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Tool Your First Power Tool?

Tool
whydontu

whydontu

I Tried, It Broke
Premium Member
A discussion about Busy Bee got me thinking…

What was your first power tool purchase?

I‘ll start:
1971, Black &Decker 1/4” single speed non-reversing power drill, along with a D984 circular saw attachment. I used it to make a phone desk for my mother, using one sheet of 1/2”plywood, from plans in Popular Science. I think Mom finally got rid of the desk in 2012.

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1974 Sears 12" wood lathe and a set of Sorby tools, straight out of the Sears catalogue. I had taken wood working at school the previous year and loved turning, so quit hockey got a paper route to top up the savings account. As soon as I got it, I glued up 3 pieces of 2 1/4" square hemlock blocks and let them setup overnight in the unheated shop. Next morning after chores, screwed the block to the faceplate and started roughing it out. Seconds into it, the gouge caught and split the blocks apart, sending one into my face, missing my dad's safety goggles. I caught heck for dripping blood in the house, but mom drove me to the hospital for stitches anyways. Who knew that white glue won't setup overnight in freezing temperatures? I still occasionally use the Sorby tools and have that lathe tucked away for one more special project...

Not mine, but similar:
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Black and Decker Drill - used for almost everything and badly abused over the years. I still have it - now bench mounted with a wire wheel in it and still going despite bearings that sound like a threshing machine. Then a 10" Craftsman Bench Grinder - still runs great and still doing what it did when I first got it 60 years ago. This tool gets used more than any other tool in my shop. It would top my list of 10 most important power tools, and be near the top of a list of all tools.
 
7.2 volts of pure power, i wanted a drill for my must have been ?10th? birthday....well my mother's contractor boyfriend obliged with a brand new cordless skill, I hung many plastic models from the ceiling with that thing

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whydontu said:
........

What was your first power tool purchase?

I‘ll start:
1971, Black &Decker 1/4” single speed non-reversing power drill, ......
Click to expand...

Funny! My first was probably the very same "Black & Decker 1/4” single speed non-reversing power drill" corded model purchased 4 or 5 decades ago. Incredibly used and abused, driving thousands of wood screws, I still have and use it. Bearings sound a little rough though. In recent years I was considering buying the exact same model if I could find one but don't see them any more.
 
First was a dremel, then later a DB200 (Unimat) used - probably was 12 or 13. Parents cosigned at the bank for a loan for it, I think it was $75. They wanted me to feel the heat so to speak.

As a young adult, first house, one of thsse B&D drills and a crapola, possibly Sears, circular saw. Unlike some of your experiences, I hated them and thought them POS. I was working full time, but also did three houses in succession, top to bottom, during evenings and weekends as a way to build equity (cripes I worked hard then, get to the house from work, go to 11 at night, then start at 7 Sat and Sun).

Contractor buddy came down to help a lot, first time he looks at the crap saw and says "I see I'm going to have to fix you up with some tools" Tossed the two POS's, splurged on a Makita drill and borrowed a worm drive Skilsaw from him (I evenutally bought it, he'd shut down his contracting business, and 35 years later it still works perfectly) .... and life got a whole lot better, what a difference :). Might have been what shaped me into one who seeks best of breed used rather than low priced new.
 
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David_R8 said:
This was mine. Well not mine but mine was just like this.
Thing weighed like five pounds but it had more torque than it ought to have had.
View attachment 28209
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Funny - as this was also my first power tool. I still have it, and still use it. Just after that purchase, I bought a lot of Craftsman power tools, all were top of the line, touted as extra heavy duty, and most performed poorly and pretty much died shortly after the warranty period. They were usually replaced with Makita. But my many Craftsman hand tools from that era have performed well over the 40+ years.
 
I still use my 3/8" Skil drill motor to power a Lee case trimmer. Those 3/8" 3amp variable reversible drills were a game changer.Skil was the first. I consider them to be one of greatest advancements in portable power tool history.
 
My first 'power' tool was a battery operated PCB drill, using C cells. In that day and age, This was the standard in the 70s for prototyping. Wire wrap or hand drilled PCB.
 
My first was a that was given to me was a Dremel when I was 11/12 maybe. Then a craftsman cordless drill a year or so later. I got really into woodworking in highschool, and started building and selling furniture. Bookcases, coffee/endtables, entertainment centers etc, and once I graduated highschool I lost access to the shop, so the first that I bought for myself was a table saw and planer. Dad met me in the middle, and bought a jointer and bandsaw. Not high dollar tools, just typical delta stuff. We did manage to crank out a few projects out of his single car garage over the next couple years, and had a great time doing it, but the distractions of college, 2 jobs, girls, motorcycles and sports didn't leave much time for woodworking (or college....) and the spark and drive fizzled out over the years once life got in the way. Still have all the woodworking machines, but they're out in the barn, and the cast iron tops aren't as nice and finely polished as they once were. I did give away that craftsman drill a few years ago once I got my Makita 18v Lion tools but I still have and use that Dremel all the time.

Then in about 2006 I started getting curious at work about metalworking......It's got a bit out of hand since then.....but I'm slowly making my way back to woodworking.
 
Us Carleton Industrial Design grads used to refer to our degree as a Bachelor of Sanding due to all the painstainking sanding of basswood models that was required. Maybe they still do, I have no idea -- but in my mind it's all software and 3d printing nowadays and those kids don't know how good they have it... [snaps out of it...] Anyhow, given that, it's not surprising that a Dremel was the first power tool I bought as well, followed soon thereafter with an Elu 1/4 sheet sander.

You can still make out the $82.95 price scrawled on the box. This would have been in the mid 90s. A quick search of amazon shows a suspiciously similar porter cable unit selling currently for drumroll please: $82.99. Given inflation over the past 20 years, that leads me to believe the shop must have hosed me proper back in the day, ha (shout out to Preston Hardware in Ottawa). I kid, that place is still cool by me.

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This was followed by a drill, jigsaw and a string of questionably flimsy contractor-type table saws before I finally started getting my act together.
 
Can't remember what my first tools i bought were, they come and go. Around the farm with several people using the tools stuff got busted or lost. Still remember my first reloading tools and still have them.
 
My first purchase was back in 1978, a bench size HD 1/2 drill press from a local United Farmers store and that damn thing has been used almost daily since and it's still going with original motor & chuck, I think I could measure the amount of hole it has drill accumulatively in miles...my wife still reminds me once in a while how , in our second year of maritage we could afford "that damn drill press" but not a new single stitch sewing machine. She now has a top-0-the line computerized 300 different stich machine and I still have the "old drill".
My second power tool was probably a Dremel, long gone by now and probably an # 7 or 8 of those now.
 
Not really a power tool, but I’ve fond memories of being given some battery powered “miniature power tools” when I was maybe 4 or 5. To say I was ecstatic would be an understatement.

I can’t remember the first power tool I bought (I think most were owned by others), perhaps it was an electronics soldering iron?
At least I remember the last though…
 
I was thinking that it was a Black and Decker Jig Saw that I first bought but in reality I rescued a Delta 14" Band Saw from the burn pit at the Bragg Creek Cub/Scout camp near Bragg Creek west of Calgary. It and a belt/disk sander were mine and went up to Edmonton that weekend. Free at that point, but later because of Scouts Canada rules I had to donate $5 for them. So they were my first power tools. Still have them both.
 
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