It’s time to buy myself a Hole-Hawg. Has anyone use the new one the Milwaukee came out with awhile back. Just looking for some feedback on that drill
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Replies
I don't have one, nor have I used one, but it sure is a thing of beauty isn't it!
View ImageI have rented Hole-Hawgs before and think pretty highly of them. I have the DeWalt "version" of the Super-Hawg and it has served me well. I think the Super-Hawg has a clutch on the low end as well. This is a great feature IMO. Also 13 arm twisting amps on this beast. I wish I had one.
This is not about the cutesy looking new model Hole-Hawg, but
rather about the old model.
making "fair use" of a passage from a favorite author, can
you guess who:
>>The Hole Hawg is a drill made by the Milwaukee Tool
Company. If you look in a typical hardware store you
may find smaller Milwaukee drills but not the Hole
Hawg, which is too powerful and too expensive for
homeowners. The Hole Hawg does not have the
pistol-like design of a cheap homeowner's drill.
It is a cube of solid metal with a handle sticking out
of one face and a chuck mounted in another. The cube
cntains a disconcertingly potent electric motor. You
can hold the handle and operate the trigger with your
index finger, but unless you are exceptionally strong
you cannot control the weight of the Hole Hawg with
one hand; it is a two-hander all the way. I order to
fight off the counter-torque of the Hole Hawg you use
a separate handle (provided), which you screw into
one side of the iron cube or the other depending on
whether you are using your left or right hand to
operate the trigger. This handle is nota sleek,
ergonomically designed item as it would be in a
homeowner's drill. It is simply a foot-long chunk of
regular galvanized pipe, threaded on one end, with a
black rubber handle on the other. If you lose it, you
just go to the local plumbing supply sore and buy
another chunk of pipe.
During the Eighties I did some construction work. One
day, another worker leaned a ladder against the
outside of the building that we were putting up,
climbed up to the second-story level, and used the
Hole Hawg to drill a hole through the exterior wall.
At some point, the drill bit caught in the wall. The
Hole Hawg, following its one and only imperative,
kept going. It spun the worker's body arond like a
rag doll, causing him to knock his own ladder down.
Fortunately he kept his grip on the Hole Hawg, which
remained lodged in the wall, and he simply dangled
from it and shouted for help until someone came along
and reinstated the ladder.
I myself used a Hole Hawg to drill many holes through
studs, which it did as a blender chops cabbage. I
also used it to cut a few six-inch-diameter holes
through an old lath-and-plaster ceiling. I chucked in
a new hole saw, went up to the second story, reached
don between the newly installed floor joists, and
began to cut through the first-floor ceiling below.
Where my homeowner's drill had labored and whined to
spin the huge bit around, and had stalled at the
slightest obstruction, the Hole Hawg rotated with
the stupid consistency of a spinning planet. When the
hole saw seized up, the Hole Hawg spun itself and me
around, and crushed one of my hands between the steel
pipe handle and a joist, producing a few lacerations,
each surrounded by a wide corona of deeply buised
flesh. It also bent the hole saw itself, though not
so badly that I couldn't use it. After a few such
run-ins, when I got ready to use the Hole Hawg my
heart actually began to pound with atavistic terror.
But I never blamed the Hole Hawg; I blamed mself.
The Hole Hawg is dangerous because it does exactly
what you tell it to. It is not bound by the physical
limitations that are inherent in a cheap drill, and
neither is it limited by safety interlocks that might
be built into a homeowner's product by a
liability-conscious manufacturer. The danger lies not
in the machine itself but in the user's failure to
envision the full consequences of the instructions he
gives to it.
A smaller tool is dangerous too, but for a completely
different reason: it tries to do what you tell it to,
and fails in some way that is unpredictable and
almost always undesirable. But the Hole Hawg is like
the genie of the ancient fairy tales, who carries out
his master's instructions literally and precisely and
with unlimited powe, often with disastrous,
unforeseen consequences.
Pre-Hole Hawg, I used to examine the drill selection
in hardware stores with what I thought was a
judicious eye, scorning the smaller low-end models
and hefting the big expensive ones appreciatively,
wising I could afford one of them babies. Now I view
them all with such contempt that I do not even
consider them to be real drills--merely scaled-up
toys designed to exploit the self-delusional
tendencies of soft-handed homeowners who want to
believe that they have purchased an actual tool.
Their plastic casings, carefully designed and
focus-group-tested to convey a feeling of solidity
and power, seem disgustingly flimsy and cheap to me,
and I am ashamed that I was ever bamboozled into
buying such knicknacks.
It is not hard to imagine what the world would look
like to someone who had been raised by contractors
and who had never used any drill other than a Hole
Hawg. Such a person, presented with the best and most
expensive hardware-store drill, would not even
recognize it as such. He might instead misidentify it
as a child's toy, or some kind of motorized
screwriver. If a salesperson or a deluded homeowner
referred to it as a drill, he would laugh and tell
them that they were mistaken--they simply had their
terminology wrong. His interlocutor would go away
irritated, and probably feeling rather defensive
about his basement full of cheap, dangerous, flashy,
colorful tools.
