Tools you wish you'd bought sooner...

[Watchman]

Olas said:

My favourite tool is an inspection mirror with a swivel mount, on a telescopic handle. Looking for the bolt you dropped has never been more enjoyable

I like your methodical approach. Mine is to poke and wave a magnetic pickup tool around until it magically finds my missing component for me.

[psi310398]

Olas said:

My favourite tool is an inspection mirror with a swivel mount, on a telescopic handle. Looking for the bolt you dropped has never been more enjoyable

Don't doctors call these speculums?

So where exactly did you put that bolt?

[Doofus]

psi310398 said:

Don't doctors call these speculums?

Err, no.

[smack]

Doofus said:

psi310398 said:

Don't doctors call these speculums?

Err, no.

[jakesmith]

2 foot breaker bar... there is no substitute for levering things up / apart. Was trying to use the claw end of a hammer before to prise up some timber that was screwed down into concrete. 2 foot breaker just pops them up. Cost about £10 too

[Watchman]

So, now that I have batteries "plural" how do I store them? amongst all the Tstak boxes DeWalt sells, there isn't one, or even an insert, that caters for their consistently-sized footprint batteries. A massive oversight, I think.

They sell a box with a clear lid and removable yellow part bins inside. Underneath those bins is additional shallow storage that is almost but not the right shape for their batteries. Someone at DeWalt needs firing.

Fortunately, some clever bods on eBay make a 3D printed plate that allows you to fix the plate to a surface then clip the batteries to the plate. Five for 12 quid. I'll let you know what I think when they turn up.

[dickymint]

Watchman said:

So, now that I have batteries "plural" how do I store them? amongst all the Tstak boxes DeWalt sells, there isn't one, or even an insert, that caters for their consistently-sized footprint batteries. A massive oversight, I think.

They sell a box with a clear lid and removable yellow part bins inside. Underneath those bins is additional shallow storage that is almost but not the right shape for their batteries. Someone at DeWalt needs firing.

Fortunately, some clever bods on eBay make a 3D printed plate that allows you to fix the plate to a surface then clip the batteries to the plate. Five for 12 quid. I'll let you know what I think when they turn up.

Store them on the tools - any batteries 'leftover' then you need more tools

PS. Have you bought a double charger yet

[Dont like rolls]

jakesmith said:

2 foot breaker bar... there is no substitute for levering things up / apart. Was trying to use the claw end of a hammer before to prise up some timber that was screwed down into concrete. 2 foot breaker just pops them up. Cost about £10 too

Or a bit of scaffold tube. Cost, about Free.

[Watchman]

I don't take all tools to all jobs but I do take all the batteries.

I don't have a double charger but I do have a charger that you can plug into the car as well as the normal mains version. Haven't needed anything more than this.

[dazwalsh]

bobski1 said:

Looking for a drill & impact driver set, max budget £200, any recommendations?

For general DIY the erbauer stuff from screwfix is as good as the big makes. You will probably squeeze in another bare tool as well into your budget.

[Muncher]

Watchman said:

Fortunately, some clever bods on eBay make a 3D printed plate that allows you to fix the plate to a surface then clip the batteries to the plate. Five for 12 quid. I'll let you know what I think when they turn up.

It's my mate that sells them, if you've found his ones they are injection moulded now.


EDIT: These are his https://www.amazon.co.uk/StealthMounts-Battery-Mou...

[Watchman]

I bought from eBay - seller is "govinren-0". Price was just under a tenner (I got that wrong in my post about them above).

[JuanCarlosFandango]

Watchman said:

I like your methodical approach. Mine is to poke and wave a magnetic pickup tool around until it magically finds my missing component for me.

This is my method too. It's amazing what else you can find besides (or instead of) whatever you were looking for.


Thanks for the battery explanations. I think that's about as close as I will get to understanding it. I've also just ordered another 5ah battery.

[skwdenyer]

Mark Benson said:

bobski1 said:

Looking for a drill & impact driver set, max budget £200, any recommendations?

