Brice Burrell of Burrell Custom Carpentry, Pittsburgh, Pa., focuses on residential remodeling and interior trim carpentry. About a year ago he began assessing his cordless drill needs, looking at the 18-volt drill he reserved for tough jobs and the lightweight 10-volt drill he used for small, delicate tasks.
With a big project on the horizon -- an interior remodeling job in a Victorian house that included demolition, two bathrooms, a kitchen and lots of remodeling in between -- Burrell wanted a tool that could replace both voltage categories. He found the Festool T15+3, a brushless motor unit powered by a lithium ion battery, through an online distributor.
In addition to being a middle ground between his two drill lines, another advantage Burrell saw with this tool was its accessories. Burrell explains a situation he encountered during a kitchen remodel, when a 10-inch-wide spice cabinet came from the manufacturer with an out-of-alignment bottom rack. He used the right angle chuck that came with T15+3, which can be rotated along the chuck at 360 degrees so you can use it at any angle.
"I needed to reach inside this long, narrow cabinet so I could re-locate the drawer slide a little bit," Burrell explains. "To do that with any other drill other than this right angle chuck on the Festool drill would have been impossible. Even a screwdriver would have been hard to get in there because this drawer slide was right at the bottom so I wouldn't have been able to get my hand around a screwdriver in there to twist."
Another accessory Burrell found handy during the Victorian house remodel was the eccentric, or offset, chuck, ideal for drilling in corners. "With the Festool offset chuck, the only thing that spins is the bit itself, so there's no worry the chuck will drag along the surface of the material you're trying to drill."
Burrell explains how this eccentric chuck helped him secure a kitchen cabinet. "I had a large upper cabinet that needed to be attached to the wall and the framing wasn't quite 16-on-center because it was an old house so you have to sort of live with what you have," he says. "I was sure I'd be able to get a few screws into one stud; I wasn't sure I'd be able to catch the second stud because it was right on the edge of the cabinet. So I used the eccentric chuck to get right next to the cabinet to drill a hole and drive the screw into that second stud to really support that cabinet. I wouldn't have tried that with my old drills because if you get a drill in there with a keyless chuck you run the risk of that chuck scratching the interior of the cabinet."
A third chuck Burrell says is a good option is the Centrotec chuck, which he calls a different take on a quick-release chuck. Burrell explains how it allows him to change from a driving bit to a drilling bit quickly. And because the bit is inserted through the chuck and into the drive of the drill, the bit has a solid connection to the tool.
"Another advantage to it is the chuck itself is all plastic, so it makes the tool lightweight and perfectly balanced," he adds.
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