I'm thinking of getting a cordless drill, mostly for use on the boat where I don't always have access to AC. My thought was to get a 12 volt model and make some sort of adapter so I could run it from the boat's storage batteries. My experience with cordless power tools so far has been that the batteries are the part that fails.
Since it will only see occasionaly use and I expect it's batteries to be useless anyway, I'm looking towards the cheapy models. There are a couple (on special at Canadian Tire for you canuks) a 12 and a 14.4 volt model that appear to be the same, and I found myself wondering if in fact they might be identical except for the battery packs. The only difference in the specs is the 12 says 0-550rpm, the 14.4 says 0-600.
Has any body run a nominal 14.4 tool with 12 volts and did it perform OK or did it overheat, shorten the life of the motor, etc?
Does anybody have the inside dope on these kinds of tools and know whether these might actually be identical except for the battery?
Has anybody made an adapter to run a cordless tool from a 12 volt storage battery? How did you approach this? I have a couple of ideas but I always welcome more...
TIA
Mickey