Power Tools

Certainly not, they came out of another marque, AEG, now the same group as Ryobi I believe. Huge range of tools available, pretty good kit. I chose Matabo, being psuedo European, got a very good deal but out of the 5 tools only the small circular saw is working. Some battery connection issues, best avoided IMO oh and weak gearboxes on the drill.

I have Bosch drills both battery and mains. I also have a couple of Lidl battery powered drills and my favourite by far is the Lidl hammer drill, with or without the hammer. Quite simply it’s a better tool.
Talking of tools. Last week I decided to replace the torque wrench that I’ve had for almost 50 years. The main reason for doing so was because the ratchet mechanism doesn’t always work smoothly and that can be annoying. I had seen them in Lidl and decided to order one from them online. It arrived really quickly. I saw the delivery van arrive and went out to meet the driver. She was carrying a huge cardboard box and I was sure it was the wrong colis. However it was addressed to me so when she handed it over I shook it and there was something rattling around inside. When I opened the box there was my torque wrench in a neat plastic case. The plastic case was about 40 cm long and 6 cm wide, the cardboard box could have held 100 of them!

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The bees knees… After my twenty plus years old DeWalt clapped out I thought I’d treat myself.

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I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the longevity of the Parkside X20V range of batteries sold through Lidl, they have proven themselves to be really quite good, even under heavy use.

Yes agreed, love to have a side by side comparison. I have bought dewalt non genuine batteries and found those to be just as good.

Is the petrol one for sale? When you did use it, was it capable of heavy duty débrouillage? What make/model?

I have one in my Lidl ‘saved’ folder. Any good?

Tell you what I found at Lidl that surprised me lots is this

It was €5.99! It is a pretty robust tool - seems to be made of the right stuff and well engineered with this proviso -

It does have a drawback which could lead to injury. The tools do not lock into position.

Once the tool is deployed and the body halves closed it can’t swing back past ‘vertical’/in line with the body but as you see, it [the blade in this case] can swing forward until its base comes up against the opposite side of the body. So it’s free to move that <45 degrees.

For €5.99 it’s a steal. If Douanes or anyone else nicked it, no great loss. But - handle with care.

Lidl is made by Gorilla apparently.

Though I did see a while back that Black & Decker offers new products they are testing / refining through Lidl to get feedback and improve the product.

Lidl does mess around with the pricing of batteries for power tools though - the 8 Ah’s I’ve been waiting for since late summer so I can test my lawnmower have not been seen online since then. But annoyingly a while after they disappeared online they offered them on a promo instore for 30 euros and a week or two ago for 40 euros. fr list price is normally 70 euros.

I can’t get to a Lidl store ATM and probably wouldn’t have made a special trip. As so many times in the past in Fr I made special trips on the date(s) of advertised availability of a promoted item to the 2 nearest Lidls in either direction (25 and 45 km away respectively) “Oh, we haven’t got that”.

If you’re ever short of a Lidl battery though I’ve seen them online on amazon.fr and .de. The compatibles seem to be Gorilla.

I have makita and dewalt in UK, but bought some of Lidl own range to keep in France to save constantly having to take tools with me. Have found them very good, especially when using the 4 AH batteries.

If a little innacurate, bought a circular saw and at a seperate time a jigsaw when my other kit was elsewhere. Circular saw 3mm out and jigsaw couldnt cut straight if its short life depended on it. Both returned for a refund.

Apologies in advance but you know what they say.
Poor work men always blames their tools :wink:
My entire tool kit fitted into my carpenters box I made as an apprentice and there wasn’t a job I couldn’t tackle.
Yes, took a little longer but todays workman struggle to fit their tool kit into a super size van and would be lost without a power tool in each hand.
I still have my tool box and most of the tools from 50+years ago which have plenty of life still in them and the only power needed to use them is me.
I have moved with the times but have a graveyard of wired and cordless machines piled up in my workshop, a throw away world.

