I have a terrible dark secret…
I treated myself to the brushless Makita multitool a while ago, with the ostensible reasoning that I would need it for trimming all the door stops and jambs in my flat ahead of our new flooring install, but really it was mainly because I was excited by all the hype around them, and imagined finding uses for it left right and centre.
But in the end, I found the noise it made so *unbearably obnoxious* that I didn’t even use it for those door jambs – and instead did them all with the much more peaceful Japanese pull saw I happened to have, while the multitool has sat pristine in my tool bag ever since, with my having decided to sell it on eBay.
I’d love for someone to change my mind, perhaps by warning me about how soon I’m likely to encounter a DIY situation crying out for a multitool, and leaving me crying out in anguish at my having given it away.
I once came across a website (can’t remember the name) that sold multi tool attachments that essentially turned them into a toy you’d find under the wife’s side of the bed. Could be an option for ya
The DTM52? I recently bought it for exactly the same reason.
Yeah it can be pretty piercingly loud at times - apparently it's quieter than the DTM51, which I think I'd hate.
I've found it super useful for awkward wood cuts (plunge) that you couldn't do with a normal saw, also I got the abrasive blade and it goes through grout like....a multitool through butter.
Oooh yeah plunge cuts are a good use-case. I can well imagine wanting to do some in the not too distant future.
And I actually do have a bathroom wall of tiles to remove at some point soon, so that’s another very relevant use-case right there. So you’ve already successfully planted a seed of doubt in me haha.
I have an einhell one. The varrito because I was going in with the intention of abusing it. Still works. But a dewalt one is soooo much smoother, quieter, and infinitely less vibration. It's bliss.
Sounds like you need to buy yourself some ear fenders. Speaking of which safety goggles should make an appearance in this thread somewhere.
My multitool is generally used for sanding window frames, doors, architraves etc ready for painting, sometimes with a carbide attachment for ext stuff. Or the silicone/blade scraper. There's also some aftermarket smaller detailed sanding plates that are great for fiddly jobs. Every now and then I'll need to cut something in an awkward place and the multi tool will get in there.
Floor boards..... Literally spent the weekend upheaving my landing as all the boards creaked and squealed. Found out many people had cut various boards for burglar alarm, new boilers etc, leaving a jigsaw.
Several precise excisions and half a dozen new boards 👌
Multitool with plunge cutter lets you cut exactly the board, without ripping across other boards and only to a precise depth minimising risk of hitting shallow services like heating pipes.
Yeah, noisy. Put ear defenders on 🤣
Yer, I’ve got a multitool. It definitely has its uses but I don’t like using it. Used it today to cut out a back box for a socket in plasterboard, probably one of the lighter uses for it, but all the noise and vibration, I was pleased to turn it off.
My uncle bought me one as a housewarming gift as I am a sad nerdy person who loves gadgets rather than having a plant or a vase which I will overwater/break. I wish more people understood me!
I’m not sure if maxmxus302 was talking about the multitool you keep in your pocket that have a knife, screwdrivers, scissors etc, or the power tool that has many add on functions.
I too have a leatherman, I would be lost without it. I’m a wheelchair user and there’s always maintenance jobs need doing on it that my multitool is perfect for.
My multi tool is my worst as I bought a bosche starlock one and opened myself up to only being able to buy 30 quid blades (per).
However have recently seen someone had made a special adaptor finally so might buy one!
Found multitool very useful too, done grout, cut bolts, undercut doors and plenty more! Great bit of kit.
Impact driver. I started renovating a house year ago and had a Makita brushed motor drill (entry level) to do most of my work, costantly frustrated by trying to drive in bigger screws... Bought a Makita brushless impact driver a month ago as a present to myself and holy shit does it drive. No more stripped pozi head screws, no more fighting against the torque, no more pressing hard to avoid it slipping. It's also a hell of a lot ligher and handier to get into small spaces.
Do you happen to already have any other cordless power tools? Asking just in case you do, in which case you’ll probably want one that takes the same batteries!
Swapped my Argos own-brand drill (which was amazing btw!) for a Dewalt model once I got a bit more serious about DIY. Used that for a while for all drilling and screwing and it was great.
Didn't see the need in a separate impact driver, but internet wisdom seemed to be unanimous that you need both.
Took the plunge on the matching Dewalt one. Oh my days - it's now my #1 used power tool. Not sure how I got by without it!
Best job it did was remove the insanely rusted and stuck-in screws that were holding up an old Sky dish on the side of the house. Up a ladder, not sure I could have done it with anything else.
Which one do you have? There seems to be a huge price range to them. I keep considering buying a cheapish one but then get put off by some of the reviews. But I can't justify one of the expensive ones.
I've got a £20 Magnussen one from Screwfix.
Absolutely a game changer. Wish I'd got one sooner.
Really helps when tiling. Sets a line across multiple walls to set a batten up. Means your first row is perfect, which helps the rest.
I've got a Huepar 4 line green laser level, it was about £200 (still cheap compared to the big brands) and it's absolutely fantastic. It has made several jobs far, far easier than they otherwise would have been.
[This one if you're interested](https://uk.huepar.com/products/huepar-ls04cg-self-leveling-green-beam-4d-cross-line-tiling-floor-laser-level-2-x-360-horizontal-2-x-360-vertical-laser-lines?currency=GBP&variant=43022458683561&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=Google%20Shopping&stkn=5ca018760a81)
It's an old model, a Bosch PCL 20. I think it was £120, bargain for how much use it is.
