Amtech F0300 Hand Drill

It is great to have this on my Boat as if the Prop Shaft fails it is easy to drill if there is no power. It has worked before.

Bought this recently when I needed to drill holes in a fairly thin ceiling and didn't want to risk using my high powered hammer drill and causing unintended damage. It's a classic egg whisk drill, well made with an actual wooden handle and a pleasing solid steel build to it. Drill bits fit tightly and it drills nicely through thin surfaces such as plasterboard leaving well shaped holes that usually do not damage the area around them. An excellent drill for the price and I can easily recommend it.

This is not a drill for heavy work and putting up shelves or building large projects. What it is ideal for is small work where you need to control the drill or avoid breaking the item you're working on. So far I've drilled a car number plate, and a small hole in wood to then screw into. Are there better ones out there? Possibly. But for the price I can chuck it into the toolbox for the odd job no worries.

In my quest for a reliable hand drill, I stumbled upon a product that left me more frustrated than satisfied. Here's the rundown on why the hand-cranked, hand drill failed to make the cut: Quality Quandaries: Clunky Crank Chaos: From the get-go, the crank mechanism proved to be the Achilles' heel. Its clunkiness and poor gear meshing made applying consistent power a herculean task. What should be a smooth operation turned into a struggle, leaving me questioning the overall quality of the drill. Handle Houdini Act: The handle's penchant for coming undone added insult to injury. It seemed like no matter how securely I fastened it, it had a mind of its own. This frequent detachment not only disrupted the workflow but also posed a safety concern. Functionality Fail: Consistency Conundrum: Designed for a specific purpose, this hand drill falls short of its intended functionality. The difficulty in maintaining consistent power makes it practically useless for the tasks it was supposedly crafted for. The Bottom Line: In a nutshell, this hand-cranked, hand drill is a regrettable purchase and a total waste of hard-earned money. The clunky crank, problematic gear meshing, and the handle's tendency to play hide-and-seek render it more of a frustration inducer than a reliable tool. Save yourself the headache and look elsewhere for a hand drill that lives up to its promises."

The design and general work/build quality of the hand-drill is great at this price point. However in this particular one that was delivered to me I found that the three jaws inside the chuck were slightly uneven in their shape (one was section was ever so slightly smaller that the other two) which means that the drill 'bit' does not fit exactly in the middle of the three jaws when they are tightened together. In other words, your drill bit is slightly off centre. I managed in the end to get the drill bit to sit properly but it was quite fiddly and rather disappointing that the build quality of the internal parts of the chuck were not up to the standards of the rest of the drill. This is why I have marked it down. I only use the drill for one particular job that does not require me to use different size drill bits, otherwise I would probably have sent the whole thing back.

A great little bit of kit, for the price you can’t go wrong Really impressed 🤙

The quality of this product is low. The drill itself was OK but the chuck teeth were badly made and could not hold a drill bit accurately so the bit always wobbled. A shame as normally this brand sells inexpensive tools which perform.

This hand drill works great for my purposes. The chuck is a bit crudely fashioned, but it holds the bit well, and when I needed to make it open wider to accept the bit the first time, I just had to push it in with the end of the bit, and then tighten it up again. I didn't have any problems pulling the bit out of the wood, as long as I didn't try to reverse crank it as I pulled it out. Other than the chuck, the quality seems decent, and it was within a few p of the cheapest solution I could find, so I'll quite satisfied.