Tools - how they have changed

[jj4091]

OK, that maybe explains it. The (what I call 88's) were used in the exchange for wiring the terminals on the selector racks. Measure, cut, strip, then wrap the wire a couple of times round the terminal, then finally solder when a few were done, with the 50v iron plugged into the rack DC. I always fancied one of those 50v head lights, but never got one. Unnecessary now, with the much smaller battery LED lamps available now.

That was what we had to use the 81's for as well, in fact making off any terminations, they must have spoilt you where you worked.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

so I guess the question is – have we really gained anything with the power tools available and used today apart from more 'toys'?

Maybe a bit more consistency...? Not so tired?

Faster and more consistent - said as someone with (last year) 50 years in this benighted industry. Without power tools it would have taken far longer to cut and notch the 6,000 plus 7 x 3in joists we did on one job, and I don't know how much longer it would have taken to cut-out rotted 20 x 10in beam ends without an alligator saw (two of use could do a beam end replacement in 2 to 3 hours, including floor out - in the days of hsnd saws only certainly at least a full day's work)

I guess that the bricks were fairly soft. I have often wondered if it was even possible to make holes in engineering bricks or concrete prior to SDS.

When I started in the 1970s you didn't often take a drill to site - drills required power (not always a given), there were no cordlesses - they existed only in NASA photos, were not very capable and massively expensive - and a lot more was done by hand. An essential part of any chippie's tool kit were his plugging tools: a side axe (for cutting wedge), a club hammer and a plugging chisel. Because holes took so long to drill with a star drill (the original Rawl masonry drill) if the masonry had reasonably wide mortar joints you chiselled out some mortar, cut a wedge (shaped with the axe so that it had a slight twist to it), bashed it in, then sawed it off more or less flush. Best plugs ever and I sometimes still need to do that on listeds. For the denser masonry we had "shot firers" (aka Tornado or Spit nailers, the older equivalents of the modern Hilti DX, etc) which fired a nail through timber battens (which had to be soggy, not bone dry) into concrete, blue bricks or steel. They could be lethal in the wrong hands and I believe they were even used for some bank robberies as they could shatter the earlier types of armoured glass in use in the 60s

By the late 70s a lot more places had power on site and new (at the time) double-insulated tools (still 230 volt very often) were a lot safer to use than the metal-bodied tools of previous decades. The early impact drills were still useless in hard brick, mass concrete or my pet hate, Accrington "blues" (engineering brick) - but when the first SDS drills came along in the very early 1980s we found them amazing; 10mm holes in blue bricks in under a minute! (My current cordless is about 2 to 3 times as fast)

In terms of the power tools available - to us in the early 70s corded drills and rip saws came out from the workshop as a "loaner", we had two of each for site teams, plus one power planer, one jigsaw, one massively heavy chop saw and a few orbital sanders. There were also a couple of site saws, one with a petrol engine

By the early 80s I had my own corded electric drill, SDS, rip saw, jig saw, power planer, laminate trimmer, router and orbital sander - and a beat-up old car to cart it Ll round. I even bought a flip-over saw

Then came 110 volt in the 1990s and it was all change again, followed in the same decade by useable, affordable (just) cordless drills (but almost nothing else). I gave up my Yankees nearly 20 years ago - a Makita was faster, smaller, and one tool actually replaced four Yankees and two braces

Li-Ion batteries started to change the game in a big way about 15 years ago, but it's the last 10 years where. with the introduction of high amp batteries and brushless motors that we've seen cordless tools capable of doing almost anything corded tools are capable of.

Problem is, there's a lot of it to cart round!