If you’ve seen my last few posts, you’ll know I’ve been working on a garage-building project my friend Doug took on. Well, last week when he and I were securing the sheet-metal roofing, Doug was standing at the peak of the structure and I a few purlins down. The batteries in his drill had run down, so he asked to borrow mine. We weren’t rushing the job, and as I talked with my wife, who was standing below, my green and black hitachi drill suddenly appeared off to the right in the periphery of my vision, accompanied by a loud thwack. A quick glance revealed it was no longer one piece.

I didn’t really care. I was mainly happy Doug didn’t leave the roof the same way. I couldn’t imagine the price of a new drill housing would be high, and it turns out it’s not. (They’re about $20, plus shipping.) However, the drill had broken quite cleanly, and I had some Sugru lying around that was approaching its best before date.

I decided to give the Sugru-fix a try, and I have to say it worked very well. I used an orange pack because I had two and thought I’d need them both, but in retrospect one was enough and I could have used the green packet (pictured above). No matter, the drill is more colourful this way. Here’s the after-shot:

This is very useful stuff. The drill has so far stood up to normal usage.