My frustration with power tools mainly Ryobi

I also have developed a hatred for anything with the Ryobi logo on it. Everything I’ve ever bought with Ryobi stamped on the side died and untimely death at the worst possible time.
I now have several Ridgid tools. So far I have not been disappointed by any of them.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

i am so happy to say i sold the last of my ryobi small power tools (which never worked accurately) at my yard sale last weekend! The only Ryobi I have left is a BT3100 table saw which is excellent for my needs.

to me Skil is in the same caste tier as Ryobi; I’ve had good luck with porter cable, but I think their quality has dropped in recent years – Ridgid and Dewalt seem to be the mid-tier leaders now, although Bosch, Milwaukee and Makita seem nice too. Skil, Ryobi and Craftsman are all bottom shelf IMHO, the top shelf is Festool, with the aforementioned inbetween

my opinions, YMMV

-- John Franklin - Central PA - http://affyx.wordpress.com

I have a Makita cordless drill that I’ve had forever and it just won’t quit. I won’t buy Skil, Ryobi or Craftsman (although I do have a C-Man miter saw. It’s older and I wouldn’t buy another one).

JC makes since thus the reason Skil is priced so low at Lowes.

-- Randy - If I'm not on LJ's then I'm making Saw Dust. Please feel free to visit my store location at http://www.facebook.com/randy.blackstock.custom.wood.designs

Ryobi is about the only “normal” tool brand out there (not counting uber high end German stuff) that I have never purchased….

I’ve considered them several times and they always struck me as absolute rock bottom… light and skimpy.

I’ve used a couple Harbor Freight tools and they were actually pretty decent. I think most of their stuff (at least what I’ve seen) is a clone of somebody elses successful design.

-- Matt, Pine is fine, but Oak's no joke!

Buy Bosch and dont look back

-- My job is to give my kids things to discuss with their therapist....medic20447@gmail.com

^That’s what I did with my insurance money after a theft, MedicKen. I saw two broken Ryobis on the “try out” shelf at the big box a few years back. Made an impression on me and I never bought one. I’ve had a couple of Skils out of desperation and they all died pretty quickly. I like Bosch, Makita, and DeWalt in that order. I like Milwaukee too but I only own the super sawzall; hardly enough for me to comment on the brand. I own a Hilti drill (a gift), which is obviously awesome but a great bit of overkill for me. I use harbor freight for pneumatic tools. If I get a year or two out of a $20 pneumatic tool, I figure I’m ahead of the game.

-- My dad and I built a 65 chev pick up.I killed trannys in that thing for some reason-Hog

I did the same thing Blackie. Looking at 10 messed up Ryobi batteries I started to add up the costs, and came to the conclusion not to purchase junk.
Hello Festool. It’s actually less expensive to purchase quality than it is to throw good money after bad.

Now you can add the new “improved” Porter Cable, Skil, Black and Decker, & Rockwell to the list of brands that have gone the way of least cost production. Once fine brands (Craftsman included) have taken to living on the name rather than the integrity of the product.
That said, I have an old Ryobi 3’ X 21” belt sander that won’t quit, and a Ryobi miter saw stand that is heavy as he!! but solid as the proverbial rock.
Today I sticking with Makita and DeWalt. Maybe they’ll keep the quality.
The black and green stuff is WAY out of my league.
Bill

-- bill@magraphics.us

The only two Ryobi tools that I have left and they both seem to be doing just OK are the biscuit cutter and the 1300 or 1301 (can’t remember) planer. I’ll refrain from buying anymore Skil. What about Hitachi, where are they on the margin line?

-- Randy - If I'm not on LJ's then I'm making Saw Dust. Please feel free to visit my store location at http://www.facebook.com/randy.blackstock.custom.wood.designs

Same experience here – My first router was a SKIL with so much run out on the motor shaft it would snap bits off in use, thought it was me at first but a little investigation revealed the POOR quality of the tool.

Bought a Ryobi cordless drill, drill motor was kinda ok but the batteries were and are junk, bought new batteries, same junk. Both have been exiled to the trash bin of “lessons learned” (Costs more to buy cheap and then replace it with quality than to buy quality in the first place).

I also have a Crapsman 10” miter saw that collects dust – No matter how much I fiddle with it I can’t get a consistent square cut from it and miters are an absolute nightmare. I use it in the early milling process for cutting to “rough length” when square doesn’t matter and otherwise it just collects dust.

I know we all look for bargains, and occasionally you find one, but in tooling, quality trumps cheap at every turn. Not to mention the frustration inaccurate tools cause. I’m no tool snob – there are no Festools in my shop, but Bosch, PC, Rigid, and DeWalt (Not necessarily in that order) all have secure homes here. Just 2 cents worth…......

