Stocking Your Toolbox Part 1: Hammers, Screwdrivers and Keyhole Saw

You know there’s an old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well sometimes the problem is a nail, and you need the good old hammer. This little guy here is great for hanging pictures if you want to drive those little nails in the picture hooks, works really well.
For bigger jobs you might want to have one of these 16 lb framing hammers. This one will drive the big 16 penny nails, 2x4s and that sort of thing. And then, of course, you got the big guy here. This is great for driving stakes into the ground. For instance, if you’re setting up concrete forms you want to get them good and solid. This will drive those stakes in so that you can nail everything together really well. Sledge hammers also come in the large size. I don’t have one right now but it’s got the long handle 9lb head on it. It’s good for breaking up concrete. So, different kinds of hammers, different jobs. You need to have at least a couple of these in your tool box.

One of the most popular and useful tools is the screwdriver. Now there’s a couple of different kinds. Today we’re going to talk about the slot blade or flat blade screwdriver. And as you can see it’s got a flat blade. This fits into the slot of the screw and you can unscrew it or screw it in. Screws are used to hold pretty much everything together from kitchen cabinets to cars. What’s important is to get the right size blade for the screw. So, if you have a small screw you want this blade to get a good bite on the slot. If you’re working in a tight space, this little stubby screw driver works really well. You can get that into very, very close areas. And, you got your little bitty guy. This is good for electronics, computers, that sort of thing. And then of course the big screw driver. This is the hefty one for those large sized screws. Again the important thing when you’re using a screw driver, a flat blade screw driver particularly, is to get one that fits in the slot of the screw so that you get the best leverage and you don’t chew that screw slot up because if you do that it’s hard to get it out.

And today we’re going to talk about something that a lot of people don’t have, but you’ll find very useful. It’s called a keyhole saw. Now you’ll see that this is a little bit different in shape than most saws. What this is used for is primarily for cutting in very small areas or removing wallboard. What’ll happen is if say that you want to put a new light switch or an outlet or phone jack or something in, you don’t want to use a sledge hammer and knock out a big chunk out of your drywall. So what you’ll do is you’ll drill a small hole and then you use this keyhole saw to get in there and saw out the shape that you need from the wallboard. It’s very, very handy for that sort of thing so if you’re going to be doing any electrical work in particular or if you’re gonna get into that wall to work on a plumbing leak or anything of that nature, the keyhole saw is a real, real handy tool.