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AvE is fun to watch, and full of cool insights into the underappreciated details of tools. but you've got to take his reviews with a few grains of salt. He's coming at it from the perspective of somebody who buys tools to use in heavy industry. If you're buying a cordless drill to hang pictures or maybe build a desk or a fence once a decade, the things he derides as being "not very skookum" will likely last you a lifetime.

Maybe you actually do need an angle grinder rated for an 8-hour duty cycle. But don't buy one just because a YouTuber told you you do. That DeWalt is probably fine.



My heuristic is to first buy the cheap version of a tool. If I use it enough to break it, I then buy a more skookum version.


Are you me?

This is the exact same method I've used to buy tools for ages. Still using the same 19€ corded hammer drill I got 20 years ago to punch some holes in a concrete wall.

On the other hand, my cordless drills is the more skookum version after the cheapo one crapped out on me mid-drywall.


And Harbor Freight makes buying the cheap version as easy can be.


He almost always breaks that down thou.




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