Dremel - Praise and Lament

I'm usually not too married to a particular brand of tool, but a quick scan around the shop seems to have revealed that I have seemed to have collected more tools that have the word "Dremel" stamped on them than any other tool that I have.

Now I'm probably not what you would consider your typical Dremel user since none of those tools are the rotary tools that Dremel is famous for. I do have a rotary tool, though it is a very cheap no name brand.

Rather, I seemed to be attracted to Dremel's more specialized tools. A quick inventory of the shop revealed that I possess:

• a Moto-Saw
• a Trio
• a Multi-Max
• a Saw-Max
• an Ultra-Saw

All of these tools get frequent use in my shop. For example I use the Trio for those very fine routing tasks which is just too small for my standard router to tackle, the Moto-Saw is a very portable scroll saw that does excellent fine detail work and the Ultra-Saw is my go to tool for cutting plywood. 

Ultra-Saw Meets Plywood

With the amount of use that these tools get, I end up having to regularly replace expendable items, such as blades, bits, and so on - and  there's where my troubles seem to start.

I started noticing that Dremel has a bit of a habit of dropping some of their least popular tools from their product offering. While I can understand the business reason for dropping a low selling tool from a product line, it almost seems that when Dremel stops selling a tool, it also stops producing all the various bits and pieces that you need to keep using your tool. 

For example, the Trio seems to have been removed from Dremel's product line fairly recently and for the Moto-Saw, while still on Dremel's website, finding the saw and the replacement blades for it has started to be very hard item to find in the stores these days.

Almost as rare as hen's teeth

It has gotten to the point where I snap up every bit and blade for those tools whenever I happen to see them (usually in the clearance bin of a hardware store). I fear that at some point my family will start to think that I have become some strange Dremel hoarder.

Hence the lament - I know Dremel produced thousands of those tools. Being that these tools were sold fairly recently, there are going to be thousands of perfectly good tools that will eventually end up "in the back of the closet" or worse simply because blades and bits have become impossible to find.

With the usefulness that I am getting just from my Trio alone, when I finally use up my last bit for it, that will be a bit of a tough pill to swallow.

Will that eventually turn me away from Dremel? Probably not, I'm always intrigued by the new and interesting stuff that they always seem to come out with.

Now if I can only get enough money together to buy of those neat Dremel 3-D printers.....