Power in the hands of many

Power tools are pretty awesome. I think I have in common with most people that my first power tool was a cordless drill. It's the perfect power tool for university. We're all putting together cheap furniture while we're away at school and the drill makes that process a little less frustrating. It also has the advantage that as long as you hide the drill bits, it can only cause minimal damage when wielded by immature drunks. The cordless drill has its limitations in the power department.

Recently I was looking to make a shot-ski. The etymology of the word shot-ski is thus - a ski which has in it five holes for the placement of shot glasses so that five people can awkwardly take a shot at the same time. Shot-ski. When you are using a cordless drill, it can be somewhat difficult to penetrate the sandwiched layers of a modern ski. A ski is not the only case where you may find that a cordless drill does not have enough juice. Which brings me to my long winded point, that each tool collection should contain a corded hammer drill.

A corded drill comes in different motor powers. When looking to buy a corded drill, it makes sense to look the half inch drills with motors around 7/8 amps. At this motor power, the drill is capable of doing a lot of things that the 14.4V cordless cannot approach. The "hammer" part of the drill is important if you ever plan on doing masonry (brick, stone, concrete) drilling. It kicks the drill bit in and out which is necessary if you're drilling into harder material.

Two products I looked at closely are the Dewalt and the Milwaukee. Though the Dewalt is listed at $179 at Home Depot and the Milwaukee $219, they were both $179 in store. If you want to look at the tools, then head into Home Depot or Rona. However, if you know what you want I would shop at House of Tools. They're usually less expensive (for example the 6.7 amp hammer drill is $99 at HOT and $139 at HD) and if not they have a price guarantee. Not all of their products are listed on their website, so give them a call if you don't see what you want. They also don't charge PST in Ontario, which is nice.