Recommend a jigsaw and cordless screwdriver please

Good afternoon, we are about to start some renovations to my daughter’s house. Need a good cordless screwdriver and a jigsaw( cord or cordless). Jigsaw will be used for laminate flooring and cordless screwdriver for removing old kitchen and fitted wardrobes.

All my tools are 30 years and been well used so looking for something decent quality.

Thanks

Makita. Can’t go wrong with it. Make sure the jigsaw blade is the right one for cutting the laminate flooring as it might chip along the top of the cut edge. I think you’ll need a fine-tooth blade, but others with more experience will be along presently.

Makita Dewalt. Can’t go wrong with it. Make sure the jigsaw blade is the right one for cutting the laminate flooring as it might chip along the top of the cut edge. I think you’ll need a fine-tooth blade, but others with more experience will be along presently.

😉

I’ve got some very expensive tools for my woodworking business – and a fair few cheap ones too.

Cordless Screwdriver – mine’s an Erbauer. It’s probably my most used tool, it’s about 8 years old and won’t bloody break which would justify me getting a fancy brand! It does all I want and it’s light. It will drive (and importantly remove) some big old screws. Combine it with an Erbauer or Bosch 32 piece mixed bit set and a Tic-tac box of Pozi bits and you’re good to go.

Jigsaw – They’re all the same unless you spend a fortune. I have a corded Makita but a corded Erbauer would do the job. Get some T101BR blades to leave a clean cut. They cut on the downstroke which is why they don’t chip the surface but because of that they need constant downward pressure otherwise they jump. Standard blades “cut up” which pulls the workpiece to the saw which is safer for DIYers. For tight corners you need the T101AOF which are thinner.

But I would only use the jigsaw for trimming fiddly bits. For straight cuts, either cross cut or lengthwise you really need a circular saw or tracksaw. And that’s a whole other thread. I have a lovely Festool tracksaw but I’ve also done quality work using a really cheap £40 Titan and a guide made out of a couple of pieces of chipboard.

I’ll probably get looked down upon for this but I have a cheap silverline 450w mains powered jigsaw for the casual/rare occasions I need one.

It works absolutley fine.

Power tools are a bit like a tattoo.

Choose the right ecosystem now otherwise it’s really difficult and expensive to go back. 😉

Makita is the correct answer. I’ve got an embarrassing amount of their 18v tools, use them every day and can’t complain about a single one of them.

Also, you can get great knock off tools for Makita batteries such as Katsu. They do a great little router tribute.

I have had an Erbaur corded jigsaw for years and it’s still working fine. I also have a Dewalt cordless which is more sophisticated and nicer to use- I bought it when the bare unit was a very silly price in a sale as I already have two Dewalt drills with three batteries- but for most jobs the corded is just as good. As for drill/drivers the Dewalt xr18v brushless are excellent.

This may just be a difference in terminology, but I’d advise to skip a screwdriver and go straight to an impact driver. Far more useful and far more powerful. Makita here as a DIYer, but as above, choose a brand and be a dick about it.
Their jigsaws are really nice as well.

Get a set of Irwin quick grips, and a speed square, and you’ll be surprised what you can achieve:)

I’d be looking at an impact driver/screwdriver twin pack. For fairly light work a 10.8v or 12v pair will do the job ok. something like this

https://www.screwfix.com/p/makita-clx224aj-12v-2-x-2-0ah-li-ion-cxt-cordless-drill-driver-impact-driver-twin-kit/213hp

I wouldn’t go for an impact driver to start off with, a drill driver is good enough for most things. I’m another Makita fan boy, only buy genuine batteries but the Katsu tools are OK. I’ve got a Katsu 18v impact driver and corded Katsu jigsaw.

For cutting boards etc get a track saw of some description. I’ve got the cheap Evolution one with extra rails as I had to cut down a bunch of 3m boards rebuilding a shed. It’s so much easier to use than a jig saw for long straight lines and I would argue safer than a circular saw. I use insulation boards as spoil boards underneath.

Looking online you can get a Makita 18v drill driver, charger and 2 batteries for £154

and an Evolution track saw for £90

Looking online you can get a Makita 18v drill driver, charger and 2 batteries for £154

its another way in for sure. An impact driver will do a much better job of screws (less rounding of bits as well, ime), but the twinpack I suggested will be rubbish at drilling bricks. If there’s going to be a lot of that I’d go down the SDS path anyway – all percussion drills are pretty naff.

fwiw, I wouldn’t only get an impact driver. They’re amazing at getting stuff in with a lot of force, but some fixings (anything in plasterboard, for example) just get ripped apart by the torque. If you’re going down the impact driver path you need something else to get it sorted.

For actually ripping apart an old kitchen, you might need neither. Most stuff from the last 20+ years can be returned to flatpack with a hammer and a single cross-head/philips manual screwdriver – the structure is all held together with locking attachments that come apart with a 1/4 turn. You will need a new driver to assemble something new with any reasonable quickness though.

For ripping apart anything my tools of choice are a reciprocating saw, a couple of pry bars and a lump hammer. Not subtle but very quick!

18v Makita multi-pack here of combi drill, impact drill and jigsaw

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313698309049?epid=9028917870&itmmeta=01JFJH135CV80M25X9M7RR6378&hash=item4909e053b9:g:tWgAAOSwvBVnYqWi

Not the biggest of batteries(2×1.5ah) but you can pick up bigger batteries as required.

Down cutting jigsaw blades are the work of the devil. They work in the opposite direction to how a jigsaw is designed to work. Okay you get a clean cut on the surface but below that the blade wanders all over the place not to mention the buckeroo experience of using them.

Downcut blades require a bit of a different technique and a general awareness about the sort of cut that’s happening otherwise yes, it’s easy to get the Buckeroo thing happening.

They can be useful but I often tend to use the kitchen fitters technique, marking my line on the good side and holding the jigsaw upsidedown on the bottom face so that it’s cutting down with a regular up-cut blade. Works well but takes a bit of learning.

Yup, jigsaw upside down is the biz. I use a rail saw now for most of the jobs I would have done with a jigsaw including scribing panels against a wall.

I’ve got a Dewalt 7.2v cordless screwdriver. Everything else I own is Makita 18v.

The screwdriver isn’t really that useful because it lacks power.

I use it for work taking medical equipment apart and it’s great for that sort of stuff where it saves time and faff with machine screws etc but it struggles to drive a decent sized screw into a kitchen cabinet for example.

Impact driver is what you want for wood screws and DIY stuff. Drill/ Driver is ok but you’re far more likely to round a screw out with one than with an impact driver.

I have some Ryobi tools. The drill driver is an ex demonstrator from a Ryobi rep then bought by me and abused for about 9 years.