Arlo Mudgett

With decades of using electric power tools, I am officially more confused than ever about tool longevity. In the early days of doing the occasional DIY project, all I could afford were the low-end consumer brand power tools. I probably bought more Black and Decker brand tools than anything else. Not one of them ever held up over the long term. They all ended up in a landfill.

Power tool longevity is more than buying a quality tool at the outset. Experience has taught me that storing power tools in an unheated garage is a guarantee for shorter tool life, especially in the New England climate. You might get away with storing your power tools in a shed in Arizona, but the constant heating and cooling cycles, coupled with humidity in the Northeast, is assured tool failure.

With limited indoor space for tool storage, many of us face the issue of potentially turning our power tools into junk by the method we choose to store them. I could fill any room in my home with the power tools that I already have, but I have a sneaky suspicion that my wife would have difficulty with that concept.

I just recently began moving many of my power tools into a newly refurbished garage on my property, but even with insulation, it does not protect anything from cold and hot weather cycles. My home has no basement, just a dirt crawl space, so that option is out. That leaves the goal of perfect power tool storage to the expensive alternative of heating the shop space in the refurbished building. Even keeping the temperature down to 40 degrees in winter will prove to be quite expensive. I have a new propane heater that I can install in the shop, but it just might be prohibitively expensive to run it at a minimal heat setting.

At this point, I may resort to storing tools in plastic tote boxes with silica gel packs inside to keep the moisture down. That may be the most economical way to get those expensive power tools to last longer. Then there is the economy of junk. What if I simply replace all power tools as they fail with cheap Harbor Freight power tools?

I recently experienced a cheap vs. expensive tool situation that was a bit of an eye-opener. I hired Chuck’s Pressure Washing in Swanzey, New Hampshire to work on the new concrete floor that my father and I installed in the refurbished garage. Part of the pressure washing deal was having Chuck use a diamond grinding attachment on my Makita angle grinder to touch up some uneven spots on the floor before washing, etching, and painting. Within a short time, the Makita angle grinder completely failed. There were still a few spots left to grind, so I bought a $20 angle grinder at Harbor Freight, and had Chuck finish the job. It did not fail. I lent it to my father to smooth out the concrete floor on his pavilion, and it performed admirably. Twenty bucks vs. well over a hundred bucks and the cheap tool prevails?

I’d rather not buy Chinese products in these turbulent times, but if a throw-away power tool outperforms a high-quality brand-name tool, what would you do?

In my opinion, this is still an unanswered question. I will take good care of all my power tools and we will see just what lasts longer. That’s the control part of this experiment. Maybe I’ll find out that there is some economy with junk, but I have my doubts.

The Morning Almanac with Arlo Mudgett is heard Monday through Friday mornings on radio stations Oldies KOOL FM 106.7, 96.3, and 106.5 and over Peak-FM 101.9 and 100.7.