The cold weather seems to have sounded the death knell for our cordless power tools here on the farm. I’ve had my trusty Milwaukee cordless drill for at least 6 years now (it’s kinda hard to think back that far) and it’s still going strong.
Well, everything but the batteries are still going strong. My dad has a very similar Milwaukee drill, the hammer-drill model, so we have quite a few 14.4v Ni-Cad batteries between us. Now all but one of those batteries are dying. This means that all the little projects around the farm are taking longer and longer as we have to wait for batteries to charge.
In my recent gutter-installing exploits (gotta get it done before winter) I’ve been hitting the wall with batteries. The Milwaukee will drive the big 7″ gutter-screws when it’s charged up, with enough power to strip the heads out if you’re not careful. Up on a ladder it’s hard to be careful, so I try not to use it.
The Hitachi impact driver does a better job, but with only one battery, there’s a lot of waiting around for it to charge as well. So what’s a cold, impatient farmer to do?
Call in the big guns!
Electric 1/2″ impact wrench, 1/2″ to 3/8″ reducer, 3/8″ to 1/4″ reducer, 1/4″ deep well socket, 1/4″ square drive bit.
There were two scenarios for how this was going to play out:
Scenario 1: Everything works out perfectly.
Scenario 2: Everything breaks in the most expensive way possible.
I’m happy to report that Scenario 1 was the order of the day.
The gutters are finished! At least some of them anyway…
Redneck tool misappropriation FTW!
