I tried to use my old mains powered skill saw yesterday. It started cutting and then sounded like a battery powered tool with a dying battery after cutting about 5cm. Just slowed down wouldn’t cut, then barely slowed even without cutting. Now it won’t do anything even without load.
It’s been stored in its hard case in the shed so possible corrosion and resistance in the motor and now it’s just burnt out? Any ideas what those symptoms might indicate?
It’s old and just a cheapy from b&q, bit ideally don’t just want to throw it away if there’s something I can test / fix.

now it’s just burnt out?

Did it / does it smell like its burned out?

If it hasn’t over heated then the other suspect would be the brushes. They’re not always easy to access on cheaper tools. If they’re accessible then the next trick is finding compatible ones to go in (although theres opportunity to bodge a bit as the carbon is easy to whittle.

If you’re the sort who doesn’t throw the box away quite often theres spare brushes in the box with some lower end tools

Brushes gone maybe?

It’s worth opening it up and have a look, if you’re lucky it’s just the brushes, and they’ve not taken the comm with them, simple cheap fix in that instance…

Did it / does it smell like its burned out?

No it didn’t

If it hasn’t over heated then the other suspect would be the brushes

Thanks, I’ll definitely open it up and take a look then. Pretty sure there’s no brushes in the box, but once I know what I need I’ll get trawling on ebay for something 🙂

Correct diagnosis. There was some corrosion on one of the bushes in the spring so it was fully retracted and not touching the motor spindle. Simply freeing it and moving it seems to be moving freely now and back to full working order! Thanks peeps.
Of course, I’ll procrastinate over ordering new bushes and it’ll let me down just when I don’t want it to. But at least I’m good for immediate jobs!

I’m always surprised when cheap tools have brushes then i put them somewhere safe….

These brushes are in a little plastic carrier that looks like a sealed single unit. They look like they should be replaceable as a whole unit but can’t see anything obvious on line. Saw must be >15yrs old.

about 20 odd years ago I used to work for Bosch (Who owned Skil at the time) in their lawn and garden power tools bit and yes brushes often came pre-assembled in a little Carrier to aid the line workers, the carrier would be pushed onto the motor body, then assembled into the tool and once everything was lined up, a couple of tabs pulled away to release the brushes onto the comm and avoid assembly damage. They were quite good at that sort of thing.

But I very much doubt you’ll find brush holders available to buy after market. You should be able to hunt down a pair of compatible brushes via a google search using the tool’s model number they might be labelled as being for Bosch rather than Skil.
Failing that measure up the existing brushes (carefully so as not to chip them) and you should be able to find a pair to fit….

about 20 odd years ago I used to work for Bosch (Who owned Skil at the time)

I think the OP might be using ‘Skill’ in the Proprietary Eponym sense.

Ahhhh, I see I had assumed he actually had a Skil branded saw of some sort…

The adoption of trade names as the default name for a given tool is a bit annoying.
One thing that Bosch drummed into me was not referring to a ‘line trimmer’ as a ‘Strimer’ as that was apparently a Black and Decker copyrighted name…

Henry Hoover 🙂