65refinyellow

This thing rocks!

Thank you!! They’re an amazing company.

Those look really great. As a builder I will eventually get into a Ridgid press tool for copper and Pex 2. Of course a Pex 1 tool is in order too.

I find better deals with Milwaukee with press tools and Milwaukee and DeWalt for snakes. I know Ridgid has the biggest selection in plumbing power tools, but are they that much better?

Wow. I have been thinking reconditioned one like yours. the 1 9/16” is just right and the fatter 1 5/8” is simply too heavy other than straight down.

OK, 14” pipe wrench and at least decent RIDGID or Brass Craft powered snake! what else?

Is it dying? It’s very very old

I would retire that and put it in a museum. I have a 35 year old USA Skilsaw which I may retire that has some Larry Haun provenance. I might try and score (if I could) a Larry Haun beamsaw from his crew. The legend used power tools sparingly by our standards but besides Skilsaws, the one tool he said all need besides a hammer, he had a few cool Makita big saws and the rare HPT nail gun. But handtrucks like yours were used by tradespeople in the day and regular people in their homes. That’s history.

Here’s the three with my friend’s unreachably expensive handmade J.W. Van one of a kind 24.75” scale sunburst strat with David Gilmour type EMG setup but wired the way my friend likes it. But my guitars are always around $500 give or take a couple of hundred and a similar JW Van would be $3,000. I couldn’t ever afford one. If I had three grand, I would get tools beyond the five grand I spent already for building houses, so let’s see within the three grand range; 1) Makita corded handheld planer $200 2) DeWalt 20/60v. Flexvolt joist drill $300 3) Mikwaukee large SDS Max rotary hammer $400 …those are necessary but also: Dewalt thickness planer $700 Makita beam saw for outdoors $900 …and various lighter weight hand tools like titanium stuff for a few hundred

Strats are great durable beasts. My main guitar is the simple made in Mexico Classic 50’s strat. I also have a cheap Ibanez Artcire AS73 hollow body for jazz orchestra class but I was terrible at sight reading, lol.

The experienced guitar builders/repairers say it’s easy and I should replace all the binding on the one side of the neck and the remove all the frets and simply put in new frets. But I am only a carpenter working towards being a contractor, not a professional luthier which is the most specialized woodworker I can imagjne possible. Simply refret the whole guitar because of a chip on the binding on the guitar neck and a chip of rosewood broken off of it? Lol!

Damage is small but involves: 1) replacing plastic binding on guitar neck 2) filling in chipped out wooden section with East Indian rosewood wood putty which I may have to make 3) refinishing part of wood guitar neck to match the yellowed binding on this old guitar Thoughts? (I only do heavy construction and don’t usually deal with woodworking on the micro level.

Here’s the small scale of the Ridgid nailgun against the Milwaukee, Makita, and DeWalt nailguns.

I use this Ridgid palm nailer when my big Milwaukee nail gun won’t fit into small spaces like nailing in Simpson brackets holding joists onto beams.

Ridgid is great stuff, I have their palm nailer and I hook it up to my DeWalt compressor.

Often almost any saw new with a new blade cuts it’s straightest the first few times. I found circular saws are notoriously wanderers. Many people prefer table saws, track saws, and sliding miter saws for sheer straightness. I have found that physically heavy saws like the Skil 77/78/Sawsquatch or dual battery 36v Makita rear handled saws cut the straightest. There is too much mass in the tool so it won’t bounce around as much as lighter weight saws. The heavier weight of many rear handled saws promote fatigue and they’re not fun to use long term. I like my moderately heavy Flexvolt sidewinder saw and it has enough mass to not be thrown off a line but doesn’t feel like a mini tank like the two 36 volt Makita rear handled monsters.

I don’t know if I will ever need anything in a 14”-17” diameter category knocking down up to a 7 1/4” inch cut in a single pass (of giant beamsaw category), or even bigger machine in a circular chainsaw hybrid monster with a 12”-15” cut on a single pass.

I have been using the typical tools in construction with mostly Makita and Milwaukee lithium battery tools and DeWalt corded tools. But my aluminum 77 circular saw and magnesium Sawsquatch are really just as good in every way as the big three pro tools. Honestly at first I thought they were good tools that I favor as top home user tools, but with real life jobsite usage, I now say confidently that these are pro. The only other high end home user tools that I would consider pro stuff are the Ridgid tools and accessories.

Do Aussies have higher standards in the jobsite or do they just not have access to nice yet affordable prosumer tools? I will see things about seeing the more premium tools from big companies like Makita or full on specialised companies being mentioned as regular tools at construction jobsites. …the cheap Christmas specials is mostly what I see on jobsite here in USA I know that best of the best in tools might make it on a jobsite but I believe good is good to a point but there’s the law of diminishing returns.

My 60v saw seems pretty reliable but there are times the battery doesn’t seat accurately in the charger. I have had similar battery seating issues on charger on my Milwaukee but not on Makita.

This thing is huge in person and no photos or videos do it justice. The Suoer Sawsquatch is 27 pounds to my regular 10 1/4” Sawsquatch saw’s 16.5 pounds and the floor sample was chained to the display so I couldn’t get a feel of if it was practical. it could be a useful tool but then again they could have made it just to make it. Not every tool can work at a jobsite and maybe the equally priced Sawsquatch Carpenter Chainsaw is the better tool being lighter but it’s still on the verge of being too heavy to use being 18 pounds and long giving it a less than compact balance to it.

I love my regular classic 1980s 77 Model Skilsaw and it’s newer big brother that I purchased, the 10.25” inch Sawsquatch. Risky? To round out my plug-in saw station, I like the relatively new (always risky in tools) but very affordable large Skil 16 5/16” beam saw. Pros and cons: It’s a lot less expensive at $649 as a large beam saw than the pricey standards of the industry, which are the longtime medium 14” Bigfoot brand or Makita brand ($725 or more) , and large 16 5/16” Makita beamsaw ($879 or more) which my boss and everybody else has. I think the basic design of LH Super Sawsquatch using common 77 engine with all potential design flaws ironed out, is a plus. It’s easier to fix if anything goes South which happens in my job. But the Makita, with more sophistication and smoothness, is unfortunately harder to fix and has some design flaws that Skil 77s don’t have. The Skil 77 engine used for all pro stuff from Skil is an 80 year old design which is simple and constantly perfected. The build of the Makita beam saw, however, is much more robust as is the case with all their tools. The Makita housing and parts are heavy duty much more than all Skil 77 housings and parts which are now made in China and doesn’t have the solid per part feel of Makita. What to do? I am leaning more towards the Skil 16 5/16” inch beam saw over Makita 14”, Bigfoot 14”, or Makita 16 5/16” beam saws. Thoughts?

I would think after being a year into heavy construction and never seeing anything beyond 6X material, is an 8.25” inch saw like this or similarly priced Skil brand 8.25” inch circular saw good? I was thinking it could be an all purpose saw doing 2X production and 6X beams without having to carry two or three saws of different sizes all the time into the job site which I do now. I have a Skil 10.25” inch beam saw and other than one pass through 4X or 8X in two passes, it’s a tool that usually stays at home like the rotary hammer. But it’s nice to have the less common stuff but I shouldn’t have to haul it around if I only have the rare 6x6 at most and so far no 8x8. I don’t do any super delicate finish work and plan on the same type of work after I get my license.

I will admit that having six Milwaukee battery tools and six battery Makita tools at work makes me see their pluses and minuses. Then I start think maybe DeWalt has it done better. But pretty much different makers excel best at different things like Makita with circular saws, DeWalt with compact Atomic tools, and Milwaukee with rotary hammers.