About Us

Welcome to Professional Power Tool Guide. We are a small group of professional contractors and do-it-yourselfers that have pooled together our knowledge to provide useful information as a resource for tool shoppers and enthusiasts.

We have four members, Bill, Warren, Eric and Mike, who constantly test, research and stay up to date on the power tool industry. We are also the ones who monitor and keep up the site. We then have five professional contractors that help us with tool reviews and feedback. In addition, using their contacts, we have access to many professional contractors for constant great sources of information. Lastly, we continually invite average do-it-yourself tool users to help us do reviews and give input.

All contributors to our site use power tools in varying degrees. That’s what makes our site so interesting. You get input from novices all the way to Professionals! Our goal is to offer objective information and insight on the latest new tools, along with the vast array of existing brands. Our tool reviews are always done by both do-it-yourself tool enthusiasts and professional contractors.

About Us

Bill- Bill started in the construction business in 1963 and he is hoping to retire within a couple of years. In this time he has been with the same company. His current company deals with large projects such as skyscrapers in downtown Chicago. They perform anything from rebuild, demos to new construction. He started out as an apprentice carpenter and then became a Journeyman carpenter. As time has passed he has worked his way up to a carpenter Foreman. Besides Bill bringing a lot of experience from on site construction, he brings a lot of value about power tools. He understands what professional tools should incorporate to let workers be more efficient. He sees workers all day long using tools, so he understands what makes a good tool, and the difference between a worker doing all the work or the power tool doing the work.

Each tool we review, we always have Bill take a look at the tool first. He looks at the balance, the features, and more to determine if we should even proceed forward with the review. He also brings more to the table, but I think you get the point.

Bill lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago with his wife.

Warren – Warren started in 1983. he worked for the same company Bill did. In 2000 he moved companies and now deals with smaller commercial projects such as strip malls and more. He started out as a carpenter in the early 80’s. Currently he is a project manager and runs the show.

Warren performs the same function as Bill, but brings a different perspective on tools. Since he runs job sites, he looks at the tool from a price stand point. He see which tools stand up in real conditions, he see hows users react to different tools and how much a power tool is really worth.

Currently Warren lives in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago with his son.

Eric- Eric started out in construction in 1992 and worked as a laborer for the same company as Bill and Warren. In 1998 he left the company to work in residential construction. Currently Eric balances two careers. He still works in the residential area for a local residential contractor. In this business he does everything from demo to remodeling. Oh yea, his other career is unrelated to the construction business, actually it is rather boring so we won’t go into that.

Eric deals with most of the networking with contractors about power tools and more. He also does some of the writing for the website. Currently he lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago with his wife and son.

Mike- Mike is a recent addition to our team. We added Mike to our team because he is more of a “Weekend Warrior.” He doesn’t have as much experience as Bill, Warren and Eric, but he helps us keep things in perspective. Some people who read Professional Power Tool Guide are beginners. Mike helps us review the tools in a way that a beginner might understand and without all the jargon. Mike is our main editor. He tries to make sure material is presented in an easy to understand format. Trust us, if Mike can learn about a certain power tool anyone can. Mike lives in the Crystal Lake area with his wife and three daughters.

Our Contractors- We work closely with local contractors in the chicagoland area. As noted above, we work very close with five local contractors, but have relationships with far more. Our connection with these contractors is extremely important to us as they provide vital feedback. When we review tools for our text and video portion, our goal it to show readers the features and benefits of each power tool. We also want to show them the tool in action. Once we are done, we pass these tools onto our contractors to use. We try to match the each power tool to the contractor and the work they are performing. In return, these contractors get to use these tool and provide us vital feedback, such as problems they incurred, other features and benefits we might not have noticed. Then they also provide us their overall opinion. These contractors let us do “True Power Tool Reviews.”

Q&A

What is your power tool review process?

We feel we offer a unique way to review power tools. We use a four step process utilizing a different approach in each step.

Once we get a power tool, the first thing we do is hand it of to Bill. Bill runs the tools through some of his own tests. He also uses his experience to see if it is a practical tool, how well it is designed and other features of the tool.
Our next step is two pass the tool off to Warren. Warren looks at the cost of the tool, such as cost of ownership. He uses his knowledge of real world experiences to see how these tools have held up on the job, site such as dependability. His major objective is to really look at the cost of ownership and value of the tool.
We write the review and create a video. We use the information we get from Bill and Warren, plus our thoughts on the tool and try to focus our reviews on that information. Sometimes it is hard to keep the videos and text reviews short and to the point. If you’re like some of us here, we have short tension spans. Our goal is to cover the major aspects of the tool to show you it in use and cover some of the features and benefits.
The last item we do is pass the power tools onto various contractors. We let these contractors use and abuse the power tools on real world applications. After they have used these tools, we always get get a report back from them about what they liked or didn’t like about the tool. They also report any problems they observed. We use this information on our text portion of the reviews. If it is something we need to include, we go back to our text version of the review and make any updates.

What makes PPTG different?

We actually test our power tools. We try to give a different perspective on each tool. Believe it or not, we actually have a long process for each review. As you can see from the answer above. Each review is our own review. We also have a lot of experience and a diverse background of guys who help out with each review. Again we don’t just write an article and post an amazon link, we actually use the tools.

Why don’t we see Bill and Warren in the videos?

Bill and Warren are employed by companies that are union. Even though this site is a hobby for them, technically they should not hold other jobs.

Why don’t Bill and Warren take the tools to their job sites to test?

Both the companies they work for are Union jobs. Only site bought tools are allowed to be used.

How can I follow PPTG?

Besides visiting our website we have three main ways to stay in touch and follow us. You can subscribe directly through your RSS feed by visiting our RSS Feed. You can also sign up to have our new posting sent directly to your in box. Each time we post new items on PPTG, you will receive an email with the information that was posted. We respect your time and your privacy, so all your information is never shared. You can subscribe here – Email Updates. Another way to stay up to date is through our feed-burner account. This allows you to use your favorite reader which will automatically keep you updated. You can see more about this under our feedburner reader.

Don’t forget you can sign up for our monthly newsletter.

If you still need more options, you can visit any of our social network sites we contribute to such as Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Plurk and more.

If you would like to contact us to ask questions or leave comments, please contact us here.

DO WE ACCEPT DONATIONS? Yes we do! It always helps to get a small stipend now and then to help keep up the site! We would much rather have you use social bookmarks for us, or just spread the word about our site to all of your friends!

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