110VIDEO Cordless Drill Tutorial

In this video I want to talk to you about cordless drills and my goal with this video is first to

educate you, just give you a little bit of an idea of how they work and what the controls do

but then also to help you make proper buying decisions. Because as I've mentioned

I'm convinced that a cordless drill is one of the first power tools you should buy. It's very

useful and not just for woodworking either. You'll find use for it all around the house

Many of you might already have a cordless drill, in which case you don't need to buy one

but you still might want to learn something here. I guess the first thing I want to talk about is

voltage. The most common voltages now are on the small end 12 volt. A very common voltage

in the middle is 18 or 20 volts, and then you can get up to some higher voltages too. But

for your purposes, you just need to look at the 18 or the 20 volt drills. They're actually the

same voltage. A lot of people, even professionals, are confused about this because DeWalt is the one

company that sells 20 volt drills, or the mainline company that sells 20 volt stuff

In North America, in Europe, they're not allowed to call those same tools they call 20 volt here

they must call 18 volt there. The reason is because of how that voltage is measured

18 volts is the voltage that the battery pack gives out when the drill is under some arbitrary

load, when it's actually working. This is an 18 volt drill, but as I've done before, you take the

battery pack out, you test the voltage. This baby, when it's fully charged, will be more than 20

volts, even though it's called an 18 volt drill. Same voltage as what you'll get from the DeWalt 20

volts. So DeWalt makes great stuff, no problem with their stuff. I just want to alert you to

the fact that when you buy a 20 volt drill, you're not getting, you know, two volts more power or

runtime or whatever than in an 18. They're the same. So, and an 18 volt, by the way, is gonna

serve you well. It's a very good general purpose voltage. Do not go with the 12 volts. They're

great machines, but they're, they're small. They're meant to fit in your tool pouch

You're not going to get the kind of power you need. So 18 or 20, that's the good all-around

voltage. This is a Milwaukee drill, professional grade, very durable. I can't remember when I got

it, but I've had it for a long time. It's fallen off ladders and it's done a whole bunch of stuff

and it's still working well. A drill like that, I'd have to check the prices, but I mean way over

$200 probably into the $300 range here in Canada, in Canadian dollars. You probably don't want to

spend that kind of money on a drill like that because there's a bunch of other things you want

to buy too, but you don't have to spend that much money to get a good drill. Rule of thumb

about $100 is about as little as you want to pay for a cordless drill. Right now Craftsman

has a decent cordless drill. It's a little bit under $100. There are plenty of off-brands

names you've never heard of before, in the $50 range. So yeah, a cordless drill for $50 with

charger and battery, it's too cheap. That's one point I want to make. It's very, very easy to

buy tools, power tools, that are too cheap. And by too cheap, I mean they're not going to last

So that $50 drill, I mean it could poo out in a year or less, in which case, you know, you're back

to square one. So you've essentially wasted that money. So better to spend a little bit more to get

to a decent level, and there's a handful of them that fit into that category. Around $100, a little

more than $100 will get you some excellent performance. Now one brand I really like

for in terms of dollars spent and value delivered is Ryobi. They make great stuff

I wouldn't call it professional grade, but it's very, very good. Very durable, lasts a long time

In fact, I know a number of professionals that use a lot of Ryobi power tools. And the reason

is because a fast-paced professional views a tool like this as a kind of a disposable thing

especially if they have workers. You know, that worker might not really care so much

might leave it on the ground, it could get run over, could fall off a ladder and break. So Ryobi is a consumer grade line, but it's sufficiently good to work in a professional

arena. So that's important to know about. All drills have a similar layout

This control here, it's kind of like the gear shift on a manual car. You put it down there

that's the number one position. You're going to get maximum torque, so that's twisting force

but not terribly fast speed. And you shift it into position two, you're going to get much

faster rotation, but correspondingly less torque, less twisting force. When I'm drilling wood

it's pretty well always in the fastest setting. This collar here on the outside, that controls

the clutch. So for instance, if I have this collar all the way over here, that's a drill bit sign

That means that it's full lock-up power, which means there's going to be no slipping

I mean, the only way I can stop this is if I actually stall out the motor. And that's what you want for drilling. But let's say you want to drive some screws

which a drill is okay for, then you can rotate the collar, and depending on where you put it

the chuck will start to slip at a certain torque level. So you can get screws driven

more or less to the same depth automatically. I'm not stalling out the motor, but I'm stalling out

the chuck, so to speak. And the higher I turn this, the more torque is delivered

before it does that slipping sound. So another thing, batteries. Within a given voltage and a

given line, like this is 18 volts, that's all fine and dandy, but the voltage bears

no influence whatsoever on how long this battery is going to last before I have to recharge it

