Ryobi Happy

 

This past Father’s Day Annie and the boys presented me with a couple very sensible gifts – a Ryobi cordless chainsaw and string trimmer.

I had coveted them when Annie and I were in Home Depot a few weeks before so was overjoyed, but not entirely surprised.  As most dads know, you don’t buy anything that is a potential Father’s Day gift for the last few weeks before that day so I had waited.  After opening my awesome gifts, I jumped on the internet and ordered something else I’d been wanting, a Ryobi One+ Lithium-Ion Ultimate Combo Kit.

The Combo Kit consists of six tools: a compact drill, impact driver, circular and reciprocating saws, multi-tool, and work light.  It came with two compact batteries and the required charger along with a carrying bag to transport it all in.  Patrick and I made sure they all worked, then I set them aside until I had time to do some work with them.

Well, Patrick, borrowed the drill and driver to finish up a deck he and my next older son, Andy, had been building and announced that the tools had done everything required of them in a half day’s work, and had not totally drained even one battery.  He had not put that battery on the charger so I reminded him about it for a couple days, then did it myself.  Ryobi advertises the charger as recharging a Ryobi One+ battery in about half an hour.  Bam!  The battery was fully recharged within minutes, which is good, as you will soon see.

The chainsaw and the string trimmer are both 40 volt.  Thus, the 18 volt One+ batteries cannot be used with them.

I tried the trimmer down beside one of our field ditches, where weeds and grass were four feet tall or more.  It cut through just about everything that was smaller than my pinky finger.  Bigger than that and even grass has stems that can be quite woody, making them hard enough to shred trimmer line.  I moved up to the barnyard and used the trimmer for what it was designed to do, trim grass that is a more reasonable size.  It zipped through the grass around my chicken coop, the freeze-proof hydrant, the wood pile, and the fence.  It worked like a charm.

I had not completely discharged the battery but I was out of time.  I put the battery on the charger until I could get back out.

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The wind claimed one of our bigger oaks last year and we had been working on getting it cut up since then.  Andy had cut up everything less than a foot in diameter and burned it last winter.  He, Madison, and Harper moved away last spring, taking Andy’s gas-powered chainsaw with them.

Patrick tried out my Ryobi 14-inch chainsaw and declared it acceptable, and claimed that it worked well but he wouldn’t want to use it on the big end of the trunk.  I don’t blame him.

That big end ranges from just under two feet thick to almost three feet in diameter but had quite a bit of rot at the butt end.  Even though it had fallen more than a year ago, the wood hadn’t seasoned so it was as easy to cut as it was ever going to be.

Obviously, a fourteen inch bar is not going to cut through a two foot log in one slice, so I’d cut on one side of the log, then move to the opposite side to finish it.  Using the 2.6 Ah battery that came with the weed whacker, I could cut one slab before the battery went dead.  In my case, I would then use the smaller (1.5 Ah) battery that came with the saw to start another cut, making it 1/3 to ½ way through the log before it, too, went dead.

These batteries took longer to recharge than the One+ batteries so I moved on to other things while I was waiting on them.  I cut the slabs to about one foot in length because the wood was a booger to split.  To give you an idea how much wood we’re talking about, just one of those slabs, when split and seasoned, should heat Patrick’s little house all night long.  Still, I had plenty of time to split the slab, and clean up all the chips and sawdust, then work on another project while waiting for the saw batteries to recharge.

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The other project I worked on was building a shelf to store the Ryobi cordless tools, batteries, and chargers on.  There was some 2×6 and 2×8 scrap from the old deck in the pile waiting to be burned so I thought, what the heck?  I got my measurements and grabbed the circular saw that came with my Ryobi One+ kit.  Before long I had cut through a 2×8 and a 2×6 (Well, two 2x6s.  The first one I cut wasn’t up to my standards.) and a couple 1x2s.  I put them together according to plan, using the impact driver, and was pleasantly surprised when I placed a screw and pushed down on it with the driver.  It dropped like a hot nail in butter.  The screw went almost all the way through the 1-by!  I was a little more careful with the other seven screws.  A couple old milk crates placed strategically between two of my parts boxes in the machine shed and the shelf positioned on top and I had a place for all my Ryobi One+ stuff, the chargers and batteries for the chainsaw and string trimmer, and even my old Craftsman cordless drill.  My work bench instantly looked more like an organized collection and less like a pile.

