23 February 2019 — 0214 mst

Farewell beloved cordless drill

Cordless power tools are among humankind’s noblest inventions. With them, do-it-yourselfers can make mistakes, and butcher wood, faster and farther from the electrical grid than ever before. I’ve owned several over the years — and now I own another.

It’s not that I’m to cordless drills as Imelda Marcos was to shoes. It’s that rechargeable batteries last years, but eventually refuse to take a charge — and by the time they go flat as stale beer, replacement batteries are no longer available.

That was my situation earlier this week when my small but powerful enough 12-volt Ryobi drill, which fit my hand perfectly, started losing rpms. Not even Amazon carried replacement battery packs. Allegedly refurbished batteries were available on eBay, but in my opinion eBay batteries are riskier than blackmarket batteries.

Another option was buying replacement solder tabbed sub-C nicads and rebuilding my battery packs. I rejected that when I added up the cost of the sub-Cs, the aggravation of performing the battery surgery, and the risk of coming into contact with cadmium, which likes to cause kidney cancer.

The final repair option was replacing the old nicads with niMH cells, but while the two battery types produce essentially the same voltage, they have different charging requirements. Still, I was tempted to give it a try — throwing away a perfectly good drill that fits my hand stuck in my craw — until I realized I was contemplating irrational schemes to protect a sunk cost.

At that point, I deep-sixed the Ryobi and paid $25 for a 20-volt lithium powered Hyper Tough cordless drill that fits my hand just as nicely as did my beloved Ryobi.

So I’m back in business. But I’m still exasperated that a perfectly good cordless drill had to be chucked because technology had improved. Not all change is progress.