StirWhip - Review

This is one of those odd little tools that has been floating around the shop for some time now. Prazi sent us one a looong time ago (probably close to a year, yikes), and we've used it off and on since then. We've always liked it, but it wasn't until our recent tile-a-palooza that we really got into the StirWhip way of life. Over the course of about two weeks, we tiled two bathroom floors and a tub surround. That was a month ago and now we're starting another bathroom and we realized it's well past time we spread the word on this valuable little item.

The StirWhip is a very bizarre mixing paddle. It fits into a drill chuck just like any other paddle, but the similarities stop right about there. Where most other paddles are large and metal, this one is small and soft (Actually not all that soft, but softer than metal). Because the mixing is done with a bunch of small, strange fingers, there's less strain on the drill and because of their flexibility, it's easy to dig out the bottom of the bucket and get all that stuff that normal paddles have a hard time with.

There are two sizes available an 8" one and an 18" one. We used the longer one because that fit our needs, but if you're constantly mixing small amounts of epoxy and things like that, you'd probably be interested in the smaller version. You can see from the images that they start to take a beating after a while, but even with the fingers losing shape, we haven't seen any loss of functionality with it.

And we've been mixing thin set with it, so we can vouch that it's up for the heavy-duty beat-down. Don't let the semi-flimsy look of the thing fool you.

It's light and also very easy to clean (which we fell behind on, so ours got all gunked up. But if we had the 20 minutes to spend, we could get it looking pretty good again.

The price is right, too. The longer one is less than $15 and the small one is about $10 or so. It's a great little item and we wholeheartedly recommend it anyone who does their share of mixing.

At Amazon

Share this Article with others:

Gorilla Tape - Tough and Wide - Review - Jun 03, 2011
Scotch Tough Duct Tape - Special Forces Unit - Mar 24, 2011
Duo-Fast Jet-Tac Tack Strip Epoxy - Dec 08, 2010

Came straight to this page? Visit Tool Snob for all the latest news.

Posted by Doug Mahoney at April 30, 2012 5:02 AM