That feature, that function, is from the amp-hour rating. That's A-H, amp-hour. So

this battery can put out one and a half amps of current, and it can sustain that for one hour

As cordless tool batteries go, this is pretty small. I don't think they get any smaller than

this. And that's often what you get with entry-level tools at Barkin prices, and that's

smallish batteries. But realize that you can get batteries that are longer. They're deeper

They have more cells inside, and a higher amp-hour rating. Let's just take a look at this one here

This one doesn't say. This one doesn't say either. Oh, hang on a sec

Let me get one that does say something here. Just a sec. This is where I keep all of my

cordless tool stuff. Ah, yeah. This would be about the smallest size cordless tool battery

you can find, and this is about the biggest. It doesn't fit on this one, of course, because it's

a Milwaukee, but 12.0, that's 12 amp-hours. So quite a lot more power packed in it than this one

And with the bigger batteries, it's amazing. You can work all day. You can drive deck screws all

morning long, and it won't run out. It really lasts an awfully long time. When you're in the

market for a drill, you really should keep your eye open for what I call combination kits

And that's two or more cordless tools put together in a package, and usually at a pretty

good price too. So if you want to buy a drill, keep your eye out for a kit that might include

for instance, it could be different things, but might include what's called an impact driver

which looks kind of like a drill, but is much better suited to driving screws. This is really

a screw driving tool. A drill can drive screws too, but just not as well. This will be faster

and the driver tip will stay engaged with the screw head better without rounding out so much

Now here's some of the other things that you might see as you're shopping around. Of course, here's the Ryobi impact driver. All impact drivers have the

same sort of look, the same kind of collet on the front for holding the bits. But this particular

kit came with a right angle drill. Quite handy actually for when you have to sneak in and drill

in close quarters. And here we have a little grinder actually. It's for grinding metal

And another thing, this is kind of an up-and-coming thing. This is something like an impact driver

except as you can see it's got a square shaft on it. This is a 3-8 square shaft that accepts

sockets from your socket wrench set. So if you have to do some work on the vehicle

sometime, then a tool like this can help. This won't really, this isn't going to be strong enough

to take your wheel nuts off or anything like that, but they do make power tools that are strong

enough to take your wheel nuts off. In fact, in professional circles, mechanics and things like

that, they're moving away from the air tools. You know, the air wrenches that you use in here

sort of rat-tat-tat-tat-tat in garages when you go to visit. Those are falling out of favor

and the cordless equivalents are becoming more popular. That's because you don't have a cord

it's just handier and at least as fast, if not faster, than the air tools too

In fact, I know of a professional mechanic, he was working out at a quarry near us, a great big

quarry, working on huge machines. He had that kind of impact wrench too, the great big ones he was

using on the big, you know, the earth movers and the big dump trucks. He only had one battery with

him at the time, as I heard, and it fell off scaffolding and broke. So now he was out of luck

he didn't have his impact wrench anymore. He just packed up his tools and drove the three hours back

to his house because he just was not going to work on this equipment without having that kind of

help. So this whole cordless thing, it's really getting to be a significant player in the whole

tool business, both for very demanding professionals, but also for you too. When you're

buying tools, keep your eyes open for the warranty on the batteries. Now the battery warranty period

is usually different from the tool warranty period, and the reason I mention that is because

replacement batteries can be expensive. It's easy to spend a hundred dollars on a replacement

battery. I don't know what each of these individual ones cost, but a big whopper like this could be

two or three hundred bucks for a battery, and you want to make sure it lasts a long time. So

the Ryobi line, for instance, has a three-year warranty on the batteries, and that's pretty good

Rigid, if you buy a rigid cordless drill, say, and you register as an owner of that drill

you'll enjoy a lifetime warranty on those batteries. It's amazing, especially considering

that batteries are consumable items. I mean, nobody expects a cordless tool battery to keep on

performing for 10 years. I mean, they're going to go bad before then, so you have to expect

to replace them sometimes. The fact that Rigid will keep you supplied with batteries as long

as you live, as long as you're registered, I think that's a very good deal, and that certainly

the Rigid line, I've talked to the people behind Rigid, and they position that as a serious

a serious non-professional user. So it's quite robust. It's a very good line

Professionals do use it too, but also discerning homeowners as well. So that's the story on

cordless drills, and when it comes to woodworking, we're going to be using twist bits like this in

our cordless drill to make holes, and also for bigger holes, one excellent and economical option

is these spade bits. They don't look like much, but when they're sharp and when they spin fast

they can actually make excellent holes in wood larger than the twist bits too. So I hope that

helps you find the kind of cordless drill that makes sense for you