Don’t worry, that won’t last long.

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I think the Ryobi tools are a good deal.  Obviously, you can’t do everything with them that you can with other, more expensive, tools, but there’s a trade off.  The chainsaw may not cut a long time on one battery, but, for many uses, it would be adequate.  You still have to be sure you put bar and chain oil in it, but you don’t have any of the aggravations of keeping a gas/oil mixture around, and the difference in noise is impressive.  I would never use a gas-powered saw without hearing protection but I could use this saw and still listen to the radio if I wanted to.  Obviously, you still need to use eye protection.

The string trimmer I found to be comparable to the gas-powered ones we’ve had, but, again, without all the noise.

With both the trimmer and the chainsaw I didn’t have to deal with the smell of the gas/oil mixture or of the internal combustion engine blowing exhaust within a couple feet of my nose.  Also, both started instantly and easily.  No cranking required.  There was no need to adjust the choke and warm the engine before starting to work, either.  Every start was the same.

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Compared to 110 volt electric tools, you don’t have to drag an extension cord around or worry about power drop with longer cords.  There is no concern about the cord hanging up or getting tangled and there was no chance of cutting through it, as I did once when working on the hay loft in our barn.  That time I cost myself an extra half hour of work spent repairing the cord on a brand new circular saw.

Dang it.

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I think Ryobi One+ is also a winner.  If you plan to work with the tools a lot, you might think about buying an extra battery or two and maybe another charger.  The circular saw had plenty of power but, depth-wise, would barely cut through 2-by lumber (about 1 ½ inch thick).  As I pointed out to Patrick, I rarely cut through anything thicker than that, and I’ll bet you do the same.  Plus, being cordless, you can use it in places where you can’t use a 110 volt corded saw.

I also bought another charger for the Ryobi One+ batteries, one that is designed to plug into a car’s cigarette lighter.  That 12 volt charger could easily be set up to run on solar power too.

I’m formulating plans for a new hunting blind/cabin/man cave that I would like to have electricity and water but be completely off-grid.  For want of a better name, I’ve been calling it the Solar Shed.  One of my goals is to build it using only cordless tools, charging them as much as possible with solar power.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

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Ryobi has been the handyman’s friend for a long time, even making business decisions in our favor when other companies have made theirs to maximize their own profit.  For instance, Ryobi’s 18 volt tools made 20 years ago use exactly the same battery platform as the new ones.  It’s just a fact of life; batteries go bad, even rechargeable ones.

Some of the first cordless tools my dad bought would still work…if new batteries were available for them.  If he had bought 18 volt Ryobi tools, the batteries Ryobi makes now would work in them just fine.

A major victory for the One+ is that the same battery will work in (at last count) 100 different power tools.  That can add up to quite a savings if you can own a dozen or more tools and only need a relatively few batteries to rotate through them all.

Speaking of savings, pricewise, Ryobi still comes out a winner.  Of course, prices vary from place-to-place and time-to-time, but I bought my six tool Ryobi One+ Lithium-Ion Ultimate Combo Kit for $199.00.

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If you buy with your eyes open and your brain engaged, you won’t expect more than these tools promise.  If you buy knowledgeably, I think you’ll “Ryo-be happy” with your purchase.

Sorry, I couldn’t help it.

 

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(above) The tools I bought to go along with the chainsaw and string trimmer my family bought me for Father’s Day last year.  I whipped the shelf up in just a few minutes, using the tools they bought me.

(below) This should give you an idea of the size of the log I sawed using the chainsaw.

 

(above) The Ryobi weed whacker and (below) chainsaw my family bought me last Father’s Day.

 

(below) a few videos I made about my Ryobi Father’s Day Gifts.