Five Things That Earned Their Spot

I counted the tools in my garage last weekend. Not on purpose. I was looking for a 10mm socket—which, if you’ve ever owned one, you know is always missing.

I stopped counting at eighty. Eighty tools. Drawers full. Pegboard full. A rolling cabinet I bought ten years ago that I still haven’t filled the right way.

Here’s the truth. Out of eighty tools, I reach for maybe five on a regular basis. The rest just sit there looking impressive.

A friend asked me last month what he should buy for his new house. He had nothing. No drill. No saw. No level. He wanted to know where to start.

I told him five things. Here they are.

Not the $39 box-store special. A real drill. Brushless motor. Decent battery. Something that doesn’t stall when you hit a knot in a two-by-four.

I use a Milwaukee M18. My neighbor swears by DeWalt. Either is fine. The point isn’t the brand. The point is the battery platform. When you pick Milwaukee or DeWalt or Makita, you’re picking an ecosystem. That same battery runs your drill, your impact driver, your circular saw, your flashlight. Buy smart once and you don’t pay again.

A good drill/driver kit with two batteries and a charger runs $150 to $250. That covers 80% of every project you’ll touch.

If you buy one tool this year, this is the one.

Most guys think a drill and an impact driver are the same tool. They’re not. A drill spins. An impact driver spins and hammers. That tiny difference matters a lot when you’re driving three-inch screws into a deck joist or lag-bolting a ledger board.

The drill does finesse work. Pilot holes. Drywall. Cabinet hinges. The impact driver does grunt work. Deck screws. Furniture assembly. Anything where you need torque without breaking your wrist.

Get them as a combo kit. Milwaukee and DeWalt both sell drill-plus-impact kits for $250 to $350 with two batteries and a charger. That’s your foundation.

This is a $10 triangle that does the work of three tools. It marks 90-degree cuts. It marks angles. It works as a straight edge for your circular saw. And it fits in your back pocket.

I bought a Swanson speed square in 2003. Still have it. Still use it. The paint is gone and one corner is dinged. It works perfectly.

Every carpenter I’ve ever watched has one of these within arm’s reach. There’s a reason.

I know. A headlamp sounds like something for camping. It’s not. It’s the most underrated tool in any workshop.

You’re under a sink. You’re in a crawl space. You’re wiring a light fixture and both hands are full. A flashlight means you’re holding it in your mouth or balancing it on something that won’t hold it. A headlamp means the light goes wherever you look. Hands free.

I use a rechargeable one from Milwaukee that clips to a hat brim. Cost about $30. There are plenty of good ones between $20 and $50. Get one with at least 300 lumens and a red-light mode so you don’t blind yourself in tight spaces.

Once you work with a headlamp, you’ll wonder how you ever worked without one.

Not everything needs a drill. Tightening a cabinet pull. Adjusting a door hinge. Swapping a light switch plate. These are hand-tool jobs.

A multi-bit screwdriver keeps six or eight tips in the handle and swaps in seconds. I carry a Klein 11-in-1. It handles Phillips, flat, square, Torx, and nut drivers all in one tool. It lives in my kitchen junk drawer. I grab it three times a week.

Cost: about $15. Lasts forever. Beats digging through a drawer full of mismatched screwdrivers every time something needs a turn.

▸ Cheap bit sets. The 100-piece sets for $12 are full of sizes you’ll never use and metal that strips on the first tough screw. Buy a 20-piece set of impact-rated bits from Milwaukee or DeWalt for $20. They last ten times longer.
▸ Cordless tools from a brand you don’t already own. Every new brand means a new battery, a new charger, and a new shelf in the garage. Stick with one platform.
▸ Anything with “as seen on TV” on the box. You know better.
▸ A table saw before you need one. It’s a big tool that takes up big space. A circular saw and a speed square handle most cuts. Wait until you have a real project that demands a table saw. Then buy one.

He bought the DeWalt combo kit. The speed square. The Klein screwdriver. And a $28 headlamp from Home Depot.

Total cost: under $350.

He called me a month later. He’d hung shelves. Mounted a TV. Fixed a wobbly deck rail. Swapped out two light fixtures. And tightened every loose hinge in his house.

He said, “I don’t know why I waited so long.”

Nobody does. That’s the thing about good tools. You don’t miss them until you have them. Then you can’t believe you ever went without.

Go build something.

— Walter