New Ice Auger
 

Being an avid ice fisherman I have acquired more than my share of equipment over the years. I like to fish for perch and normally use a fin bor 4 1/2" hand auger for that. I have an old Mora 5" which needs new blades and I don't use it anymore. When I fish for blue gills, sunnies and crappie I need the bigger hole and have a gas powered 6" tanaka powered nils master gas auger. Lots of people have migrated over to electric so I bought a Dewalt DCD995 cordless brushless drill kit with two 4.0 AH batteries and charger. I had a custom machined 16" adapter made that screws directly into the Dewalt chuck spindle and accepts a fin bor auger. I bought a new 6" fin bor and can now use that or my 4 1/2" on the set up. I tried it out yesterday and cut at least thirty 6" holes through well over a foot of solid ice. At the end of the day I still had full charge indicated on the battery. This thing cuts like a champ and is far lighter, quieter and easier to use than that gas auger. There is a side handle that comes with the drill to help offset the torque. No more gas and oil to deal with.

I have been wanting to get some kind of cordless drill ice auger but no more ice than we get here I am not sure I could justify the cost of the auger plus a new cordless drill to run it. I do have a makita 18V lithium drill that might work but I am not sure

Any cordless drill will work. The extra torque and battery longevity gets better with the high end cordless brush-less drills but even a old 12V drill will cut ice but probably not all day. The clam plate in one version will allow using a cordless drill without having to remove the chuck. Unfortunately they are all sold out nationally for the season. There are often adapters sold that can adapt a drill or drill clam plate to any existing make of hand auger so buying a new auger often isn't necessary. In my case though I elected to have a custom machined adapter made that threads directly onto the drive spindle after the chuck was removed and bought a new fin bor hand auger to complete the package. I have no plans to ever use that new drill for anything other than an ice auger.

As an edit I fished for flat fish today and was on about 16" of ice. I cut somewhere between 50 and 100 holes and still had 2/3 original power as indicated on the battery LED's. My set up is a beast.
Today I cut 75 holes and then loaned to a buddy who filled his gas auger with gas and forgot to put the cap on the tank resulting in a mess in the back of his truck and an empty gas auger. The thing still had 2/3 power when I stuck the battery in the charger.

Cost of the new set up:

Dewalt DCD995m2 drill kit- $249.00
Custom 16" machined adapter- $ 54.00
New Fin Bor 6" hand auger- $95.00

So for roughly $400 bucks I have a replacement for my aging high end Nils Master/ Tanaka gas power auger that cost new $600 to $650