New tool: Milwaukee 2401-22 compact driver

I bought this one for myself just before Christmas, which is usually a bad idea but worked out well in this case.

Back in my previous woodworking days, I had three drills in my shop:

1. A DeWalt 14.4v cordless, my everyday workhorse
2. An old Sears 7.2v cordless, which was my everyday before I bought the DeWalt
3. An even older Sears corded 3/8″ drill in a stand that allowed it to function as a mini portable drill press

In the process of excavating and rediscovering my tools, I found the Sears cordless dead.  The batteries just wouldn’t take a charge anymore, and there was no buying new ones for a drill that dated back to the 1980’s.  The Sears corded was also in bad shape; the chuck was seized beyond the lubricating power of WD-40.  It wasn’t that great a drill to start with, so no big loss.

The DeWalt still worked, and while the batteries were old and weak DeWalt still sells 14.4v XR batteries so it was easy to replace them.  With a new battery, the DeWalt runs like it did when I bought it in 1995 or so, and it runs all day and then some.  So that’s great, but it still left me down to only one drill.  Most of time that’s fine, but it can be really annoying if you’re trying to connect two pieces with countersunk screws that you will fill later with plugs — something I’ve done a lot of.  The process becomes one of:

• Insert the countersink bit into the chuck
• Set the drill speed to high
• Drill the countersink/pilot hole
• Remove the countersink bit from the chuck
• Insert the driver bit into the chuck
• Set the drill speed to low
• Drive the screw
• Repeat for every screw while holding the pieces together some other way.

The sperm concentration below 15 million is called oligozoospermia, it’s a common finding in male infertility. generic levitra 20mg Even though, safed musli was initially known to be a wonder drug for ED and impotence related problems but there is a possibility that even this drug might not suit you and you might end up making you incapable of having sex with your partner as in this course of time the medicine gets ample amount of time to mix order generic cialis robertrobb.com up in the blood. The sexual condition may have several causes related to psychological problems viagra generika as described above. Baltimore Ravens tickets deliver plenty of excitement for a fan base that has buy cialis embraced pro football in a unique fashion for more than 50 years.
There are quick-change bit sets that can help with this.  I used to have one, I just don’t know where it got to.  If you can have the countersink in one drill and the driver in another, the process is much smoother.  But I’m not a production shop; I really couldn’t justify spending upwards of $200 on a modern-day 20V behemoth drill just so I could have two different bits handy at once.

Then, while paging through a back issue of WOOD looking at kitchen cabinet organizers, I came upon an article comparing a bunch of brands of “cordless micro-drivers.”  These things didn’t exist when I was last actively woodworking, so I read the article and realized that this was exactly the sort of thing I wanted — something compact and light to drive fasteners with, which is 2/3 of what I do with a drill anyway.

WOOD tested 10 different tools for the article (issue 198, July 2010, page 76) and ultimately recommended three more or less equally:  the Bosch PS20-2A, the Makita DF030DW, and the Milwaukee 2401-22.  “We suggest you choose the one that feels best in your hand,” they wrote.  So I looked around.  The Bosch had been upgraded and had a different shape and more power than the one in the article, but the Makita and Milwaukee were on the shelf at Home Depot.  The Milwaukee felt great in my hand, the Makita was kind of top-heavy, and the redesigned Bosch looked basically the same shape as the Makita.  So I bought the Milwaukee, for $99.

I haven’t had the driver long enough to do a thorough evaluation, but it made a hell of a good first impression.  Maybe it’s because I’m used to a 14.4v drill, which is underpowered by modern standards, but the Milwaukee feels every bit as strong to me as the DeWalt.  It has no problem driving flat-head screws into hardwood and plywood without a pilot hole, and the hex chuck makes bit changes quick and simple.  It’s lighter than my DeWalt and feels great in the hand.  I would never use to drill a 3/4-inch hole in a 2-by-4, but that’s not what it’s designed for; it’s designed to drive fasteners, and it does that very, very well.

 

Comments are closed.