I know what you mean. I use an older version and if you fail to control it it will calmly and dutifully mulch anything that got in the way. It can be scary in tight spots where you can't pull back or get away. Like in a tight crawl space. I have been known to take a 3' long piece of 3/4" pipe for a handle. Even bent that after a bit. Often I used a leg to hold the extension in place. Sounds silly, at least to anyone who hasn't experiences a run away it sounds silly.
One job in particular. The house was made from large beams of Florida heart pine. The stuff is tough and will grab bits and weld them in place. Hawg was the only drill that could handle some of the holes. The crawl space was so tight that you had to hug the beast. For a few holes I brought two pipes and wedged one between the ground and floor joist and then tied the 3' handle to it. Worked well once I got a system going.
Of course don't ever get confused and place the handle on the wrong side. A 3' piece of 3/4" RMC screwed into the drill can do some real damage if it gets away. Babe Ruth didn't have a better swing.
"But the Hole Hawg is like the genie of the ancient fairy tales, who carries out his master's instructions literally and precisely and with unlimited powe, often with disastrous, unforeseen consequences. "
T Dog,
The problem is....all the better hole saws come with the end that goes in the chuck shaped like a hex so it positively will not slip. It would be nice if the people at MKE Tool added an adjustable clutch to their drill. Matter of fact, all high torque 1/2" drills should have one. I have smashed my knuckles (like many) too much, to know.
Jon
Thanks all for the feedback. My brother actually owns the older hole hawg aka. the *beast* as I call it and I've borrowed it on and off when I needed it.
Now that business is picking up and I will be needing the tool for more jobs, it's time I get one for myself. I did consider getting the older one as I know it's a workhorse (like all Milwaukee drills I've owned) and I took into consideration the more use of plastic on the newer model. It just means a lighter tool which may be a good thing when working overhead :).
It just means a lighter tool which may be a good thing when working overhead :).
Reconsider that.....
Who ever invented work didn't know how to fish....
I own the new version of the hole hawg. It is in fact about 3 lbs heavier than the original hawg weighing over 14 lbs. It is a more powerful and improved tool. It incorporates the clutch in the low speed side. Yes the handle, motor housing are plastic (nylon), but the very substantial gear housing is of course all metal. It is a very sturdy and substantial tool. It is a longer tool which gives the user more leverage on the handle side. Plus it has a rotating handle for various switch positions. Nice tool. But very expensive.
So I'm about to order my new RA drill........I've got a couple of Irwin/Greenlee Auger Style bits that I use with this type of drill.
Are the Milwaukee Self Feed bits the Bits of all Bits. I see alot of guys use their bit with the RA drills.
YES!
Who ever invented work didn't know how to fish....
Back when I first started in construction, we were building a timberpeg post+beam house.
I watched the electrician drilling throuh a beam for a fan with a hole hawg.
the bit started to slow so he switched to low and put all his wieght against it.
finally he got through, but had a hard time getting the bit back out.
After switching directions about twenty times, he was able to yank the bit out.
Wound up perfectly in the flute of the nail-eater auger bit was a 6" pole barn spike!!!
looked like a spring when he got it unwound from the bit!Mr T
Do not try this at home!
I am an Experienced Professional!
I have to be honest, I just bought a new Hole Hawg today to replace my the one recently stolen and I went with the "original version." It has always been one of those tools I figured was hard to improve on. The new version looks good, but I figure the more moving parts/gizmos are just one more thing to break on a tool that is nearly indestructible.
I, like others, have some pretty good Hole Hawg stories. Most pertain to building timber bridges. One in particular when my boss's girlfriend thought it looked like fun to drill the holes and thought she wanted to give it a try. I don't think she was even having fun at the beginning, but certainly wasn't when the bit made contact with a steel pin holding the timbers together and the Hole Hawg came around and fractured her ulna/radius.
Hold on tight and take her for a ride. The drill I mean, not necessarily the boss's girlfriend (unless your not going to get caught.)
Sorry haven't used the new version of Milwaukees Hole Hawg but we use older versions at Work ~ Maintenance Dept in a Hospital its amazing the punshment those Beasts can indure we use for everything from drilling metal,wood to stiring drywall compound,there one HD Mothers..
ToolDoc
i want one too even though i get myself in trouble with the milwaukee 3107 rt angle i already have. my favorite maneuver, learned recently when drilling a 1/2" hole in 1/2" steel plate, is to make make sure everything is properly braced against the auxiliary handle while drilling, then when the bit seizes as it exits the stock, forget to reverse the bracing direction before reversing the drill and hitting the gas. yanked it right out of my hand but not before wrenching my wrist and putting a nice blood blister on my trigger finger.
"MORE POWER!" - Tim the Toolman Taylor
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