Wake the Lakes Lifehack for the Week: Five Hand Tools It’s OK to Buy Cheap

Tools can be extremely expensive, and it’s easy to assume that spending more will get you higher-quality tools. While that’s often true, the fact is you don’t always need a tool of higher quality.

–Pliers: Unless you work regularly on projects that require great precision, just about any pair of slip-joint pliers will do the jobs you need done. If you do a bit more around the house, you might invest in a cheap set of pliers that offer a pair of nose pliers (for tight spots) and a groove joint option (for irregularly-shaped objects)—but again, go cheap.
–Hacksaw body: Hacksaws are necessary if you ever need to cut stuff like metal sheets or PVC piping, but the key thing to remember here is that the saw blades are replaceable, and the saw blades are really all that matters. Buy the cheap one, then put your money where it matters—into the saw blade.
–Rubber mallet: A rubber mallet is a pretty simple tool, and it’s very hard to make one that is so cheap it’s not at least basically useful. If you’ve tackled your first-ever project that needs a rubber mallet, you can safely assume you won’t need it again for several years. So, buy the cheapest one you can find and you will never look back.
–Hammer: Hammers are dead simple. Heavy thing on top, long handle to grip, pound stuff into submission. Unless you know the difference between a framing hammer and a ripping hammer, you probably just need a claw hammer—and you probably don’t need to spend much on it. The key here is how often you use your hammer. Even the cheapest hammer you pick up at a hardware store will get most basic jobs done, but the cheaper hammers will be louder, and will send some very powerful vibrations through your arm as you use them. More expensive claw hammers will absorb more of that shock for you. So the key is whether you’re hammering constantly and icing your arm afterward or if you’re only using it occasionally. If the latter, go cheap and never look back.
–Pry Bars: A pry bar is just a hunk of metal designed to slip between things and give you the torque necessary to remove them. For most folks and most projects, any cheap pry bar will do the job well enough, whether it’s prying up nails or ripping up old flooring. The simple nature of the tool means that there’s not much fanciness you can add to it.