driving screws but if you’re not careful in metal on low speed in drilling metal and it grabs it can easily bruise or break your wrist just like the old D handle drills. When Milwaukee made the M18 comment they already had experience with the M28 line that they’ve all but abandoned. This was when we had the Kobalt 24 V stuff, Dewalt sells “20V” and came out with Flexvolt. We have seen this before when we moved from 12 V NiCd to 14.4 V NiMh then to 18 V Li Ion. This was Milwaukee saying there was no technical advantage to higher voltages on a brushless Li ion platform right when Dewalt was claiming the advantages of 60 V tools over 18/20 V. So they avoided doing yet another battery line. At some point way beyond drills and impacts you run into limitations in higher currents and higher voltages just make sense. That’s why large trucks have 24 V battery systems and power companies use thousands of volts on power lines. The MX line is something really new. It isn’t impact guns. It’s kind of an area where Hilti has a few products but right now most of those types of tools are either corded, hosed, or gas engines. If it works out for them in 10 years it will be like drill/drivers today where the market is dominated by cordless. But the big thing is most of those tools are rented and time will tell whether the rental companies are willing to invest or not, or can get a premium on renting them. It looks like Milwaukee is making products that can do things the others can’t. Like a light plant that fits on a dolly instead of a tow behind or a core drill you can safely use on a ladder instead of putting up scaffolding. These are different products, not “me toos”. This opens up new markets so it’s not just a substitute. My prediction is like any truly new product demand will be slow at first then either fizzles out or takes off. In today’s instant gratification works though Milwaukee staff need a lot of patience. They need to market to a different crowd and they have to realize that if I’m say a tool rental company I’m taking a big risk on a new product that may have little interest in the higher rental fee, and on whether Milwaukee will fold up shop and skip town in a year if they don’t like how things go. When SBD comes out with the Dewalt light plant or buys up Hilti, we will know it’s successful. Right now they are too busy putting out red rebranded Chinese tools.

Service tech. Plenty of cab space. Service area includes Lejeune, Bragg, and on Monday I’ve got work to do on part of the water system for Seymour Johnson. Was thinking of the typical tractor trailer size roughly $100-200 range. They sound great but when I looked at one of the Igloo models in Walmart for instance it was obviously only useful for say keeping medication cold.

You can do it. We have solar farms in NC (second only to California in solar) that are hundreds of acres. But realistically it’s not usually worth the money to do more than trickle charging to maintain. But for instance at a local mine we put up portable wi fi hot spots which were a couple car batteries, a solar panel, an inverter, and the radio. Trouble is the wind are up the solar panels with blown sand and dirt (scratched them up) in a year.

I’m confused. Cordless “framing” nail gun? The market is 99% pneumatic for a reason. A few finish nails sure but for framing you’d never use an electric gun. Way too slow and charge limited. Maybe BC to frame out an electrical panel or minor plumbing rough in for stubs but it’s not really a framing nailer. That’s like showing up to a crane job with a come along on an A frame and a crew of HD day laborers that don’t speak English instead of a crane and certified riggers. Sure it might get it done but it’s not the right tool for the job.

Thinking about an iceless cooler in the work truck. Been carrying a cooler for years. I used to do the ice thing but it’s a constant hassle. With a good thick “Yeti” style cooler (I have the Walmart version) ice lasts a day or two in summer but I noticed that it insulates so well that even ice free water stays roughly “average” temperature which means slightly cooler in the daytime and drinking “lukecool” water isn’t too bad. So I’m already using the space in the cab and thinking a cooler that would hold maybe a half case of water and a sandwich or two would be really nice. My service area is 3-4 hours so I typically have a 2 hour ride on average both ways so plenty of time to chill down on the road. Any experience with these things? Igloo advertises heavy but I was not impressed with what I saw in a local store. Truck stop units look tempting but hey it’s a truck stop...could be good, could be a waste of money. Anyone have any experience good or bad?

