The Next Tool for an Apartment Tool Kit

  The next tool that a small tool kit needs is a hand drill, I suggest a 1/2in Hammer Drill like this one.  It is cheap and will do most everything an apartment dweller or first time home owner needs.

   When you go to a tool store to get you drill there is a vast universe of hand drills available, most are cordless with key less chucks. ( go to a tool store, not your local super duper everything store, buy tools at a tool store, toilet paper at a toilet paper store)  Why do I suggest this type of drill as the one to start, several reasons:

1. A small time user is someone that drills a few holes now and then, projects like book cases and putting up shelves in the hallway etc.. A decent cordless drill is an expensive tool to have sitting around for months at a time unused.  Also if a battery drill is not used regularly the user will find the batteries flat when they go to use the tool.  Expensive drills come with fast chargers, but the cheaper drills take a couple of hours to charge. Cheaper battery drills also have much fewer inch pounds of torque.  Go corded, since the drill is a low power tool you don't need an expensive high grade extension cord either.  Besides, in an apartment there is probably an outlet chose to the task at hand.

2. Why hammer, because lots of apartments are concrete block or poured concrete.  If you want to put up a hat rack by the door you will be drilling into concrete.  The proper tool makes drilling concrete a breeze.

3.  Keyed chuck, cheaper drills don't have very good key less chucks.  Keyed chucks are nearly always metal, since they are not stylish they are better quality and so will last a life time.

   As your tool box expands your 1/2 inch hammer drill will always have use even when it is replaced by cordless drills, this drill becomes the second drill you use to drill holes while driving screws with the cordless, making it so you don't have to keep changing bits on your cordless.

   My first drill was a B&D 3/8 variable speed corded drill that I got when I was a teenager.  Hammer drills were unusual and expensive in those days. I think my drill cost about $39.00 in those days so drills haven't really gone up in price at all. It was a Christmas present and I used it for at least 30 years before it finally gave up the ghost.  I killed it using it to spin a sanding disk on a very large project.  The drill would still be here if I hadn't abused it by over working it on a continuous cycle and burning out the motor.

   There are plenty of 1/2 corded hammer drills on the market.  Generally the cheaper ones are old fashioned looking and a little bit big in your hand but this is not the tool you buy to drill dozens of holes a day, this is the starter tool you buy to drill a couple dozen holes per year.

   Remember the right tool makes the impossible, possible. 

Apartment Tool Kit

 The tools that you have in your shop have a big impact on the type and quality of work that you do.  Poor work shouldn't always be blamed on the tools, but the right tool does make it easier to do good work. And, sometimes the task is impossible without the proper tool.

   So for the next while I am going to look at tools and “tool kits”.  Chris Schwarz has a very good and well expalined set of tools that he puts into his Anarchist Tool Chest.  His tools are the tools of a cabinet/furniture maker. We could look at tools for wood carvers and tools for the folks that spend all their time turning things on a lathe, and we will. Aside from special tools for special branches of woodworking there certain tools that everyone that works wood needs. We will work toward building that kit over the next little while.


The tool kit I want to start with is the "basic kit", this is the one that an apartment dweller might have, or a young person just starting out. This tool box was the one that I made when I went away to live in a dormitory at university, many years ago and many of these tools were in that original kit. If you think that a tool kit is extra weight that won't pay off, you are wrong, I traded time and tools for cookies and/or beer on a very regular basis. In a college dorm room their beds and chairs to fix, drawers to adjust and dozens of other little things that are not a high enough priority for the school's maintenance crews to get to in a timely fashion but still need to be repaired to enable life to function smoothly.

The box is about 30 years old and has had a couple of serious repairs done to it over the ages. There is a slide in bottom compartment where wrenches and the little saw live.

The contents of the tool box reflect the general house care tools that my wife likes to have at hand. My shop has all the tools you can think of but Eva likes to have these in an easy to access tool kit in the garage, that way she knows where her tools are when she wants them without having to search around in my shop.
Contents:
adjustable wrench, multi fit socket wrench
screws drivers, Red and Green Roberson, two multi-tip and a paint can opener type.
pliers, vise-grips, wire striper
round file
one very sharp 1/4 chisel
square, pencil. ywo tape measures, one imperial,one metric
saw
hammer
pruning shears
scissors, utility knives,
cheap block plane, very sharp
couple of boxes with mixed screws and fasteners.


When the task is greater than this kit can deal with, we work together on it and bring the speciality tools from downstairs to bear on the challenge. Once the full shop comes into play the only limiting factor is skill.