Has it ever occurred to you that you could do more than just drill holes with your cordless drill? If not, gear up for these 9 clever cordless drill uses you can try at home.
The cordless drill is one power tool that is common among homeowners, weekend warriors, and even professional craftsmen.
It’s basically an adjustable chuck attached to a spinning motor. That means you can attach anything to this chuck and make it spin. That’s why it has so many uses.
Because it’s cordless, it’s very portable, and you can take it wherever you want. It’s also pretty cheap. Although some are costly, you can get one for as low as 40 bucks if you search carefully online and in your local hardware shops.
If you’re a professional craftsman, you probably already know a lot about cordless drills and their numerous uses, but you never know; you might learn something new and maybe funny.
On the other hand, if you’re just a beginner or a homeowner who just got the tool, you’ll surely learn some more things you can do with this portable tool.
Here’s the first one.
Table of Contents
1. Mix paint, concrete and grout
If you already have a cordless drill in hand, you don’t really need to go buy some special type of paint mixer if you want to mix paint for a small project.
With a paint mixing bit attached to your drill chuck, you can reduce the effort and time it takes to mix paint and other materials. There are mixing bits for concrete, gout, and thinset all you can attach to your drill to help you complete your project.
2. Make hidden joints by combining a cordless drill with a procket-screw jig
If you like to build furniture, jewelry boxes and picture frames in your spare time, then you might want to forgo the biscuit jointer and get a pocket screw jig which you can combine with your cordless drill to make amazing hidden joints for your projects.
Kreg makes wonderful pocket hole jigs you can use with your cordless drill to help you build amazing furniture employing the use of standard wood screws to make hidden joints for assembling your furniture pieces.
3Assemble and Dismantle Furniture And Appliances
One of the easiest ways to assemble furniture pieces together is through the use of screws. So, if you have a cordless drill and few packets of screws, you an assemble any kind of furniture together with ease. If you ever need to disassemble or dismantle that furniture piece in the future, you’ll also need a cordless drill to do that. Apart from furniture pieces, you can also use it to loosen screws holding appliances together.
4. Loosen and tighten nuts and bolts
If you love carrying out DIY projects, every once in a while you’re going to have the need to loosen different sizes of nuts and bolts.
Should you buy all the different types of wrenches? You certainly can. On the other hand, if you pair a cordless drill with the universal socket wrench shown above, then you might not need all the wrench types or sizes after all.
5. Cut sheet metal
Want to cut some sheet metal but you don’t have a sheet metal nibbler? Well, you can go ahead and buy an electric sheet metal nibbler that will probably cost you over 200 bucks or, if you already have a power drill, you can just buy this sheet metal nibbler drill attachment that will cost you less than 40 bucks.
Combine the sheet metal nibbler attachment and your power drill, whether cordless or electric, and you can cut up to 14 gauge sheet metal with ease.
You can cut straight line and curves, even circles with it.
6. Strip and twist wires easily and uniformly
Of course, you cannot use a cordless drill to strip and twist wires all by itself, but with this clever cordless drill attachment shown above, stripping and twisting wires during your electrical projects will no longer scare you.
The attachment strips and twists the wires all at the same time, helping you to increase your productivity.
So, if you’re an electrician or a homeowner who engages in electrical projects at home once in a while, then you need to know that you can strip and twist wires just with your power drill and the attachment shown above.
Related: The Different Types of Drills for Construction and DIY
7. Remove rust from metal
If you have some rusty metals in your home workshop, trying to get the rust off them by hand can be painstaking and time consuming.
Just attach a brush bit to your cordless drill and use it to brush off the rust from any rusty metal pieces and items you may have.
8. Make a power pepper mill
Ever thought about getting your standard pepper mill to work faster, maybe make more pepper for a family dinner?
Well, if you think your pepper mill is too slow, you can gear things up. Just unscrew the top of your pepper mill to expose the drive shaft.
Attach the drive shaft to the chuck of your cordless drill, and get that mill spinning and milling more pepper like it has never done before.
Take care not to brake it though.
9. Sand or polish irregular shapes
For sanding projects, I usually favor my random orbital sander because it just produces the smoothest of finishes for me.
The downside is, a random orbital sander or palm sander don’t sand curves or irregular shapes. Only flat surfaces.
If you want to sand curved or irregular shapes, you can always go for an oscillating spindle sander. But if you have a cordless drill, you can still make do without the oscillating spindle sander in some situations. Just get a sanding drum, attach it to the chuck and you can add smooth edges to the curves on your workpiece.
Conclusion.
A cordless drill is one tool I personally cannot do without. Like I said earlier, it’s a chuck attached to a spinning motor which means you can attach many things or accessories to it allowing you to perform different tasks with it.
For now, try the applications mentioned mentioned above if you’ve never tried them before.
If you think I left a particular application out, let me know in the comments below.
