Bozos And Horror Stories

[RJSakowski]

Sometimes they build it into the switch in such way as to make that very difficult.

I had a Craftsman 3/8" drill from the sixties that had the lock button right next to the trigger switch. It would frequently lock the drill on in use. I finally cut it off flush with the housing; end of problem. I could still use the lock if I wanted to but had to use a drill bit to push it to lock.

 

[silence dogood]

Why not remove the lock?

The stupid trigger lock would sometimes get stuck on lock mode. So I cut off the plastic tab. Now every time when I release the button, it turns off.

 

[John Hasler]

I had a Craftsman 3/8" drill from the sixties that had the lock button right next to the trigger switch. It would frequently lock the drill on in use. I finally cut it off flush with the housing; end of problem. I could still use the lock if I wanted to but had to use a drill bit to push it to lock.

I had one (don't recall what brand) that had a two position trigger swittch (not variable speed). If you depressed the trigger all the way it locked. Depressing it all the way again released it.

 

[kvt]

Think that was an old Milwaukee My dad had one like that, 1/2 Drive gear reduction, T handle on the top, and D handle on the back. Problem I watch that thing break 2 2X4s out of a wall where they were trying to drill anchors. The bit caught on the rebar, and the only thing that stopped it was it spun until it unplugged, My dad refused to let me near that drill.

 

[MikeWi]

Think that was an old Milwaukee My dad had one like that, 1/2 Drive gear reduction, T handle on the top, and D handle on the back. Problem I watch that thing break 2 2X4s out of a wall where they were trying to drill anchors. The bit caught on the rebar, and the only thing that stopped it was it spun until it unplugged, My dad refused to let me near that drill.

I have a brother with permanent damage to the hinge of his jaw from one of those. Drilling into concrete from on top of a step ladder where he worked. The bit caught, spun the drill into his face, and knocked him out cold and of course, from the ladder. He can't open his jaw fully, and the doctors say they risk far greater damage if they try to fix it surgically.

Not a fan of wire wheels either. Besides the current complaints I'll add how the dang things seem to fling wires everywhere like a needle gun.

 

[jim18655]

Hilti TM7 has one the worst buttons of any drill I've used. If you hold the drill in your left hand it is almost guaranteed to lock on. I always pop them out with a small screwdriver.

 

[TOOLMASTER]

YUP

 

[intjonmiller]

With a proper steel-cutting blade, and considering that he is wearing appropriate safety gear and standing as far as possible out of the path of the metal should it kick back, I don't see anything wrong with this. I've cut thousands of linear feet of metal (steel and aluminum, including 14 gauge steel) with those blades, and usually in a handheld circular saw. If the rollers on the panel saw like this one had been in better shape I would have happily used it in one of the shops where I used those blades.

 

[dlane]

Need one of these

 

[intjonmiller]

I've been posting in the POTD thread about the work on my mother's house. Here are some bozo discoveries along the way:

• There were four different circuits in use for different outlets in the tiny kitchen, not even including the oven. We're now running the wall outlets there on one outlet, which freed up a substantial amount for a new run to the garage, as the power situation out there has always been frustrating. We can do because...
• The ceiling fan in the living room was installed by my mother's once-fiance. I won't pretend for one second that I was sad when she dropped that bozo. He installed it where, as is typical in older homes, there was no light fixture in the living room. We were rather impressed and entirely surprised to find that it was installed securely. We found that out when tracing all of the weird electrical arrangements. Instead of its power dropping straight down the wall from the outlet into the basement where there are no ceiling panels and exactly where the electrical panel is, it was run out over the garage and tied into a box just inside the attic access. The fact that it was tied up inside a box was another good sign, but it was the last one. From there it went out a foot, poked through the drywall (just the wire, no fixture of any sort), and over to the garage door opener, where it was spliced to a lamp cord of low gauge with wire nuts hanging out in the open air, then plugged into the same outlet as the garage door opener. So we're running a new line for the ceiling fan and another for dedicated power in the garage as long as we're already there.
• Just below the light/fan switch there was an outlet which my mother swears was there before she moved in, but my brothers and I are skeptical. You see, it came up through the wall that we removed, so we had to trace it back and remove it safely from the panel. It turns out it PASSED THE ELECTRICAL PANEL, snaked around into the utility closet, and got spliced to a lamp cord of low gauge with wire nuts hanging out in the open air, then plugged into the same outlet as the water softener. I mean both lamp cords were even white and of similar length. And of course neither had a ground wire. And both emerged in their final place with 12 gauge yellow romex, giving every impression of 15 amp safe capacity. Do you know what happens when you overload lamp cord with that kind of current and no ground wire? The one in the basement was in direct contact with the wooden joists.
• I have a Greenlee multimeter, 120 volt circuit wiring analyzer (tells if the ground wire is present/absent/weak, if the polarity is switched, if everything is okay, etc.), and non-contact voltage detector. They have served me well for over a decade. At the beginning of the demolition we used the voltage detector to turn off all the breakers to ensure that none of the wires we were working around were live. Near the end of the day, just barely after it got dark, my brother was about to pull the 240v line out of the floor. "Did we check this one?" "Yes, we did." "Let's check it again, just to make sure." So I handed it to him and he confirmed that it was not live. I even brushed it against my shirt as I always do, and it flashed and beeped from the static electricity, so I know it was working. Usually I also test a live circuit but we didn't have any nearby that were still live. So he went ahead and pulled the wire nuts off of and as he pulled the wire out of the old metal box it arced with a LOUD pop and tripped the 100 amp breaker. HOW?? He had just tested it! I saw him do it! He passed it along quite a bit of the wire, on both sides of it. Fortunately he had on good gloves appropriate for the task. I can't get him to keep his safety glasses on his face, so he was fortunate that the box shielded him from any injury there. The detector still worked fine on other circuits after that, but I think I'm going to upgrade to the Milwaukee with a louder beep and an integrated LED flashlight. Crazy.
• There was a second 240v line just a few feet down the wall, which had wire nuts and electrical tape on the ends. Period. This is the other side of that same wall directly above the electrical panel. No idea why they didn't just remove it entirely, or why there were ever even two lines. Either could have been reached from the position of the range in the middle. Yet another potential house fire.