Too much detail?

Yeah, probably, but in the interest of closure I thought you should know about the new drill I bought today.

I went looking for the Milwaukee drill that I posted about previously, but when I found it at Home Depot it turned out to be an electric screwdriver. The distinction may seem minimal; after all, they both rotate a bit, right? Well, the screwdriver doesn't have an adjustable chuck, or didn't as near as I could discern given the limited range of the 3" Home Depot security cable. They did have the 3/8" drill, and it was still quite small and light compared to a "normal" drill, but it was $149. The sales dude pointed me at the Rigid (Home Depot store brand) variant, but even with the tiny lithium battery it was nearly the size of the regular drills. I decided to look elsewhere.

I go past a Sears on the way home so I pulled in to see what they had. Well, they had a lithium battery 3/8" drill that looked identical to the Milwaukee drill in everything but the branding. Sears being the home of Craftsman tools and all, I suspect they wanted to have their own branding on it. It had the same torque rating, the same two-gear speed ratings, and the battery even looked the same (although I wouldn't be surprised to find that they aren't interchangeable). The difference was the price: $89.

Here it is in a side-by-side comparison with my old drill:



It's not much bigger than an air drill and there's no hose to drag around. Nice!

Even without the more manageable size, I was going to have to buy a new drill anyway. The batteries on the old one are at least five years old and only hold a charge for a few minutes at a time these days. Replacement batteries, even if available, usually cost more than buying an entirely new tool.

Planned obsolescence at its finest!

Tools: Air vs. Electric

I mentioned yesterday that I'm trying to decide whether or not to buy an air compressor for the basement shop. I have one in the hangar that I could bring home, but I then wouldn't have a way to air up Papa's tires. I'll also need it to be in the hangar when it comes time to rivet the larger parts/structures. Carrying it back and forth is simply too much bother, especially when you consider the issues that I have with my lower back.

On the other hand, compressed air in the basement would allow me to use the blind rivet pneumatic rivet puller rather than the hand-powered rivet puller. It would also allow the use of air drills. That's not as inconsequential as you might imagine. Air drills are smaller and lighter, and for tight corners nothing beats the little angle drill that I bought last year. The lightness comes at a cost, though: you have an air hose trailing around behind you, and the noise of the compressor is sure to generate complaints from the white collar workers (aka: family members) in the office space above the Production Floor.

Without compressed air, the next best choice is a battery-powered drill. And for the most part, that's just fine. The only problem with battery-powered drills is their size. Well, and to some degree their weight. That big, clunky battery that they carry around like Jennifer Lopez's butt gets in the way and makes the drill somewhat unwieldy. Figuring that surely the new battery technology that allows for ever-tinier cell phones may have worked its way into power tools since the time when I last bought one, I did some internet searching this morning and found this:



That's the ticket! And at $130, it's less than what I would pay for a beat-up used air compressor before all of the hoses and attachments. It's only a 1/4" chuck, but on the rare (or non-existent for all I know) occasion when I need a 3/8" drill, I doubt that the size of the drill will matter that much if I can just use a uni-bit. And besides, I already have a 3/8" drill anyway.

And then there's this, flagged as "Coming Soon" on Milwaukee's web site:



Well then. That leaves only the question of pneumatic vs. manual rivet pulling. I'll have to pull a few to see if I even care about that or not.