Your favorite power tool brand?

[Conductor562]

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

[wayneburgess]

You are brave Tool Boy that question normally gets the lads who own Dewalt on the war path LOL.

I don't have One brand as a favourite brand as such, but Metabo and Milwaukee are the main 2 in my armoury.

I also have a couple of craftsman, some Makita, and an old Elu drill which is what Dewalt was before Black and Decker bought them out.

[Eric - TIA]

Man that is a hard question. For 12V, Milwaukee hands down. They have all the cool tools and a huge line of them. I have been using my M12 Hammer drill like crazy and it last and just does the trick everytime. In regards to 18V, that is hard to say. Every brand has stuff I like and don't like. Such as a cordless circular saw. I think the Milwaukee is the best, while Dewalt is pretty weak. But I do like the Dewalt cordless SDS the best, but never tried the Bosch cordless. Milwaukee has the best corded reciprocating saw. I have used and abused mine and it always keeps going. Blades never get stuck in the tool or even bounce out. Man I could go on and on and I know I will keep coming back to this post. So why is Milwaukee your favorite? Wayne, why is metabo your favorite.

Wayne, I think you have tool boy and conductor mixed up.

[drywallman]

Milwaukee Impact Driver. Use it all the time framing walls and works wonders. Paslode Framer, this has saved my ass and my arm from pounding all day long. Trakfast I use to lay plates all the time in basements, never fails.

[Conductor562]

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.

[Conductor562]

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.

[wayneburgess]

The questions I would like to ask you guys out there are, How good is the warranty on your power tool?

Did you have to register the tool on line to get the full cover?

Have you ever had to make a claim on it?

How easy or hard was that to do?

And how good was the service you got from them?

The reason I ask is, over here in the U.K the warranty given on a power tool does not seem to be as long as in the U.S and Canada, even on U.S tools.

I must add here that many still carry lifetime warranties.

I am interested in finding out if there are other differences, and if so what they are?

And also which manufacturer looks after you best when you have spent your money?

Look forward to hearing from you folks and finding out.

Wayne

[Conductor562]

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.

[wayneburgess]

In the U.K the maximum warranty I can find including Milwaukee is 3 years on any power tool.

[Conductor562]

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.

[usa]

Hilti and Bosch. Very pricey, but they last.

[wayneburgess]

I have been looking into it over the last few weeks and it seems from the feedback I have received, that Dewalt seem to have the best customer service over here, also Worx ( Rockwell in the U.S)

Bottom of the pile came Milwaukee who's after sales and customer services were described as diabolical and a few curse words which I won't print but you know what they are.( shame because me and my Son are big fans of Milwaukee).

Nobody seems to have a problem with the tools Milwaukee makes, over here in the U.K its they're attitude to suppliers and end users that apparently sucks.

Bosch seem to be not bad but could do better.

makita seem to come second place to Dewalt in the customer services department.

[Eric - TIA]

The drill was nice but it was the Sawzall that really won me over.

That's what won me over also. I used to be a labor and that was all we used, Sawzalls. The Pm picked what tools would be job bought and on some jobs they would go with the Dewalt. The Milwaukee was just so much smoother and the blades never got stuck in the tool. The Dewalt would get stuck and sometimes the blades even popped out of the tool when using them. I have beat the hell out of my M18 drill and it just keeps going. A couple of times I should have smoked the drill, but it just hold up. However I also have a Bosch drill that is pretty beat up and that thing just keeps going too.

[Conductor562]

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.

[Eric - TIA]

That is pretty impressive. We are just finishing up a test with the new Fuel. We are using a 1" auger bit drilling into a 4x6 to see how many holes we get. Glad Milwaukee changed their batteries years back. The new M18 batteries are nice.

[PutnamEco]

I started out with B & D and Porter-Cable/Rockwell. I stuck with B & D through their "Professional" and "Industrial" lines until they turned yellow. I still have some of the older tools and the original B & D Super Sawcat remains one of my favorite tools. Later I adopted Milwaukee as my preferred brand, after the not so great change of B & D to Dewalt. Rockwell and what they procured from Porter-Cable had been "value engineered" to end up as pretty poor tools before Dewalt finished what was left of B & Ds professional quality tools. I was a late adopter of Makita. They finally won me over with their 9.6v line of cordless tools. And their 5007 circular saw. I did run both a Skil 77 and later a Milwaukee 6365 dropfoot saw through this time as well. I did flirt with both Milwaukee and Porter-Cable 12v tools before switching back to Milwaukee for 18v. More recently with Milwaukee selling out to TTI, I switched back to Makita for 18v tools. I have bought a few other tools as well, Usually aiming for higher quality tools. Hilti, Festool, and Mafell all have some worthy tools. So what I guess I'm saying is today I don't really have a favorite brand. If you would have asked my favorite when I started out I would have said Black & Decker, later I would have said Milwaukee. Today I just can't commit to a brand to call my favorite.

[Conductor562]

B&D used to make some tough tools. My dad still has an orange B&D hammer drill from the late 70's and a Sand Cat that's probably close to that old. Once they started producing shit under the Dewalt name it was game over for the B&D line. Porter Cable is headed that way too.

[PutnamEco]

B&D used to make some tough tools. My dad still has an orange B&D hammer drill from the late 70's and a Sand Cat that's probably close to that old. Once they started producing shit under the Dewalt name it was game over for the B&D line. Porter Cable is headed that way too.

Porter- Cable died twice, once under Rockwell, then Pentair semi-restored them to the quality brand they once were, then under Stanley Black & Decker they turned Chinese, they will never be what they once where. Now they are just another Chinese/Mexican commodity tool brand.

Wasn't it Skil that manufactured the Sand Cat?

[Conductor562]

You may be right about the Sand Cat. I never fooled with it much. All I know for sure is that it's been hanging in my dad's garage for as long as I can remember. He got it from my grandpa before he died and he's been dead almost 25 years. It was somewhat old when he got it so it's got to be 30 years old anyway.

[PutnamEco]

The Skil Sand Cat was one of if not the first of the "home owner friendly" consumer grade belt sanders offered. The competition at the time were beasts, like the Porter-Cable 564 and 362 and many "locomotive" type sanders were still available at the time, like Skils 449 and Porter-Cables A3

I don't recall ever seeing a worthy belt sander come from Black & Decker.