Chris Marshall examines the innovative drill/drivers from Bosch and Festool with interchangeable chucks. Chris Marshall examines the innovative drill/drivers from Bosch and Festool with interchangeable chucks. These drills feature different specialty chucks that add versatility to these tools. Some of the Festool C-Series and T-Series drill/drivers, and the Bosch FlexiClick drill/driver are compatible with four chucks, including a conventional three jaw, a right angle chuck, an eccentric chuck that shifts the driving action off-center, and a quick connect hex chuck for changing driver tips quickly.
Read Chris’ complete overview of the latest drill/drivers and how to choose the best drill for your workshop in the July/August 2018 issue of Woodworker’s Journal.
Sometimes a standard drill/driver is just too big for the space you need to fit it into. Here, I can’t install the screws for these new slides because the drawer opening is too small.
And other times, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to drill at a right angle to your angle of approach, especially when you’re working in tight quarters, without having to be a contortionist? These sorts of these situations don’t come up very often, but when they do, this tool’s basic straight configuration may not help you much.
Well, there are a couple of unique drill/drivers from Bosch and Festool can solve these sorts of problems.
Several of Festool’s C and T series drill/drivers, and Bosch’s new 12-volt FlexiClick, each come with four different interchangeable chucks.
You get a conventional three-jaw chuck for holding round drill bits. A right-angle chuck. An eccentric chuck that shifts the drilling or driving action off of center by about an inch. and a quick-connect hex chuck for holding driver bits.
Both Bosch and Festool make their chucks easy to install: you just fit the chuck onto the head of the drill, and lock it in place with a collar. It’s ready to go!
Sixteen detents enable you to rotate the chucks to the most convenient position for the task at hand — there’s a stop every 22.5 degrees.
With the right-angle and quick-connect chucks installed, driving those drawer slide screws inside a small drawer opening was easy.
And the eccentric head gave me just enough clearance to drill that pilot hole for my seat slat without the drill/driver getting in the way.
Now, most of us woodworkers or DIYers aren’t going to need a right-angle or eccentric chuck very often. But remember, you can use these tools with their standard, three-jaw chucks as your dedicated drill/drivers. And then, when that oddball situation comes up — and you can be sure it will at some point! — you’ll have all the other chuck options too. That’s a LOT of versatility from one tool!
