Last year, while using hole saw to drill a cylinder hole in a metal door, my cordless drill more or less melted in my hand. I may or may not mentioned this before. But what I want to focus on this time is how much trouble I had getting a good drill to replace that one.

The drill that melted was one I bought in a kit with two batteries, a charger, and an impact driver. I didn’t have great expectations for the drill when I got it, my experience of that particular brand’s drills having been rather unimpressive. In fact, prior to that, I insisted on using the familiar red Milwaukee cordless drill, since I considered the Makita drills to be wind-up toys in comparison. I only stopped using Milwaukee because the batteries were absolutely useless.

I did, however, see a strange cordless Makita drill on a job site which made me momentarily curious. It looked and felt quite different from the wind-up drills that came in the kits they sold at big orange hardware store. So, when my toy melted, I went online and decided to see if a better one was available.

Better ones are available. And that bothers me.

Why does that bother me? Because the better ones are not commonly available at any of the big orange, blue, red, or chartreuse hardware stores. But even more than that, I don’t understand why a company would push an inferior product on people the way they do with the drills in these kits they sell.

The impact drivers seem to be of varying quality, also. I recall the first cordless impact driver we purchase and how well it performed and how long it lasted. How long was that? Well, it was the only one we had for about six months. Then, it lasted while two more were bought and burned out. I assumed it was just me being hard on the other ones, but I don’t really think that’s what it was.

I’d bet they reduced the quality of the tool to reduce cost, after the initial push of the product.

And, really, that makes sense. You know, they want to sell tools. As long as they don’t design it like the DeWalt cordless router, with its self-destruct mechanism, I don’t mind that much.

But the fact that they seem to want you to buy drills that are essentially useless irks me.

So, I ordered a better Makita drill online. I have been using it, in an excessively punishing way, for over a year. It shows no sign of breaking. It has not slowed down. The switch still works properly. I would have gone through three of the pretend drills.

As you can see from the picture, the drill is not alone. This is a small sampling of the broken turquoise tools. Some of these probably just need brushes replaced. The chargers are a totally different story. I cannot tell you how many of those have quit working. It probably doesn’t help that they designed them to be vacuum cleaners. They have an air-intake vent in the bottom, meant to cool the battery and the charger itself. Well, you tend to dump these things on the dusty floor at jobsites, so they spend the day sucking up dirt. Soon, they sound like helicopters….

No, they actually kind of sound like the toy drill on hammer.

As an aside, I was watching a guy drill a hole in a piece of sheet metal the other day. He had it down on a piece of wood and was pushing all his weight down on the 3/8 bit he was using. Not abnormal, but the bit was so dull, it soon started glowing red and even a few sparks shot off. In the end, he tossed it on the floor and got another one.

Sometimes, it’s not the drill.