Cordless drills are a preferred and viable choice for nearly all hand-held drilling duties on almost any woodworking project. Cordless drills are available in numerous sizes and with numerous totally different features.
What options should you look for when shopping for a cordless drill?
Begin With the Battery:
When searching for a cordless drill to satisfy your woodworking wants, the first thing to consider is the battery. Cordless drills are presently accessible in voltages from 9.6 volts all the way in which up to 24 volts. The advantage of a more powerful battery interprets to additional torque for driving long screws into stronger hardwoods. It also likely means longer battery life per charge.
Nonetheless, these stronger batteries additionally mean a considerably heavier drill. A 24-volt cordless drill is far heavier than a 12-volt cordless drill, and considerably heavier than a corded power drill.
Mandatory Features:
Any cordless drill that it is best to consider on your woodworking initiatives ought to have a variety of primary features. These include a reversible motor that may will let you again out any screws that you simply drill in, a dual-speed motor (with a high and low switch) and an adjustable clutch, that, when adjusted correctly, will assist keep you from driving screws too deeply into your wooden stock.
Further Options to Think about:
Many cordless drills use a three/8" chuck to hold your bits. However, some bigger fashions have a half of" chuck that can permit one to use drill bits of as much as 1/2" in diameter. These half of" models typically embrace a "hammer drill" feature which has little sensible software for woodworking, however is nice for drilling holes in masonry.
Many recent cordless drill fashions make use of a "good charger" that will help lengthen battery life by optimizing the way the batteries are charged. On these chargers, when the battery is approaching a "full" charge, the charger switches to a trickle-charge mode till the battery is maxed.
Many models will even embrace two batteries with the drill and charger, which, whereas it is not a requirement, is definitely a superb idea. With two batteries, you may be using one and charging the other at the identical time.
How you can Select:
Sarcastically, an excellent lots of the cordless drills available on the market have all the features we have already discussed. What, then, must you look for to differentiate between these fashions?
In my mind, there are two main factors to contemplate when all else is equal. First, when you look at the batteries, look past the voltage. As an illustration, all 12-volt batteries are not the same. When evaluating batteries of the same voltage, the battery with a higher mAh score (which stands for milliamp-hours) will maintain a cost for a longer period of time.
The other factor to think about comes into play when you pick up the drill with the battery installed. Maintain the drill in quite a few positions, including over your head, as should you were drilling screws into your ceiling. Ask your self questions like, "How does this drill really feel?" "Is it balanced?" "How lengthy might I exploit this drill holding it over my head?"
If the drill is just too heavy to comfortably use over your head for not less than 30 seconds at a time, you then likely need to have a look at a drill with a lower battery voltage (and therefore, a smaller measurement). The drill ought to be sturdy, however snug to use.
The bottom line is, in case you do not discover your drill comfy, then you won't take pleasure in using it. Discover one which feels good in your hand and you'll be extra prone to put it to good use on your whole woodworking projects.