After a $2,400 Tool-Buying Mistake: The Honest Porter-Cable Setup I'd Recommend

If you're building a professional-grade kit from scratch, the order matters more than the brand: buy a Porter-Cable 20V 8 tool combo kit first, a Porter-Cable drill press PCB660DP for your bench, a 34 pc ratchet set with no size gaps, and a masonry drill bit for hammer drill work before your first concrete job. What I would not buy, six years into this trade, is a welding machine—unless you already know how to weld. I bought one before I could, and that decision cost me about $1,100.

I run residential and light commercial jobs, and I've personally made (and tracked) over $2,400 in bad tool purchases since 2019. This article is the checklist I hand to every new person on my crew. It's organized as "buy this, skip that," so you don't have to learn the expensive way.

In short: the combo kit handles daily work, the drill press handles precision jobs that hand drilling can't, the ratchet set bails you out of fastener trouble, and masonry bits keep your hammer drill useful on concrete and block. The welding machine is a specialist tool for a specialist skill. Owning one without the practice is an expensive paperweight—so spend what you saved on a few hours with someone who actually knows how to use one.

Why My Tool-Buying Experience Is Worth Reading

In my first year (2019), I made the classic beginner error: I bought tools for the image of the work I wanted to do, not for the work I was actually doing. The welding machine was the worst. A railing job had steel posts, and I told myself owning a welder meant I could weld. It does not mean that. My practice beads were so bad I didn't even want to test them (which, honestly, was the moment I should have stopped). I paid a certified welder $400 to redo what I'd planned to do myself, then sold the machine for $200. Net loss: about $850.

The cheap drill press was quieter but similar. I bought a no-name benchtop unit for $90, and it couldn't hold a 1/8-inch bit straight. Every hole wobbled. On a shelving job, that meant misaligned holes and a cracked panel. Redo cost me $220 in materials plus a lost day. The Porter-Cable drill press I bought after that costs more but has drilled straight for two years—which is exactly what a good tool should do.

Porter-Cable 20V 8 Tool Combo Kit: Start Here

The 20V 8 tool combo kit should be the foundation for one simple reason: it solves the platform problem. You get the drill/driver, impact driver, recip saw, circular saw, oscillating multi-tool, a work light, two batteries, and a charger. One battery shape, one charger, one ecosystem. Every bare tool you want later just clicks into the same batteries.

Buying these tools individually with batteries would run roughly 30-40% more than the kit. And if you do bathroom or kitchen work, the oscillating tool alone earns its place—it cuts drywall, grout, and trim without requiring five different tools. Most contractors I work with start with a kit like this, then buy bare tools as work expands. That's the smart long-term play.

One thing worth knowing: some retailers count the bag as the "8th tool" in the kit. The bag is fine. It's just not a tool. (I referenced the "8 tools" on a bid once and got a follow-up question that was embarrassing to explain.)

Porter-Cable Drill Press PCB660DP: Buy It Before You Think You Need It

Here's a take I don't hear often: most of us buy a handheld drill first and add a drill press later. I think that's backwards if you do any work beyond drilling holes in studs. The Porter-Cable drill press PCB660DP is a 6-inch, five-speed benchtop unit with a 1/2-inch chuck capacity and a tilting table. It's not the biggest press on the market, and it's not trying to be. It does exactly one job, precisely, for less than the price of a nice weekend trip.

Why the PCB660DP specifically? Because the first thing I check on any drill press is chuck truth. My old no-name press wobbled, meaning holes came out slightly oversized. That's fine for a small bracket, but it's a disaster for jigs or anything that has to align with an existing hole. The PCB660DP's chuck ran true out of the box, which was a reverse-validated lesson: I should have checked that on the cheap press before buying it, not after the first bad project.

Also, per OSHA's hand and portable power tool standards (29 CFR 1910.242), tools need to be inspected and maintained for safe use. A worn chuck that throws a bit is a safety problem, not just a quality-control issue. Ten seconds with a dial indicator before each drilling session costs nothing.

Ratchet Set 34 pc: Gaps Are the Enemy

A 34 pc ratchet set sounds complete until you find out yours doesn't have a 14mm socket. That happened to me at 6:40 p.m., replacing a wheel on a work trailer after a blowout. The 14mm was the one size the budget set skipped—one of those things that seems trivial until you're crouched in a parking lot with an adjustable wrench. (Note to self: check every size on any new socket set before the first job, not after.)

What makes a good 34 pc ratchet set is consistency: sockets from 8mm to 19mm, matching SAE sizes, no skipped sizes, and a 3/8-inch drive ratchet as the core. I'd also suggest six-point sockets if you can find them—they grip the corners of a fastener instead of the edges, which matters when a bolt is already half-rounded from a previous person's mistake.

Masonry Drill Bit for Hammer Drill: Don't Learn This One the Hard Way

Drill bits for wood and metal are not the same as a masonry drill bit for hammer drill use. A masonry bit is carbide-tipped and designed to survive impact. Using a regular twist bit in hammer mode is a time-honored way to ruin a bit and your patience. It took me three ruined bits and most of an afternoon to learn something that the $10 price tag on the right set should have taught me.

Start with a small set: 1/4-inch for shelf anchors, 3/8-inch for heavier brackets, and 1/2-inch for larger through-holes. Run the hammer drill at lower speed and let the bit do the cutting. The cheap set I started with wore out after maybe two dozen holes in concrete block. (To be fair, they were $8. They performed exactly to their price point.)

What Does a Welding Machine Do? And Why I'd Wait

The straightforward answer is that a welding machine joins metal by generating enough heat to melt the base materials at the joint, using a filler rod or wire to reinforce it. But the useful answer is more personal: it does this well only in the hands of someone who has practiced. Reading about welding and welding well are separated by hundreds of hours of torch time—and a weld that looks fine on the surface can be weak underneath.

Under FTC advertising rules (ftc.gov), performance claims have to be substantiated with evidence. That's not the issue here, though. The tool performs exactly as advertised. The bottleneck was me—my skill level, not the machine. I didn't fully understand the value of hiring a specialist until after that $850 loss. The welder I paid earned his fee in two hours, and his work carried a guarantee that nothing would crack. My work would've come with an apology.

Granted, if you already weld, none of this applies. You know exactly what you'd use it for. But if you're asking "what does a welding machine do" while standing in the aisle, that's your answer: you're not ready to buy one yet.

When to Ignore Every Piece of Advice Above

To be fair, this whole recommendation is for general construction, remodeling, and maintenance work. If you're a fabricator or a sheet metal specialist, the welding machine is the center of your shop, and you should already have one. If you run a crew with a certified welder on it, buy a good machine and put it in the truck. The right tool in the right hands pays for itself fast.

The point of this list isn't to tell anyone what gear to worship. It's to remind you that skills—not tools—are the real purchase. A $650 welding mistake taught me more than any video ever did, and the checklist above is the part I kept.