Who can recommend a cheap but useful drill

I dream of the day that I come across a Stanley Yankee screwdriver in good nick. I had one years ago - loved it. Left it in someone's loft, and they claimed it was never found.

 

131A or 135 - the former being the one I would like (if I remember correctly, they went to plastic handles with the 135). One day, I will pick one up for a reasonable price somewhere.

 

Aye, they weren't cheap, but they were worth it. That is one of those 'legacy' products that if Stanley chose to relaunch it, they would sell hand over fist.

I owe my life to a Stanley screwdriver - not a Yankee, but a standard slot screwdriver. I was running aerial cables in a friends house, and I used a screwdriver to pop a wee hole as a starting point to fish the wire out of the cavity; as I did so, there was one hell of a bang, a flash and as I drew the screwdriver out of the wall the end was obliterated. Some eejit had mounted a double gang mains socket on the other side of the wall, and hadn't bothered to fit a pattress box - basically, they carved a wee hole in the wall, attached the wires to the faceplate and then used wood screws to screw it to the wall. My screwdriver connected with the back of the socket, and must have shorted the live and neutral rails out (I didn't get a shock, so it didn't ground through me), and blown the end off the screwdriver. Moments later, if that hadn't happened, I would have had my bare hand guddling about in a wee hole looking for a coax cable......

 

Well, its amazing what you can turn up on eBay - I have just won an auction for a 130B, and another (model not given, but it looks to me to be a 131A) for £12!

The one I suspect is a 131A is a bit on the tatty side, but I reckon with a bit of a clean up with wire wool, and stripping/filing/repainting the handle it will restore quite nicely. I am half tempted to dip the handle in resin to see what sort of finish I get, but it would probably be too slippy to use?

 

It didn't, but given the photos that were on the auction, I decided to take a gamble. The 130B looks like new, but even the older one seems to have nice, deep channels in the ratchet. Given that it was at the lower end of the price scale for these, I thought it well worth a gamble.