Almost me too. Chuck is locking up and basically worn out. Ordered a new chuck, Rohm same as Dewalt, Makita, etc., but in goofy Milwaukee 9/16-18 thread. Hopefully this one will outlast because the one thing that sucks about it is the chuck. Will be changing it tomorrow. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Uhh no no no! First off I have lots of pool experience. Head over to the Trouble Free Pool forum as far as chemicals. The worst thing you can do is trust the idiots at the pool store when it comes to chemicals. Don’t believe me? Try this. Take a bucket of water. In fact take two to two different pool stores preferably from someone else’s pool. Do each one on a different day or at least morning band afternoon. Have them run both samples. If you are lucky one store might give you the same results but usually not. Ok and the chemicals? Totally overpriced. I have paid $20 for what amounts to a box of $0.99 Arm and Hammer grocery store baking soda. Or muriatic acid for roughly 1000% markup over the auto store price. Bleach is cheaper even if you buy the liquid bottles at Walmart! Expect to pay hundreds of dollars per season in the pool store. And if you are truly feeling like donating to pool store profits here’s an easy method. They have a product that goes by several names but the key chemical is biguanide. It works sort of, for a little while, at massive profits even by pool store standards. That’s until the water molds start and you can’t kill them after spending hundreds on chemicals. I’m not making this up. There are issues to be sure like making sure the salt (if you run a salt system) does not contain iron remover but other than that I buy a few things from Amazon and the rest locally, just not from the pool store. You can easily buy chlorine at the discount store if that’s your thing or go salt water. Bromine is just an overpriced chlorine alternative that is basically chlorine and biguanide is the biggest scam going. First get educated. Head over to a web site called troublefreepools.com and most important their awesome forum. Second get a Taylor test kit off Amazon. There are lots of moving parts here. TFP tells you what testing stuff you need and which tests work best. Third if you can stand the price get a saltwater system. Why? Super stable, super cheap chemicals, crystal clear water sand the least amount of work. But a titanium chlorine generator cell is not cheap. Ok so quick scenario of a worst case. So I just put in a 14,000 gallon in ground fiberglass pool. Poured down rain for weeks so no concrete yet. I just got the salt in and was circulating water just to get construction stuff out. No testing because no test kit. That stayed with the old house. Wife and daughters decide to have a pool party and spring this on me!! So I go to Lowe’s and buy a tarp to lay over the rebar and a test kit. pH is close but salt is low, not enough stabilizer (cyanuric acid) which just makes the chlorinator work harder, needs more buffering. Worst problem is I’m down around 0.5 ppm chlorine. Pool party in one hour. Even at max output no way I can fix the chlorine. So off to Walmart. 4 jugs of bleach and a box of baking soda. Dropped it all in slowly in the skimmer with some stabilizer and salt the pool contractor had on site. Pool guests arrive, stave them off with food to give it time to circulate (pump cranked up to cleaning speed) and things are looking good 20 minutes later and no issues at all. This is an extreme example. As I’ve said I’ve done my I own work opening, maintaining, and closing pools for years. I know what works and what doesn’t. The pool store doesn’t even know about liquid bleach and would tell you what I did was impossible or dangerous. I’m not saying this is a good way to run a pool just that an average person can easily do it. Only thing I’d say about TFP is they like to run salt water systems at 0.5-1 ppm chlorine. I found it’s just not easy to control down there. 3-5’ppm is much easier to control and I had no algae and crystal clear water. Don’t believe the 10-30 ppm the pool store tells you. It’s wrong but they just use some software program that is designed to sell chemicals at inflated prices. Or if you just want to spend money have the pool store put it in and send someone over once a week to maintain it for you. You trust your money and your health to a 16 year old high school kid on their first time part time job with a boss that’s a hippie straight out of the 60s right? I thought so.

Tool bags on Toughsystem 2.0. It’s almost impossible to hang a tool bag on top of the carrier or cart/box and not have it slide off. Packout has TS and TStak best in this category,

Power and cordless screw driver are never associated. Klein 5 in 1. Can’t go wrong there. More power than any cordless toy screw driver. Pretty much any major name brand drill/driver has more power and options. A good high torque Dewalt or Milwaukee or Makita is going to set you back about $150. Scratch that. You buy a battery and a charger kit and it comes with a free drill/driver! Budget minded drill/drivers (Craftsman, Rigid, Ryobi, etc.) are around $100 with a battery and charger. Those cordless screwdrivers are so vastly underpowered I can put more torque on the above manual screwdriver. They are intended to separate a Christmas shopper from their money but that’s it. Also the ergonomics are horrendous. You’ve got this huge fat barrel to contain the batteries that only fit properly in the hands of a gorilla. Then your grip is in the traditional screwdriver position so if it was “powerful” you couldn’t hold onto it. Drill/drivers have a pistol style grip off to the side that fit just as well in my twelve year old girls hands in her robotics club as my pro weight lifter team mate at work and greatly increase your ability to hold it. With a drill/driver I can vary the torque for soft materials, increase it and drive wood screws into shed and dried hard wood (if it doesn’t split), drive drill bits for the screws, run but drivers, Allen, and Torx bits, and turn on hammer mode and do all of the above into concrete and masonry. On one charge often all day long. The cordless screwdrivers don’t do pretty much any of that except run screws in drywall and picture frames on soft wood and screw the tiny screw in the battery door of the other kids toys. One possible advantage is this. My Gen 2 Milwaukee drill/driver has enough torque in drill mode to easily bruise or break your wrist if it grabs hard in low speed high torque mode. A cordless screw driver stands a good chance of being broken when I get frustrated with it. Make sure to buy a pink colored one. The light reflects better off them to help see the screw.

