For the past day or so I have been absorbed with the problem of how to cut out sections of illegally dumped car bodies. A friend of mine, Kim Williams, who has considerable experience as a sculptor, has assured me that an angle grinder will cut through the skin of a car “like butter”. Now I already own an angle grinder, which I have typically used for paving tasks and the like, but it plugs directly into the electrical mains; hardly suitable for working up in the escarpment bush. So I have rashly gone online and purchased a cordless angle grinder, a Bosch GWS 18v-Li Skin:
I wasn’t quite sure what “skin” meant. Did it perhaps mean that you couldn’t cut through solid objects, only through their outer skins? Did it refer to some outer plastic sleeve that ran around the outside of an actual grinder, indicating that I hadn’t bought an actual grinder at all? I realised that these were fairly unlikely interpretations. A quick bit of additional research revealed that what “skin” actually means is that the device comes without a battery or charger. Damn it! Off to Bunnings to rectify my initial omission. Of course, it turns out the battery and charger cost more than the grinder itself, but on the plus side, the guy at Bunnings was very helpful so I learnt a fair bit about how the amperage rating of a cordless device relates to its power output. Just waiting now for the actual grinder ‘skin’ to arrive.