air tools

i'm looking at buying a compressor and rattle gun/airsocket and all the impact sockets. what are some good brands and what are they worth?

Cheers.

first question is can you claim any of it on your tax as work tools?(even if they are not) as far as air tools go i have a snap on impact gun that is the ducks guts in my opinion.cost alot so next best is ingersollrand for impact guns, air rachets and palm drives. my air rachet and palm drive are both IR. as far as sockets go it comes back to money again. do you want to spend 40 dollars a socket for snap on or 100 bucks for a set of sidchrome/cgl/KC/blackhawk?
compressors again its how much do you want to spend? again IR are good but then these days so are a lot of the cheaper ones on the market. bigger cfm for a few more dollars is better than a cheap little one as it will piss you off having to wait for air to build up after 2 wheel nuts. and if you want to spray paint you need big cfm. hope this helps
wombat

i'm probably not so fussed with the compressor, as you said a lot of the cheap ones aren't too bad. Primarily its the sockets i'd want to be decent. I don't want to be rounding wheel nuts or snapping sockets! Sidchrome make good impact sockets? No, unfortunately I can't claim it on my tax.

Would a 2.5hp compressor be enough?

Cheers.

mate with the sockets as long as they are single hex you won't have a problem rounding things off. do you want a full set or just job specific sizes? when i was doing cars i just bought a 3/4" and a 21mm from the snapon man(42 bucks each) and they will last a life time. if you want a whole set go to your local repco etc and see what they have going. with the compressor its not so much the Hp as the cfm that you should look at. i've got a 8cfm (i think) comp and i can do 3 wheel nuts before i have to let it catch up, which is not that much of a problem at home but
would piss you off big time in a workshop. and to spray paint anything large you would need a 12cfm at least. belive me once you have a compressor you will be temted to paint something eventualy.
wombat

I have a 3hp with a 65l tank that flows 13cfm and I haven't had to wait while working (yet!). As wombat said, if you don't want to wait for it to fill or you're spray painting it's worth getting one with a larger tank (not necessarily higher HP though).

In terms of CFM, I found when researching them that companies will over quote the figure.

When comparing prices make sure that everything is equal. Some places don't include regulators, water traps or fittings in their quote price, even though they are essential.

Cheers
Jim