The tool itself does not overheat but there is a subtle difference in the Milwaukee 18V battery line. There are actually 3 battery series: the smaller XC series (2-3 Ah), the larger XC (5 Ah and another size or two), and the monster 8 and 12 Ah. It’s not just Ah that is changing though. There are more contacts used and more cells in parallel. You CAN use the cordless full size Super Sawzall with a 2.0 Ah XC battery for about 10 seconds before it overheats or the correct (8 or 12 Ah) battery for a long time with no overheating unless you stall out the tool. I see lots of guys trying to use the high torque impact guns with 2.0 batteries instead of 5.0 size batteries, then complain that the tool sucks when it’s just using the wrong battery. Unfortunately Milwaukee doesn’t help things by color coding or something to make it clear which battery goes with which tool. It was less of a problem when you had brushed tools but as the torque and current draws have gone up the battery limitations are a lot more obvious. If you buy batteries for the Milwaukee 18V line today don’t bother with anything under 5.0 Ah unless you are only going to use them with low torque/demand tools, if you are going to use heavy demand tools at all (Sawzall, circular saws, table saw, grinders for more than about 10 minutes) the 8 and 12 Ah batteries are a must. The lights are really good but if you want any time at all on them 5 Ah is a must. Probably the only big lighting issue is that the rockers only last 8 hours on the lowest light setting but the slot won’t accept a 12 Ah battery. As an example with the grinder on a 2.0 Ah battery using a flapper wheel I get about 5 minutes. If I switch to a cutoff or sanding wheel and load up the tool at all it stalls and overheats in seconds This is a Gen 1 or 2 grinder mind you. With the 5 Ah battery I can go until the battery is dead in about 15 minutes and no issues with overheating even if I repeatedly overload it. It just stalls. Bigger batteries just last longer. Save issues with a super Sawzall on a 5 Ah battery but stepping up to the 8 eliminates the stalling and overheating, Of course the manuals that you read with 15 pages of safety warnings and 1 page of poor instructions on useless things explains all this. Yeah I threw those away too.

At least around me Makita is more expensive and as mentioned since my trade is more electrical and mechanical oriented, Makita is very limited in those areas. So it’s no different than say Porter Cable to me...good drill and impact and maybe a saw. After that not much good. I used Makita back in the NiCd days and I wouldn’t say it is any more professional than any others. I’d agree with the statement that Milwaukee has issues to a point. First issue is their chucks suck. Every manufacturer except Milwaukee uses the same chucks. If you replace it with the popular brand, problem solved. So right up front the most basic and common tool is a piece of crap in terms of a key component but the rest of the line is very reliable. They are pretty well known for the best demolition tools for a reason, Second problem is this. If you under power the tool, you can’t tear it up. So Consumer Reports gives crazy insane rave and highly biased reviews of Toyota pickups but ignores the fact that they have low performance across the board except their ability to suck gas. So sure it’s more reliable because you can’t really do anything with it. I thought the marketing king by far is Dewalt. They are everywhere. I burned up several drills and saws before I figured out they underpowered them but that was also in the cordless years. I love their corded grinders and a lot of their hand tools, and their tool boxes are awesome. But the power tool line itself not so much. But you might also want to check into those dealers. Often tool manufacturers have “trade in” deals. As in they will credit you for your old Makita tools traded in for Milwaukee. It can be a very good deal or just reduce the cost a little, and it’s usually only available through a local dealer so the markup might kill the savings do shop wisely. I’m not out of Makita yet. For instance I have a Greenlee Crimper that uses Makita tools and at 3-5 grand won’t get replaced until it dies.