Ah yes, the management statement they think excused them from updating from ex US war department equipment we were supposed compete with other countries using CNC machines, well for British engineering that worked very well didnt it.

In my defence, I can always counter for a 3mm error on the tool, but was merely pointing out the short comings of some of the Lidl equipment being spoken about, forewarned and all that.

If I was nearer I would give you the petrol strimmer. I’m not sure if it works or not but it was fine when I last used it. It’s from a German supermarket and is unusual because it has a 4 stroke motor. Most are 2-stroke, for a reason, a high revving 2-stroke is a great engine for the purpose, the 4-stroke did the job but didn’t give me the same confidence. The multi tool looks great. I have a genuine Leatherman which is a sort of inheritance. I say sort of because I gave it to my father and he gave it back to me shortly before he died. It travels with me and has proved invaluable. You used to be able to buy little booklets in Germany which showed which manufacturers made Lidl and Aldi products. They also gave examples of the manufacturers own products. Believe me they use some pretty good people.

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Back in the UK, we were renovating a house that had been derelict for 25 years. To state the obvious, it needed some serious work doing to it.

This called for some serious tools.

One of the best drills Stuart bought was a DeWalt hammer drill. It’s huge and it’s nickname is ‘Shakey’ (Not Shane Byrne ex-BSB 6-time champion!).

After 30 minutes continuous use, he had to sit down for 10 minutes until he stopped ‘shaking’.

It’s about 20 years old now and still does a fantastic job.

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‘Old Shakey’ and ‘Big Huge’ they’re the ones that get the job done. :grinning:

A pal was stripping tiles from his kitchen wall. They had been properly installed. With a lump hammer and cold chisel it was going Extremely Slowly.

I happened to have ‘Big Huge’ to hand [demolition of conservatory] " 'Ere 'ave a go with this"

20 mins later, all done. “That was two days’ hammer and chisel!” He immediately ordered a Makita …

A must have.

I was a ‘first adopter’ with the Leatherman. A berth holder at my boatyard flew cargo Jumbos for Lufthansa. He landed in some place in Alaska, went to the general store - not much else to do, I s’pose other than play chicken with a polar bear - and saw, for the first time, the Leatherman tool. He bought 5, sold 1 each to three of us.

As per usual with US tools - built like tanks but poor design. This was back in 1995/6/7. I expect they’re better now but user assessment reckons Victorinox is still tops.

The other thing with 4-stroke is the weight of the motor/power output. Not really suitable for ‘hand held’ tools.

I have a pet ‘campaign’. All 2-stroke motor machines - jet-skis, mopeds, go-karts, whatever - should be banned and 2-stroke motors only allowed for machines to be carried/used by hand - chain saws/strimmers [but not the stupid leaf-blower] etc

It’s very much the same weight of the two strokes that I have owned.

Considering it has no valves, camshaft, chain or drive for the oil pump let alone the oil, 2 stokes should weigh less.

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Then we have battery tools, you dont smell of exhaust fumes after 30 seconds of use. There is a move away from two stokes, but its slow, difficult to buy a two stoke outboard any more.

Isn’t a “two stoke” a steam engine? :slight_smile:

Having a barn full of numerous 2 stroke garden tools I have not been bitten by the battery bug, until a few weeks ago.
The starter pull cord snapped, again, on my hedge trimmer and I was reading a thread on SF at the time about battery hedge trimmers and were they as good as petrol power.
Certainly the Mickey mouse tool with small voltage are no match.
I bought a Greenworks 40v hedge trimmer and what a game changer. It wasn’t cheap with the biggest cost being the battery and charger however the battery can be used with the entire range of Greenworks tools.
The actual tools are very reasonably priced so my 2 stroke tools will gradually be replaced.
I am a battery convert for garden tools but I must be clear that my conversion doesn’t stretch to EVs on the road.

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Chainsaws HAVE to be two stroke. And loud. You just do not get that lumberjack feel with a battery powered saw…unless one is a girly lumberjack maybe.

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