Milwaukee Tools

Picked up the new drawer base. Slicker than dogshit on a linoleum floor. Holds my M18 multi, drill, lantern, M12 caulking gun, bandsaw, and cable stapler. Doing a 100A service replacement for a customer tomorrow and got anything not in its own hard case in my roller. Stoked!

 

Dang, that thing looks sweet! At $250 I will continue to remove all of my packouts on top of my current one

 

Military discount and $25 pro dollars made it slightly less painful so it was ‘only’ $210ish.

 

Definitely the way to go for anybody that doesn’t have a rolling base

 

Who owns the pro press tools? I’ve done a lot of repair work at my house and never considered the price at 2k but it’s becoming more and more enticing to go with my PEX A tools as I do more work at my house and friends. It will never make me money back though so that price tag is still difficult.

 

We have it at work… it gets used once a month for 30 presses I’d guess. It makes quick work but it takes planning or lots of inventory.

If you’re in the industry using it great, I would not recommend for homeowner use. No value added.

That’s my opinion.

 

I think the value is just the “permanent” fix for copper pipes. Unless I learn to sweat copper then I’m stuck. I love the PEX system and I’m personally converting all my house when I do projects but to connect or convert from copper and if I need a copper line repair, I’m out.

But at a 2k price tag, I need a lot of use to make up the value.

 

Clean, flux, heat, apply solder. Shield over heating around the sweated joint with foil.

There’s probably some YouTube how-tos on it. It’s soooo infrequent that you should need to sweat a joint for a personal home I can’t see the benefit. Do they rent pro-press at the tool rental places?

 

I learned how to sweat pipes from YouTube. Added a pressure regulator and replaced a hot water heater myself. I must say my work looks a lot cleaner than some of the stuff I see plumbers do which isn’t saying much

 

the trick with sweating copper is that whatever you think is hot enough, it needs to be 3-4 times longer heating time.

if sweating copper is like a fine steak, set your mental cook timer to 'incinerate'.

for me, it was that knowledge, but also, remind yourself of who normally sweats pipes. plumbers don't require PHD's and decades of schoolwork.

same with welding. if your finding it difficult, go basic and bang rocks harder. it's not really the science, it's the brute force of it.

 

The new lead free solder has a higher melting point thus requiring more heat. Using Mapp gas instead of propane helps.

 

Nice!

I've been eyeing this up to replace my worn out packout base.