Chris

-- So Much Wood - So Little Time! --

OK, here’s the “deal”. Techtronics owns several US brands. Yes even Milwaukee. They also build the Rigid power tools. Robert Bosch bought Skil which was on the skids at the time. Bosch tools are good stuff. I own two Ryobi tools that are about 20+ yrs old. A 2 1/2hp, 1/2” plunge router that serves me well on my router table/home built mortising jig and a 3×21 VS belt sander. BOTH are excellent. But, these may be of an era when their stuff was still made with some degree of quality. I know several people that “fell” for the “lifetime guarantee” with Rigid tools at Home “Despot”. Much to their chagrin when the tool farted its eye out they got the “Oh, the guarantee isn’t through us, you have to send it back to the factory.” So that “great deal” isn’t so “great” after all n’est pas? Got an issue? Go STRAIGHT TO THE TOP! E-mail the customer service dept of the manufacturer. Raise some hell (politely) with them. They want happy consumers. If the tool is still under warranty there should be no issue. The “bots” in these DIY/tool stores generally are clueless. I bought a pipe threading set from HF. 1/2”-1” for 40 bucks. Lifetime guarantee. If a die breaks they replace it I assume. This is the set that when I get the “Hey! Can I borrow you pipe dies” goes out the door. They’re not getting my Rigid dies. BTW, Rigid should stick to their forte, piping tools. I’m a fan of Metabo power tools. Good stuff built in Germany.

-- OK, who's the wise guy that shrunk the plywood?

The only Ryobi I have ever owned is the BT3100 table saw I bought back in 2000. Still accurate and doing it’s thing. I’ve been thinking of a new saw lately, but I just cannot justify it since this thing just keeps on cutting like the day I bought it, save it looks like it has been through a war. (Moved four times now.)

As time goes on, (and I own WAY too many cordless drills), I find that I keep getting more and more Rigid tools. I still buy HF for low usage items, but my main four cordless drills are three of those Rigid compact 18V Li-Ion with 3/8” chucks, and one 18V Li-Ion Milwaukee with the 1/2” chuck. I have lots of others, and corded drills, but I don’t use them unless I have to drill through a bunch of bricks, then the Milwaukee plug-in Holeshooter comes out.

My routers are Bosch, save for one Porter Cable and a HF that I just could not pass up. (1/2” router for $49? I bought it…) Then I bought a Rigid router that came with a plunge mount no extra charge and I like it a lot save for where the off-on switch is.

All my vacuums are Rigid. Two of them are 12 years old and still running fine, as I use multiple vacuums as a dust collection system so they get some real hours on them. Recently they had a special, a 12 gallon with not too many attachments, but it came with a detachable motor for use as a blower. $49. I got the last one in my store, and it is a great vacuum. Where you going to get a 2HP 12 gallon with detachable blower for $49, guaranteed for life?

I used to buy DeWalt, not anymore. Now it’s Rigid, Milwaukee, Bosch, or for low usage, I look over to see what HF has. Like their Chicago random orbit sander for $22.99. You can’t beat that.
I’ve never considered Festool, and I only bought two Rockwell units, the multi-tool sander/cutter/Festool knockoff which is great, and that dumb small plunge 3 1/4” circular saw w/laser light which I hate. Can’t cut a straight line with it, even with a fence!

-- Paul, Tennessee, http://www.tsunamiguitars.com

I’ve been as unimpressed with Skil as most Ryobi….both are aimed mainly at the same homeowner market as B&D, Tradesman, some Craftsman, HF, and others. If you want better quality than Ryobi, you need to aim at more of the pro/serious hobbyist market. I’d look to Bosch, Milwaukee, Makita, Metabo, Hitachi, DW, some Ridgid, some PC. I’d found some great deals on Hitachi in the past few years and have been very satisfied overall.

-- Happiness is like wetting your pants...everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth....

By the way, a little rant about Craftsman. My very first experience was back in 1971 when I bought one of their “reconditioned” routers from a bin in Norfolk, VA. It ran for a couple years and finally just basically fell apart. OK, but $35 was a lot of money in 1971. A few years after that, I had a Craftsman tractor, top of the line, B&S industrial engine, the decal said. One year, 13 warranty service calls, and when the renewal letter came it said one more year warranty for $375. This was 1980! I said the heck with that, I could replace the engine for that! Which, dead in the middle of the very next Pocono winter, is exactly what happened when I was plowing my drive, the engine seized. Found out that Briggs and Stratton, whose decal was plainly on top of the engine, would not support that engine. Could not even get parts through B&S. A new replacement engine was half the price of the tractor from Sears. Sold it off instead after I took the engine apart to find plain bearings, a splash oiler and only one piston ring per. What a POS that was.
Few years later, I bought a variable speed Craftsman drill, and after the third one, I finally got one that worked for more then a month. Same with the second router. Had to turn in two before I got one that worked. Still own the “third” router, but never turn it on, it is a memorial these days for me to never buy another Craftsman tool – ever. Threw the variable speed drill away, too sick to even sell it at a garage sale. Sears chain saw? I’ll bite, heck of a lot of saw for the money. Wrong… Found out they decided that aluminum was good enough to hold the bolts where the chain bar mounted on. It’s not. Bolts slowly over time pulled out of the casing. Kept cutting in a circle. Some guy gave me $25 for the engine.
Back in 1996 I needed a larger belt sander but did not have the money, found the 3X24 Craftsman, and while sanding with it first time, the front wheel fell off because the hot melt glue holding the front wheel on melted. It didn’t even have a key! When I took it back, the guy reached down to a large stack of return forms, maybe three inches high. I asked him why so many return forms? “Well, we use a lot of them.”

That was it, put a fork in me, I was done with Sears…that was 1996. Oh, and if I remember right, the famous Craftsman warranty does not cover a “sharpened edge”. You would be surprised how many Craftsman tools have a “sharpened edge”.
Nowadays, I won’t even walk into a Sears. Sorry, Craftsman lovers…

-- Paul, Tennessee, http://www.tsunamiguitars.com