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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

I see this all the time. Friend of mine bought a $200 Milwaukee drill to put up a couple picture frames.

My rule of thumb for tools is to always first buy the cheapo Harbor Freight special (I'll get something a little better for precision tools) and if that tool breaks then that means I use the tool enough to justify getting something better.

Spoiler alert: most of my tools are the cheapest I could find.

That's a good one and this is what I mostly do.

I like the idea of this, and I'm sure you save a lot of money, but the downside is this: I want to do some one-off job I haven't done before. It'll be difficult, because I will be trying it for the first time. Do I really want to make it even _more_ difficult by cheaping out on tools? I've done this several times, and I've ended up doing several jobs over again with better tools after I've screwed up the first time.

Edit: In other words, cheap tools aren't just less durable, they often do a worse job (or at least make it harder to do a good job).

You would want to start with cheapest thing cause usually you don't know how good things you actually need.

Using cheep tools gives you a freedom to experiment and know the limitations of the domain area and then invest in things that you exactly need without the risk of overpaying or underpaying, all for a minimum investment.

I initially wanted to do the same (needed a drill and a jigsaw for my project, never used them before), but then decided to go with the cheapest Makita which was ~2.5 times more expensive than the cheapest brand, for one reason: safety. For example, the Makita jigsaw had an electric brake (which stops the saw immediately as you release the trigger), while the cheapest tool didn't. Since I didn't have any experience with it, I'd rather not cut my fingers than save some money.

One of my buddies is a construction guy. He just buys consumer grade with warranty and has two sets of everything. He says pro is too expensive given how often they still break and get stolen on the job site.

At the same time I accidentally bought Bosch Professional cordless drill long time ago.

It's biggest problem is that sometimes I forget I have it, then fix what I was doing in few minutes. Also I sometimes forget to charge it, as it holds a charge for years in my practice.

Yeah, but you have to be careful with literally any product available at a big box store. My first foray into the Milwaukee brand was their M12 rotary tool and the speed controller broke after about 2-3 total hours of use. Meanwhile my Grandpa's Dremel from the 70s is still chooching along.

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