Hehe, yeah, the more metal in my tools, or, anything for that matter, the better! I won't even touch one of the new cordless drills that have plastic chucks. Plastic bodies I'll live with, but the chuck absolutely must be all steel. I'm sure the plastic ones are just as good, but... I dunno :P I gotta say, if these old drills had a reverse switch on them, I'd sell all my modern drills in a heartbeat.
I was really scared to even use that big Thor when I first got it, for fear of the bodily harm it could inflict on me... And, it doesn't have a trigger that turns off when you let go either. So, if it slips from my hands, it's gonna be a mad-dash to unplug it before it cripples me. Its cord is something like 20 feet long too X_X
My big green Thor is a force of nature! Not only is the motor honking huge to begin with, if you look at the front of the drill, you can see there are 2 axles in the case. Meaning starting with massive motor, it's then gear reduced THREE times to final drive. I bet I could hook this drill up to the transmission in my car and drive it. (until I ran out of extension cord that is :P) And it's got a 5/8" chuck. So I could put as big a bit as I want in there, if I REALLY wanted to kill myself.
Hahaha, fantastic :P I figured it was for some sort of finish removing... but it's supposed to strip paint off of wood... I guess, maybe if you had a slow enough turning drill it wouldn't hurt the wood... but, it wouldn't hurt the paint either at that point, I suspect :P