Usual advice is whatever from the Makita/DeWalt/Milwaukee/Bosch Blue twinpacks are on offer and within your budget and Screwfix or Toolstation.

All much as good as one another for similar price points and all will stand up to DIY work pretty well.

As a significant user of Makita kit, note that there are a lot of different models & a lot of different twinpacks as a result. Some are much better value than others.

Frequently Screwfix etc are not at all the best value. So shopping around can yield big benefits.

Also don’t dismiss second hand tools, especially for less-often-used items. A second hand impact driver might not last as long as a new one in daily use, but for infrequent jobs could be just fine.

On a limited budget for Makita stuff, I’d tend to buy a brand new brushless drill (the better ones are a lot better than the cheapies), a charger, decent brand new batteries and a second hand impact driver, but that’s because I think the better drills are worth the extra for my use cases...

[Carbon Sasquatch]

skwdenyer said:

On a limited budget for Makita stuff, I’d tend to buy a brand new brushless drill (the better ones are a lot better than the cheapies), a charger, decent brand new batteries and a second hand impact driver, but that’s because I think the better drills are worth the extra for my use cases...

Interesting - I’d have said exactly the opposite

My impact driver is the most used / abused tool I have so I wouldn’t touch a 2nd hand one.

My combo drill hardly ever gets touched - the impact driver is great with paddle bits through joists and for any masonry I use my SDS which is way better. The only thing my combo drill is used for is drilling occasionally drilling into into metal.

[Watchman]

Don't dismiss "conventional" motors. Brushless is definitely better but more expensive. I doubt you'd get a brushless drill and driver for £200 but normal ones are likely to be within budget.

Check out that Ryobi kit. Some YouTubers I follow use them, even in the US, and they use their tools more than me.

[Flibble]

Watchman said:

Don't dismiss "conventional" motors. Brushless is definitely better but more expensive. I doubt you'd get a brushless drill and driver for £200 but normal ones are likely to be within budget.

Check out that Ryobi kit. Some YouTubers I follow use them, even in the US, and they use their tools more than me.

https://www.screwfix.com/p/dewalt-dck2060s2t-sfgb-...
£190 for brushless. £200 gets you the same with 2Ah batteries.

[Pat H]

Dont like rolls said:

jakesmith said:

2 foot breaker bar... there is no substitute for levering things up / apart. Was trying to use the claw end of a hammer before to prise up some timber that was screwed down into concrete. 2 foot breaker just pops them up. Cost about £10 too

Or a bit of scaffold tube. Cost, about Free.

I found a large nasty looking wrecking bar on the ground in a public car park, where it had obviously been dropped by a villain.

It was re-homed in my toolbox, and a very useful tool it is too.

Another useful free tool is an old fork stanchion from a 1976 Triumph Bonneville. Essentially it is a three foot length of chrome plated steel tube, which slides nicely over the end of wheel braces, ratchets and the like and provides a lot of useful leverage, very much like a piece of scaffolding tube.

Another splendid tool is a half litre fluid syringe, which is brilliant for priming diesel fuel systems after a filter change. Also good for filling gearboxes or diffs where the filler is in an awkward spot. About £7 on fleabay.

[Watchman]

Flibble said:

Watchman said:

Don't dismiss "conventional" motors. Brushless is definitely better but more expensive. I doubt you'd get a brushless drill and driver for £200 but normal ones are likely to be within budget.

Check out that Ryobi kit. Some YouTubers I follow use them, even in the US, and they use their tools more than me.

https://www.screwfix.com/p/dewalt-dck2060s2t-sfgb-...
£190 for brushless. £200 gets you the same with 2Ah batteries.

That's a fabulous bargain..!!

[9xxNick]

Pat H said:

I keep looking at those Knipex 86 03 250 adjustable spanners.

But at the end of the day, can they do anything beyond the decent sets of spanners and sockets that I already have?

These are amazingly useful tools for anything where you need to apply force to hold something still (or rotate it for that matter) without damaging its surface finish. They are also handly for manipulating metal in situations where it's been wrinkled or bent out of true but you can't easily get it into a vice. I use them much more than I would have anticipated.