FirTrader

What's everybody's favorite tool? What makes your heart pound?

What turned into a huge disappointment?

For me, my favorite tool, after many years, is a Makita Framing saw... that thing has cut a lot of stuff, and I still love it every time I pick it up.

Biggest dissapointment for me has been my lathe, because it makes such a ridiculous amount of mess, and I have to wear a mask to use it, which cuts the enjoyment quite a bit for me. I love turning, but it's just such a pain...

Also, I'm anti- DeWalt, simply because I have 3 DeWalt tools, and they all blow air right in my face. None of my other tools do it. Fussy?

TxBuilder

Craftsman has been disappointing me as of late. The quality in their tools is awful. Bought a brand new drill and after only a couple times the motor burnt out. Nothing stressful just a bad motor. Then was at a friends and his new Craftsman skill saw's motor burnt out as well.

FirTrader

Agreed... Crafstman has really gone from almost top-of-the-line to almost bottom-of-the-barrel. The "Home Handyman" dominates the market, I guess, which is to say that Sears is happy to sell a hundred thousand crappy tools instead of one thousand really good ones. DeWalt spans that gap, being kind of for professionals, and kind of for wanna-bes. Then I'd say Makita, porter cable, Milwaukee, maybe Hitachi... are pretty good, and then above that are the super-tools - Fein, Bosch, Metabo, etc, out of Europe. But they cost silly money, and if you run over them with the van....

sonofthesoil

I own a mix, like most people, I suppose - DeWalt has been a tremendous disappointment, and I won't even bother any more with Craftsman - I have a brother-in-law who gets me Milwaukee at a reasonable price, so I have been building my collection of those and I like them.

FirTrader

The thing I'm most impressed with is Milwaukee's support. You can email them, and ... they respond!! It's amazing.

Mach1

I just got a Ryobi stand for my compound miter saw. What a backsaver! I should have bought one of these years ago! I also just bought Bostitch framing and roofing nail guns. They seem like great quality tools, though I admit I haven't had a chance to use them yet.

HandyMac

I have a tool trailer full of almost every major brand tool----Milwaukee(Sawzall, screwshooter), PC(nailers,compressor,table saw, sanders, router), Makita(belt sander), DeWalt(CMS, jig saw, cordless drills), Bosch(corded drills, hand jointer, rotary tool), Rigid(shop vac), Skil(Mag77), and a Harbor Freight 4&1/2" grinder.

Shop has a Rigid table saw, Delta 2 spd planer, old 12" Shopmaster band saw, DeWalt biscuit joiner, Craftsman mini biscuit joiner, Rigid OSS, HF benchtop drill press, name missing cause it is so old 20 gal compressor, PC router in a home made table---and more but I forget.

Like all of them cause some of those mentioned replaced the original Ryobi TS,router, recip. saw, and sanders I initially bought and had break or burn up.


Oh, yeah, I have one of the rare Craftsman self adjusting routers.

cranbrook2

by far my most favourite tool has to be my dewalt 12" mitresaw.i have been using it for 5 yrs now with no problems .

The Gingerbread Man

You guys may hate me......
My favorites
Gerber Scientific Sabre 404 CNC router (my baby)
Powermatic 5 horse 3 phase left tilt table saw
Powermatic 20" planer
Powermatic 24" double drum sander
That's just the cool stuff
One of my olde tyme favorites is
my wife's grandfathers draw knife, razor sharp and used with care
when we have to build a hand hewn timber mantel.

Square Eye

I like all of my tools. I use my Dewalt 705s mitersaw as much as any tool I have. I like my Smart Tool 24" level. And I like this OLD Stanley #5C Jack plane. I bought it on E-bay a while back. It's spray-painted black, but that doesn't hurt the performance at all. My Starrett ProSite Protractor has me pretty excited right now. I'll try to list a review of something different every week. I'll include pictures as often as I can.



Tom in KY, Plane old carpenter.