May 29, 2009

Easy Chamfer - Review

We get sent some strange stuff to review, but the Easy Chamfer is by far the oddest. But odd doesn't mean bad, it just means, well, odd. The Easy Chamfer is a tool that fits on the end of a drill that allows you to chamfer the ends of a pvc pipe. And it looks sort of like a space station.

The Easy Chamfer is extremely well built and consists a base plate with two handles, three adjustable rollers, and a conical bit that fits into any drill. To operate the Easy Chamfer, you fit the rollers snug around your PVC piping and then activate the drill which spins the bit and plunge into the end of the pipe. At this point you just have to work the tool around the edge of the pipe, giving the end a nice chamfer.

The first thing we noticed about the Easy Chamfer is that it's not easy at all. In fact, it takes quite a bit of getting used to. We tested it out a number of times and it took quite a while before we even got close to the results in the video. Time and time again, our chamfers kept coming out uneven and with little shavings of Schedule 40 hanging off in every direction. After a while though, we started to get the hang of it and came up with a few acceptable chamfers. But still as difficult as it was to get used to the tool, it was still far, far easier and faster that chamfering with a file. And like we said, this is all initial difficulty, a byproduct of using a very unfamiliar tool. Spend a little time with the Easy Chamfer and you'll probably be like the guy in the video, minus the accent.

There is no question as to the item's durability. It's built to last; the body is made of thick metal plate and the rollers are of a very dense plastic. The spinning blade also has the look of a high-quality router blade.

This isn't a tool for the DIYer or even the residential carpenter. This is something for the industrial/commercial crowd, people who are putting down pipe after pipe after pipe. The price only reinforces the niche quality of the tool. The Easy Chamfer sells for around $200. It sounds like a lot of money, but like we always say, if it's something that you're going to use and it replaces a slow way of doing things, it's not going to take long before you make that money back.

There is a video of the Easy Chamfer here and more info on this unique tool at easychamfer.com