Accessories

Great gift! Lots of useful items - all in one handy set!
This is a great set - my husband has been using it faithfully ever since we purchased it! Thanks for making my shopping easier!

Works great for the money
I am very happy with the Skil 18V set. I have purchased a third battery from Skil so that I always have a spare on-hand during my heavy usage for home remodelling reengineering projects.

just fyi...
Robert Bosch Corp., (yes, same Bosch)owns Skil. Skil tool power plants, cordless and corded alike are designed by Bosch engineers and built under contract at Black & Decker, who just so happens to be the parent company of DeWalt. Skil is merely a company in name only anymore, much like the cb radio giant Cobra. Cobra, once a stand alone manufacturer now exists in name only, with all of their products built and designed by Uniden but still sold under the Cobra name. Same thing here. Anyway, I enjoy the combo set immensely. I have cut 59 2x4's on a single charge. I cut 12ea 2x6 rafters, including peak rake and bird's mouth, 10 2x4's for blocking,etc and crosscut 4ea 7/16 4x8 OSB on one battery charge. It will take you four solid charges to get the battery ready to accept a full charge and you should always completely discharge the battery each time. My only dislike is the sliding feature and general design of the battery. Oh well, I have many tools and this set has earned its keep. Do yourself a favor, bypass the other sets at $500 or more and spend the $180 for this one. You'll be glad you did.

Good Value
O.K. this is not going to rival a 500.00 cordless set but for the price and for an occasional user this is pretty good stuff. Unlike some of the other reviewers I would rate the circular saw as my favourite piece. The blade has to be sharp and you need to take it easy and let the saw do the work. The paper work suggests 70, 2X4's can be cut on one battery and this seems in the ball-park. Someone wrote that they could only go through 5 2X6's before running out of juice..there must have been a serious problem with the batteries or saw if this was the case.

Mine has lots of power for general building and more than enough battery juice to complete the small home reno stuff I do. The first few charges the batteriesare at about 80% and then full power is attained.

The soft sided bag is a good idea but a padded, pocket for the batteries would have been a nice touch. There are many nice touches though... the stud finder slips on top of the drill and is easily detached and works very well, the light on the drill is a good idea for those over 40, the reciprical saw has on board blade storage for two blades, the base of the circular saw holds a wrench for blades changes, the gauge on the battery makes running out of power less of a surprise.

I think upping the price and including 4 batteries would be something I'd pay for but all and all; good stuff.

After several years I'll add the following. The batteries drain down in storage faster than other cordless tools I have. This is frequently annoying and I awould downgrade my review from 4 stars to three.

Plenty of power here
This is a homeowner's dream. I've been looking at the Milwaukee, DeWalt, etc. cordless combos for years but I could not justify the price for my week-end warrior needs. This kit gave me reasonably well-made and well-powered tools at a price I could afford. My son and I built a real tree-house (8x10, 10 ft. high!) over the Thanksgiving using these tools with no problems. The tools all performed and held up well through that 40 hour project. I was glad to have the cordless feature up in those trees 200 feet from the nearest electric outlet. You really do need to cycle the batteries a few times before you get the max life out of them, but the one hour charger does exactly that. I'm also a fairly slow worker(nobody's paying me), so that I rarely needed a new battery before the charging one was ready and if I did, that was a good time for a break (like I said, nobody's paying me for this work). I can see where a professional would need more run-time.

If I were using these tools everyday, I'd shell out for the professional brands, but for my needs they are just right for the price.