What came in the mail today?


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I wanted a battery powered string trimmer with a long shaft that I could keep on the mower, and use from the seat.  I have a few Ryobi 18v tools that I've been surprisingly pleased with.  They're significantly less expensive than the main tool brands, but every piece I have has proved to be really pretty good.

Since I already had batteries and chargers, tool only was barely over a hundred bucks.  I just tried it out, and sure enough it does a good job.  

It was just too much of a production to keep a gas powered one on the mower.  This will do just fine, and is easy to start.  Now I just need to figure out how to mount it.

The safety extra trigger built into the big trigger is uncomfortable.  I'm going to superglue it up in place inside the trigger.  It's light enough that I can use it some with one hand.

 

 

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On 4/27/2022 at 11:02 AM, Tom King said:

I assume the new ones are brushless? When I was trying out electric strimmers a few years ago I bought both Ryobi's 40V and Makita's 18V versions and didn't like the performance of either. Settled on DeWalt's brushless 20V that was on sale at the time and it's been a great workhorse.

Coincidentally I am also working on building a trimmer mount for my riding mower. I've got a lot of fruit trees and fences so I'm trying to avoid having it stick way up or out to the side.

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I got stupid and bought a Black and Decker cordless trimmer a few years ago. It was awful and in the garbage before it was 2 years old. I honestly don't know how B&D stays in business when there's competition like Ryobi in the same market segment. I have a Dewalt trimmer now and it's great.

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Here's where I want to mount it.  Yes, it's brushless.

I had bought Pam a Worx to use around her gardening stuff, but it's too short, and uses different batteries.

Commercial mounts are available, but they cost more than the trimmer did, and I doubt one would put it right where I want it.  I want it right beyond all the controls, even with the front of the mower, and no farther away from the controls than is necessary.

 

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On 4/27/2022 at 12:16 PM, drzaius said:

I got stupid and bought a Black and Decker cordless trimmer a few years ago. It was awful and in the garbage before it was 2 years old. I honestly don't know how B&D stays in business when there's competition like Ryobi in the same market segment. I have a Dewalt trimmer now and it's great.

My theory is that B&D only survives because TTI (owners of Ryobi, Rigid power tools, and Milwaukee) have some sort of exclusivity agreement with Home Depot. So Lowes is stuck with Craftsman and B&D to fill the low and middle tiers of power tools. Stanley Black and Decker (the merged parent company) seems to only really care about competing for power tools via DeWalt and Porter Cable (mixed bag there), leaving B&D to sort of flounder around the crafty market (apparently their glue guns and the like are decent) with a few hardware store items rounding out the product segment. Ryobi actually gets R&D money from TTI it seems, while B&D is just re-badged stuff from elsewhere as far as I can tell.

On 4/27/2022 at 1:04 PM, Tom King said:

Here's where I want to mount it.  Yes, it's brushless.

I had bought Pam a Worx to use around her gardening stuff, but it's too short, and uses different batteries.

Commercial mounts are available, but they cost more than the trimmer did, and I doubt one would put it right where I want it.  I want it right beyond all the controls, even with the front of the mower, and no farther away from the controls than is necessary.

That's a nice mower. I'm just using an old consumer Craftsman (pretty sure it was made by MTD) I found on craigslist.

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In my collection of old power tools, I have some Black & Decker stuff that probably was the best there was when it was sold.

That mower has allowed me to have time to do other stuff that I've been putting off for years.  Just this morning, I cut grass around an old house in 20 minutes that used to take me a little over 2 hours with a 54" garden tractor type riding lawnmower.  The grass was much taller than it normally would have been too.

I cut the grass here in half a day that used to take me, or my helpers several days.  

It will cut a 6' swath at 14 mph if the ground is smooth enough to go that fast in the air ride seat, and it will hold a 45 degree side slope.  It leaves very little string trimming to do.  I'm working on turning more rough ground smooth.

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@Tom King I currently have one router that can be dedicated to it, once I use it a couple times I’ll see if it’s worth having a second. I’m not getting into any large scale production work, and won’t use it for all dovetail projects. Basically I’ve considered it several times over the past few years and the other night I was up late and got into the late-night QVC/HSN mindset and bought it. 

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2 hours ago, Tom King said:

Two dedicated routers for the Leigh?  I guess it's not as important as it used to be, now that we have digital height gauges, but it's a quick job with two routers set to go for a given board thickness.

One of my client families were going into town for lunch one day, after visiting their old house we were working on.  The Wife asked if we could build a half dozen chicken nesting boxes for her hen house.  When they got back from lunch, they had the nesting boxes made from Cypress we had for the job there.  They had variable dovetailed corners.  They thought I was a magician.   After that, we saw them about every three months, and worked there for almost two years.  The Leigh jig, and routers rig paid for itself that day.

Did you use two routers so you had one for the tails and one for the pins so you could do them faster or was there other advantages in making the joints more accurate? I thought if I read the technical info correct they did not recommend using different routers due to concentricity problems that can happen if the two routers have different bit to guidebush offsets or is this overcome by using the same brand router?

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Yes, two routers, each with one of the two bits for through dovetails on 3/4" material.  I don't think router brand figures into it, but both of mine are 690's.  Bit depth has to be exact, and boards flat.  I just decide on spacing, clamp the boards in place and go.

I really have never used it much.  I made a storage box for handsaws cutting three of the corners with the jig, and one by hand, to ask people if they can find the hand cut corner.  They can't.  The only other time I've used it was with those nesting boxes. I bought it used off of another woodworking forums, years ago.

When we move into one of those old houses, we set up a complete shop, and the Leigh stuff is in a couple of the 140 toolboxes in cubbies, so little time for finding, and setup.

edited to add:   I was working with two helpers then, so three sets of hands made really quick setup.

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On 5/2/2022 at 7:38 AM, Mark J said:

I'm curious what's a good price on these nowadays?   

I got this (the version with the spare blades and in/outfeed tables) for $550. Grizzly and HomeDepot have the same package for $750 ($600 without the tables and blades), Amazon has it on sale for $600. Used, they sit around $400-$600 where I am depending on condition and accessories (like a stand)

I figure even if I upgrade to a nicer 220 or combo unit in a few years, I can recoup a decent chunk when I sell it. Might also stick a helical head in down the line depending on how it performs.

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This didn't come today, but I put it together today.  It's for the metal cutting bandsaw whose bed is too low for any of the normal woodworking ones.  It's a lot sturdier, and is easily the best one I own, or have seen.  It weighs probably double what the fold-up ones do.  The feet are easily adjustable in height to fit uneven floors.  Lowest height is 23".

The height adjustment piece is tapered, so the crank handle has an easy time keeping it where it's set.  The crank handle does not change the height, but just locks it where you want it.

I'll probably need to get another one for the other side of the bandsaw when I use it, but not folding up means it takes up room that I don't have.

 

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