Drills for ice fishing

Hi All,

With the new baby and expenses related, money is a bit tighter.

I have a gas auger that I need to clean the carb for, but little time.

I have been looking and seeing people last year just using battery powered drills with special attachments for the auger. I have a drill at home but don’t know if it is a good enough drill.

The drill is a DeWalt 20v Max DCD771. Has anyone used this drill for ice fishing and if so, does it work well? The attached pic is the drill I have. Does using the drill as an ice auger also cause a lot of wear and tear on the drill?

Thanks in advance

I’m guessing it would work for a 6” auger with sharp blades.
Especially if you’re just doing a couple holes.
If you’re doing 8” or moving around or fishing with a few people, I’d guess you’ll need more drill.

I agree with Drew.

The drill mentioned (DeWalt 20v Max DCD771) might be ok with smaller hole and with not too thick ice, or else this drill may not have enough power/torque. I'd say you are better with a DeWalt 20v Max DCD996 drill, if you stay with DeWalt.

You drill is rated 340 UWO. That’s about 500 inch lb of torque.
You may be able to turn a 6” but never a 8” auger.
Also your battery amp size has a lot to do with being able to sustain torque.

I wouldn’t run anything less than a 4 amp battery.

That drill on the number 1 setting will work fine. The issue is the battery size. With that said it comes with 2 batteries and with a 6” auger you will get about 20 holes in 18” of ice. As for power it will turn an 8” auger no problem but in 18” of ice you might only get 8-10 holes per battery. So depending on your fishing style it might fine for you. I am answering with experience with that exact drill.

Did you find a conversion on-line for UWO to torque. According to DeWalt UWO is a better way to measure performance. I am not sure if that is true or if they are being purposely obtuse. They also rate their driils as '20v' but, if you look at how they do it, they are the same as others rate as 18V. Misleading, I think. I have Ridgid but that sort of misleading advertising turns me off a DeWalt.

It took me a while to figure out the effect of battery ratings on torque. i.e am-hrs. My bud and I bought the same Ridgid packages a few years ago. They came with 1.5 amp-hr batts. I didn't realize that he had upgraded to a 4 amp-hr. His 6" auger was going thru the ice no prob while mine was stalling out several times. I was attributing that to my blades being dull or maybe the blade angle being a bit off. Then I realized that the torque drops off faster as the current flows in a 1.5 amp-hr batt than in a 4 amp-hr batt. Apparently the 4 amp-hr batts have 2 rows of cells in parallel, which means less internal resistance than with the single row in the 1.5 amp hr batts.

I am posting this here in case others don't realize the effect of the battery rating on sustained torque while drilling.

That's great info Knuguy!

DeWalt is the only manufacturer that rates their drill in UWO. There is absolutely no reason for this as inch pounds of torque is a standard and is measurable and repeatable.
Ask yourself why any company would suddenly use a different measurement and rate their drills at peak torque not sustained torque like the top manufacturers. When you answer that you will know why not to buy DeWalt.

I used to buy everything DeWalt back 15-20 years ago when I was a contractor. There are way better options now.

No matter what you use your battery has to be able to keep up with the drill.
Best explanation I have ever heard came from a master electrician.
This of a garden hose. The speed of the flow of water is like volts. If you double the size of the hose and the speed of the water stays the same as the smaller hose you still get more volume. Volume is like Amps.
Volts are like the speed of flow of electricity. Amps is the volume. If you don’t have enough volume your drill cannot perform at peak capacity no matter how fast the electricity is delivered.

I used the same drill you have with a 5ahr battery, I used it for a several years using a 5" auger and it drilled a lot of holes in 18" of ice, but not so good with an 8" auger. I now have the 996 with 5ahr battery, using 8" auger with 18" of ice I get about 16 holes.

Did you find a conversion on-line for UWO to torque. According to DeWalt UWO is a better way to measure performance. I am not sure if that is true or if they are being purposely obtuse. They also rate their driils as '20v' but, if you look at how they do it, they are the same as others rate as 18V. Misleading, I think. I have Ridgid but that sort of misleading advertising turns me off a DeWalt.

It took me a while to figure out the effect of battery ratings on torque. i.e am-hrs. My bud and I bought the same Ridgid packages a few years ago. They came with 1.5 amp-hr batts. I didn't realize that he had upgraded to a 4 amp-hr. His 6" auger was going thru the ice no prob while mine was stalling out several times. I was attributing that to my blades being dull or maybe the blade angle being a bit off. Then I realized that the torque drops off faster as the current flows in a 1.5 amp-hr batt than in a 4 amp-hr batt. Apparently the 4 amp-hr batts have 2 rows of cells in parallel, which means less internal resistance than with the single row in the 1.5 amp hr batts.

I am posting this here in case others don't realize the effect of the battery rating on sustained torque while drilling.

Hey Knuguy.

This article gives a good over view of approximate conversion and why UWO sucks for those that need true max torque numbers. The highest torque is what we need for turning an auger not the average UWO (unit watts out)


https://www.protoolreviews.com/max-watts-out/

thx for posting that. I guess I'm not the only one who was confused and turned off by DeWalts use of UWO. Maybe their intentions were good in using UWO but their use of peak torque when their competitors are using sustained torque is, IMO, a blatant attempt to mislead i.e false advertising.

I did read that article but the author's analogy with football nearly stopped me from reading any further!

What unit one buys depends a lot on the deals to be had, I guess. My bud and I both bought Ridgid because they had a good deal on at the time. My bro bought a DeWalt because there was a good deal on a DeWalt pkg when he was looking. One of my batts conked out so I was happy to have a Ridgid with their 'lifetime guarantee'. I got a replacement gratis.

I understand electricity quite well as it pertains to house circuits and the like. I just had thought of a batt as having circuitry with cells working in //.

996 is on sale right now on Amazon. Tool only , 159$

Dewalt 996

highly recommended to go with a brushless motor too. When sourcing my drill out i found the k-drill website was pretty good at giving a rundown of what drills worked. Not sure if it still does.

That’s a good price, if you’ve already got a 5ah

I have exactly the same drill with exactly same 20 Volt battery and I use this with an Electric winch ( WARN 500Lbs) and I use this to pull up my ice fishing gear ( the entire sled) up to my pickup truck's bed. ( The pull behind sled when loaded the weight is around 250 -300 Lbs)

This 20 Volt battery drives this Winch very well and it's strong enough doing it a couple of times without charging up the battery.

I suggest have another spare battery with you just in case it would lose power drilling more holes.
But as the guys say ......probably will be strong enough to drill 6 inches holes.... ....but I'm not sure anything bigger.

But you can try. But always have a spare extra 20Volt battery with you.