Suggestions for a "Serious" Drill please

Once you get one you will wonder how ever you got along without it. Totally brilliant piece of kit.

I won’t reccomend a make ,but suggest that before you buy go to a shop where you can hold the drill,especially battery ones , as the balance varies between makers. When you have decided buy on the internet.

If you are going to use Cat6 rather than Cat5e ethernet cables (and possibly (re-)fit connectors, then it is best to be aware of the following:

" While the obvious advantage of Cat6 cabling is that the throughput bumps up to a ridiculous 10 Gbps, but the detail is that these speeds are limited to 55 meter / 164 feet distances, which is shorter than for Cat5 or Cat5e runs, and at longer distances goes back to 1 Gbps.

While the speeds are faster for Cat6 on shorter runs, the downside is that the wires are stiffer making them more difficult to bend, and the thicker wires are more difficult to terminate."

Regarding the drill, personally I would go for a corded SDS drill and a lighter cordless one - both Makita of course!

Yes, Hilti are very expensive but Makita are reasonable for what you get. Well worth paying the extra. I’m still using a makita sds that I bought 30 odd years ago and which has seen professional use in it’s time.

I picked Cat6 for networking in “la maison française”, mainly because I had some - though it’s unlikely to get used for faster than 1Gbps (maybe 2.5Gbps at some point) . It’s stiffer because of the internal separator (plus the copper cores are slightly thicker I believe) - but that’s no bad thing because it means you are less likely to try to go tighter than the minimum bend radius. I didn’t find it especially harder to terminate.

I have just installed Cat6 cabling in our property renovation using Legrand faceplates - they are a bit bizarre you make the terminations without a punchdown tool just a twist of the fitting secures all 8 cables.

I am not convinced by them.

she did say “I have been promising myself a decent drill for ages” so if she really wants to go the whole hogg that would be it :wink: If not i’d still pay the extra for a makita. I exploded one of those cheap big heavy sds things, they replaced it under garantie but told me not to come back with the new one as they’re only built for a very limited life (a couple of small drilling jobs a year and everybody’s happy)… It went in the bin after a week and I went back to my makita which weighs a third of the cheap thing, is 3 times more effective and will last 300 times longer doing the same work!

Oh and for the record I do do the school run in an italian vehicle (my italian or my italian van), but we’re talking fiat not ferrari, ma tutte le due fanno lo stesso que la ferrari, più o meno :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

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The Ryobi should be good to drill that if it is a hammer drill. The important point is getting an appropriate masonry drill bit.

London Bricks are made from Cream Crackers as are the aptly named Butterley Bricks :rofl:

And that would be an SDS drill and SDS bit,

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They were known as soft reds for a reason :wink:

Unlike the 3" thick ceramic brick wall we had as a divide between the kitchen and hall, two of us with sledgehammers thought this will be easy, 15 profusely sweating minutes later we gave up, the skim coat of plaster fell of and that was it :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
Every hit just bounced, even drilling them has melted the end of a hilti drill bit before, the only time my Hilti demolition te100 hammer has struggled to break something up.

For a laugh :joy:

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Enter the thermic lance :astonished:

@SuePJ - lots of advice, opinions etc, have you decided what to get ?

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Not yet. Life has got in the way! And I’m waiting for my next pension installment to come into my bank. In the meantime, OH did get the drill bits yesterday from Lidl . :slight_smile:

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Get a mid range Ryobi/Makita/DeWalt cordless is you want a reliable small hammer drill/power driver combo that’ll do 95% of the DIY jobs you’re likely to have.

Don’t get hung up on getting a bunch of spare batteries unless you have a big decking project which requires endless hours of drilling etc.

They’re all much of a muchness these days as all the power tool brands on the planet are owned by only 4 or 5 different companies these days.

Schappach/Dexter/MacAllister/Parkside, for example, are all identical budget ranges in difference colours with diffferent stickers on them.

For the occasional drilling of GBFO holes in half metre thick walls, one of those 1500 Watt “store brand” SDS big boys and a few decent bits for it.

I’ve found that it’s with the drill bits that you see the big difference in quality. Don’t expect the “store brand” masonry bits to have an an edge left of them after a couple of holes in foot-thick French stone.

Depends on what the wall is made from, up in the north where granite is prevalent, best to give up and find something else to do. In the middle of France its a lot more limestone, the clearing the spoil, swarf is more important to lessen the jam ups.

Most of the infill in our walls is flint, which makes drilling fun :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: digging holes for posts is the same, our ground consists of flint with some sandy soil to fill in the gaps.

ground consists of Hampshire Diamonds