cordless hammer drills

Hi I have been putting up routes mainly in Thailand and Sweden and have found the HILTI to be the most high performing and reliable. The T6 -lead battery will drill 20 15 cm holes with 14mm diametyer on one charge. The newTE &-A Li-ion is probly the best you can get lighter and more powerful than the above, God drilling! Björn Alber

The Hilti 36v is the best machine around but also the most expensive. The Bosch 24v is also a very good machine. Makita have dropped their 36v rock eater from the product range, unfortunately as this was very fast drilling machine. Otherwise any 24v will do a decent job, my friend is using a DeVolt (american made) which he says works well. 18v drills are a bit on the small side, the manufacturers will try and convince you otherwise but we have been experiencing a lot of bit breakages and short battery life so I wouldnt recommend such a small drill. Whatever drill you buy, try and get a seperate battery pack for it. This makes a massive difference to the handling of the drill and subsequently the fatigue you are likely to experience after drilling. This doesnt matter so much on slabs but for very steep routes the seperate pack is almost essential. Old 24v drills can be fitted with two 12v motorcycle batteries (sealed) when the old NiCad batteries die.

Hi, after studying lots of forums and asking people here in Sardinia where I live, I bought a Hitachi DH 18DL, as the best compromise between weight (we bolt bottom up as well as top down), power (I studied J/blow), and cost (I paid about 400 euros). It drills 11 90mm holes 10mm diameter with 1 battery. You can see some photos of us bolting routes at http://www.peteranne.it/album I am very happy with it, though some people feel it rotates a bit fast, though the overall performance (especially for the price) is v good. I buy and use 86mm Raumer expansion bolts, since you can't really use glue-in bolts when bolting bottom-up / on very steep ground. happy bolting! Peter

I found this thread looking up cordless drill information.  I'm not much of a climber, having done just a little bit with friends, but I think I do know my cordless drills so I was intrigued by this thread.  I run a site where I recommend cordless drills. For 24v cordless drills I recommend the Milwaukee V28 line, so I thought I'd do some analysis.  The Hitachi mentioned is 3.5 lbs and has uses an 18v 3.0 A*hr battery.  It's about $330 on Amazon.  The Milwaukee is 6.7 lbs, uses a 28V 3.0 A*hr battery and is about $365 on Amazon. Since power current times voltage the Milwaukee has a little over 1.5 times more power than the Hitachi, but it weighs 3 pounds more.  Both come with two batteries.  Another point is that the Hitachi has 1330 in*lbs of torque while the Milwaukee has 600, but I would think the Milwaukee has enough torque to do the job. So it comes down to the choice between runtime and weight. But the Hilti with the Li-ion batteries is a different beast altogether.  It has 36v 2.4 A*hr batteries.  That is just slightly more power than the Milwaukee, but it weighs 8.4 pounds.  But by all accounts in a different class of quality being much more heavy duty.  It also comes with the price tag to match, about $1000.  If the Milwaukee does the job I don't think the slight gain in energy justifies the price and weight. But I've never tried to drill into rock with the Milwaukee.  Does anyone have any experience with that?