Power Tools: Best brand of home power tools?

If you are working at the cheap end of power tools there are a few brands to choose from. I have bought Ryobi stuff a few times, weedeaters have been good, also a good 1200 watt electric drill (a knockoff of a Bosch or Hitachi drill) with variable speed, hammer, 2 speeds, reverse etc. I used this some years ago to drill a lot of holes in desks to run cables through and it did a great job. 

Then there is Makita, I have owned a few Makita products but not anything that I bought myself. Orbital sanders, mains powered and cordless drills have been some of their products that I have had, some of which are still in use today.

Then there is Bosch. Their home stuff has been quite good, from a range of cordless drills, saws, heat guns and sanders.

The problem seems to be these days that all three of these brands, plus Black and Decker, have gone mad and are now producing cheap rubbish that only lasts a short time. Well, B&D stuff was always cheap and nasty but now there is a race to the bottom. Some examples:

• Mouse sanders (triangular detail sanders for sanding into corners): Bosch have two models that are of very poor quality, the base plate is made of foam onto which the sanding pad is held with velcro, the pad being a soft material disintegrates and is then expensive to replace. A ludicrously poor design with also the dust collector box being either difficult to remove and empty, or falling off all the time. 
• 1/4 sheet detail sander: Makita have done a very poor job with their BO4555/4556 models. Numerous reviews worldwide attest that the paper clamps on these will break off after only a few uses, whilst there have also been a number of people who have found the whole base plate has broken off completely.
• Any sander that uses Velcro fastening: there are too many of these where the hooks and loops wear down quite quickly and will no longer hold the sanding sheet into place. This also includes the sanding pads that can be bought for multitools.

Seeing these situations for these brands of tools which have previously been fairly well regarded is a big deal for me. It seems these manufacturers are just producing throwaway junk with a life that can be measured in hours.

These situations are hard to understand because I have here an older Bosch random orbital sander that has a velcro pad for attaching sandpaper and not only is the pad made of good quality material (hard rubber) but also the velcro works very well and holds the sheets in place properly and they don't fall off. Generally the older Bosch tools are well made and don't break. The Makita detail sander I have is well made and has given a lot of use (except for the dust bag which has a flimsy internal support that broke). 

So I have to look at some other choices:

• Metabo (which now has taken over Hitachi)
• Bosch Professional
• Hikoki ?
• DeWalt

Metabo is the only one of these that doesn't seem to be specifically geared at the professional trade (but I could be mistaken in that assumption). Their gear is going to cost twice as much as Bosch but about the same as Makita, yet it looks to be of better quality. They have a mouse sander that Mitre 10 carries in stock for about $175 that appears to be quite well made although reviews are hard to find.

Dewalt don't have a mouse sander but they do have a 1/4 sheet sander and also a random orbital sander which price around $175-225 in NZ and appear to be well made. Bosch have some professional products which can be hard to find here.

Mostly what I see in reviews for certain home user Bosch and Makita products is people questioning why these manufacturers now turn out cheap junk when they used to produce good quality stuff. At least everyone already thought Black and Decker was low end but it seems Bosch and Makita are falling over themselves to emulate B&D and see who can produce the cheapest flimsiest tools that don't last much longer than the ones you can buy from The Warehouse.

I don't need to have any more sanding gear at the moment so this is an interesting discussion / conversation for future reference.

Arlec Plug In Heater Controls [2]

In my previous post in this series I described the PC900 2 hour plugin countdown timer which Bunnings have been selling for some time. The oddity of this product is that it is described on the packaging as having "adjustable switching increments". This is a rather clumsy phrase more worthy of adjustable 24 hour timers and is referring to the fact the timer can be set for any time between 120 minutes and 1 minute each time it is used.

In the same post I referred also to the new THP401 plug in thermostat which Arlec's packaging describes as a "temperature controlled programmable timer". The problem with using the wrong terminology to describe a product is that it sends people up the garden path. The description as above is, once again, carried through into the product packaging. Someone at Arlec needs to improve their knowledge of the English language.

I happened to visit Bunnings again today and one of these was on the shelf at $29.95. The product is, very clearly not a "timer", but a plug in heater thermostat, and obviously a very useful thing to have. The problem is whether people will understand what it does with the wrong labelling.

Arlec Plug In Heater Controls [1]

Arlec is an old established Australian brand of electrical products (such as extension cords and plugboxes, timers etc) that has been available in NZ for many years - at least 40 to my recollection, their innovative designs and features continue to the present day.

With plug in electric heaters sometimes certain desirable features that would be easy to fit for a wired in heater, such as a time delay switchoff or a thermostat, are not always easy to find. I can recall various brands having come and gone, for example countdown timers from BenQ and HPM come to mind. Likewise various brands of plug in thermostat. Arlec is now making both types of product and selling them through Bunnings. (I also remember Kambrook plug in timers with some affection from my youth but they have diversified more into household appliances nowadays). I do have still a Honeywell plug in timer fitted with a cord and interrupted phase tapon plug which can be mounted on a wall some distance from the heater and this is still going strong more than 30 years later.

The Arlec PC900 plug in countdown timer is a mechanical timer giving 2 hours delay and simply plugs into a 3 pin outlet and the heater or other device plugs into it. 

The timer appears to do what is expected of it. However due to its design, it will block an adjacent outlet in a plugbox or multi outlet wallplate. This appears to be a design factor with Arlec products in this range (several different types of timer including the PC697 digital 7 day timer).

Newly available from Bunnings is the THP401 which is clumsily described as a "temperature controlled programmable timer". 

So far as I can ascertain (it wasn't on the shelf at the Bunnings store I visited today) this should really be described as a digital plug in thermostat. Because Arlec do not appear to have added this model to their website yet and because there was not one on the shelf at Bunnings I was unable to verify the description of the unit.