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If you’ve ever tried to tackle a DIY project with just the hammer and screwdriver you bought at a convenience store, you’ve already learned the most important lesson: The right tools make all the difference.
The difference in effort it takes to complete a job when you have exactly the tool you need for it is startling. There are plenty of fancy power tools that you probably didn’t know about, but the humble hand tool can be transformative, too. If you’re planning some work around the homestead, consider picking up some of these simple but powerful specialty tools that will make your project easier.
Cabinet jack
I’m a solo DIY kind of person; I hate asking for help or relying on other people’s schedules, so I usually plow ahead and try to do everything myself. The first time I attempted to install cabinets in my kitchen alone was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life—if you’ve ever tried to position a wall cabinet and hold it in place so you can drive a set screw, you know my pain.
Enter cabinet jacks: simple, adjustable platforms that raise a cabinet box to the correct height so you can have both hands free to drive the screws into place. They instantly transform a nightmarish job into a pretty straightforward project. And they can be used to lift just about anything into position, so you can get a lot more use out of these than you think.
Magnetic pickup
You don’t have to be especially clumsy (note: I totally am especially clumsy) to experience the horror of dropping a bunch of small screws or washers when you’re working. Picking up tiny things with your hands is slow and frustrating, and some of these tiny bits of metal will absolutely slide into every nook and cranny available. Extra points if you just dropped the unique screw that came with a product that you’ll never figure out how to replace.
A magnetic pickup tool like this one is the answer. Flexible, extendable, and with a guide light, this tool will make finding and retrieving lost fasteners extremely fast and easy, so you don’t waste any more time on your hands and knees muttering as you blindly search for a lost screw.
Air wedge
Sometimes you just need to wedge something under whatever you’re working on, either to get it level or to open up some space underneath. You can monkey around with a bunch of shims or pieces of spare wood to engineer a wobbly solution, or you can use one of these air wedges—inflatable shims that slide under whatever you’re trying to lift and inflate to the perfect dimension. These are especially useful when you’re trying to level something, because you can slide one underneath, slap a level on top, and inflate until you get it perfect.
Augur bit
I like to re-use old lumber for framing projects—no one’s going to see the ugly wood, and it seems like a waste to toss it. But that means I’ve had to work around a lot of embedded screws and nails, and it can really be a pain in the butt. If you’ve ever started drilling into a wall and hit a screw in one of the studs, you also know how it can present a real problem if your choices of where to drill are limited.
Enter the augur bit. This thing will chew through those screws and nails with ease, allowing you to create fresh holes even in old studs or other lumber that are riddled with the fasteners of projects past.
Reversible wrench
When you’re working with a combination of squared-off bolts and round things (like pipes), you find yourself swapping out the wrench you’re using constantly. That means carrying an extra tool, and constantly searching for the other one. Unless you have a reversible, adjustable wrench. The reversible jaw means you can switch between bolts and rounded stock with ease, using just one tool.
Screw removal pliers
Stripped screws will strip you of your sanity. When the head gets so chewed up no bit in the universe will grab it, your whole project can be derailed as you spend hours trying to convince it to give up and come back out. Unless you have a pair of extractor pliers in your toolbox. These pliers are designed specifically to grab onto stripped and broken screws and twist them out with relative ease.
Cartridge puller
If you have a leaky faucet or shower handle, the cartridge in the faucet has likely failed. If you’ve ever tried to remove that cartridge for a little money-saving DIY plumbing, you likely walked away with a new appreciation for plumbers, because they can be a real pain to pull. Unless you have a cartridge puller, a nifty device designed to latch onto faucet cartridges and give you the necessary leverage to yank them out. Different faucets need different pullers, so you’ll first need to identify the brand you’re dealing with (for example, this cartridge puller works with a few specific Moen models), but it’s worth it if you value your time.
Hook and pick
You may not think you have a use case for a hook and pick set, but once you have one, you’ll never stop using it. I’ve used these dental-looking tools to scrape, to remove small, delicate parts, to grab onto things in tight spaces, and to bend and manipulate clasps on jewelry and other items. They’re also lifesavers if you have tangled necklaces or other chains, as they make grabbing onto the tiny links really easy. Trust me, you’ll use these more than you think.
Hand masker
If you’re going to be painting several rooms in your house or putting down protection on your floors ahead of a project, you’re going to be applying a lot of masking tape to protect surfaces. A hand masker makes that part of the job a lot easier. Just load up your roll of tape, and the masker lets you apply long strips without having to deal with twisted tape or crooked applications that have to be lifted off and re-applied. (You can whip up a DIY version of this using a paint roller—it’s not quite as easy to use as the real deal, but it’ll still make it a bit easier to tape up your work area.)
Magnetizer
For a long time, I was always surprised when I picked up a certain screwdriver in my tool chest and discovered it was magnetized—it saved me from losing screws plenty of times, and made setting the screw in place a lot easier. Guess what? You can magnetize—and de-magnetize—most screws and bits using a magnetizing/demagnatizing tool. It can also magnetize blades or other thin implements to be used as a quick parts retrieval tool.
Angle clamp
Have you ever tried to drill or screw two pieces of wood together at a 90° angle? Fun it is not. But if you have an angle clamp like the Can-Do clamp, it’s a lot easier. This clever clamp lets you hold a variety of angles together so you can easily drill starter holes and then secure everything without losing your mind as things slip and spin out of place.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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