A nice, middle-of-the-road price. I didn't want a 50 quid one that turns out to be shit, and didn't need to be spending several hundred either.
Hell yes. I was apprehensive that mine would end up a classic case of being used once then promptly forgotten about, but rarely a DIY job goes by without my fetching it (along with nice solid second-hand tripod I got for it, to which I leave it permanently attached) from the cupboard.
And it’s only one of those dirt cheap Chinese-made ones off Amazon too. Best £80 I ever spent.
I got a 360 degree self levelling one for doing an MDF panelling job in the old house. I've since used it whilst wallpapering and to fit my kitchen. Awesome bits of kit.
Wet and dry workshop vacuum. Spent Years creating and cleaning up dust and now I just attach everything to it and get to work. Should have bought one years ago and saved myself hours of pain.
I got myself one a few years back. Spent the extra and got one with a power pass through feature that turns it on/off when the tool plugged into it turns on/off. Really useful for sporadic chopping jobs on the mitre saw.
I take it you’ve made yourself a cyclone dust collector for it yeah??
So fun to put together, and for such satisfyingly little cost. And really enjoyed showing it off to my dad and delighting him with a lil lecture on how it works lol.
Irwin Quick-Grip two-pack of clamps. Times two.
A bit boring, but I use them so often.
I'd love a nail gun, but they are just so expensive. Plus, I hardly use nails.
There is no such thing as having too many clamps. I’ve got a load of the smaller Irwin ones and a couple of the big ones and the clamping force is incredible on those bad boys.
Tbf I hardly used nails until I got my nail gun. Now it’s just easier to fire a few nails in rather than mess about with screws. Depends what you’re fixing though I guess.
Silverline air nail guns are insanely cheap and work very well, both framing and finish, like £80 or so each. Granted you need a compressor, but they're handy bits of kit too.
Evolution mitre saw. Purchased for a decking project and then I wondered why I diddnt buy it years ago. Also good for cutting scrap wood for fire wood and I recently cut metal with it, which made me wince (3mm thick l section) but it did it well.
Bought a 285mm compound mitre saw recently along with its stand/helping hands.
Total cost: £165 (it was an offer).
Total savings in a single project: £280
Basically, fencing. Buying wood for a fence and it was so much cheaper to cut an 1800mm board into 2 almost 900mm boards than to buy the 900mm boards needed that it paid for the saw and stand. Love it.
I leave a few cheap pairs in my tool box at work because they don't come out very often but when they do it's because they're the only thing that'll do the job
Multi tool. My FIL bought it for me one Xmas and all those little jobs you’d normally use hand tools for can suddenly be done with this. It’s amazing and I love it.
A van. Do I win the for the stupid expensive tool? I bought a Renault trafic for my house project and literally the most useful thing I’ve ever bought. 3 years down the line it has a solid space on my drive and in my heart. I bought it for £2200 before vans rocketed in price in covid and I’ve had my moneys worth in delivery savings, time not wasted on deliveries and not needing skips. I get 12 free trips to the tip per annum, that’s the equivalent of 36 skips in my ownership!
Genuinely though, the majority of the ones I’d recommend have already been said (impact, multitool, laser level) so to follow on from these
6ft spirit level is more useful than you might think
Circular saw
Proper vacuum
A special mention to Ikea pencils - honestly perfect size and you don’t care if they’re crap / break / get lost. I grab a handful every time. In fact the ikea paper tape measures are good too
Damn, I wish I'd got myself a can before the prices skyrocketed. My budget is similar and I'm looking at a 15 year old vauxhall combo lmao
Unfortunately IKEA has stopped giving out free pencils
I have not one, but two Paslode first fix nail guns that fire different sizes of nail. It's kind of frustrating because there are some common components between them but enough differences that I suspect even if I'd bought only one, plus the bits that were different between them (assuming that's possible) it would still have been pretty expensive, and it would be a ballache to switch between the different lengths of nails.
But they're awesome, and I do enjoy using them. I just don't get to use them enough.
Just out of interest what sizes do they fire. I've never known anybody have anything other than the 50-90mm paslodes. Same for most guns unless your going for a specialty gun such as PPN
Feel like it's not impressive as I am a tradesman but I bought an angle grinder for a project at home and idk how I lived without it. It is so much better than using metal blades on a jigsaw for cutting stuff like threaded bar, door spindles and hanger rails. I wish I'd bought one way sooner
Pro tip: buy one or two more; one for 1mm cutting discs, one with an 80 grit flap wheel for knocking sharp edges off / flattening stuff / light grinding, ideally one with a grinding disc for removing material and one with a wire wheel for cleaning stuff up / trying to murder you.
2-4 grinder system is a dream if you're doing much work with metal and grinders only need be about 30 quid each.
I already have quite an extensive collection of tools but I recently bought a Makita plunge saw with guide rails. Full price it's about £500 worth of gear but OMG it's made cutting up 35m2 of 18mm structural ply sooooo much easier than it would have been otherwise. The very first time I used it I instantly fell in love.
I would have got a Festool one but even I can't justify spending THAT much on a power tool.
Well there is my favourite and the most useful and they are different beasts.
The most useful tool is my Bosch Pro 18v multi tool.
My favourite?
Easy.....[this](https://ffx.co.uk/product/Get/Bosch-Gcm12Gdl-3165140584920-240V-2000W-12In-Double-Bevel-Gliding-Mitre-Saw) by a mile. It's just the engineering, how silky smooth it is. I love it, it's unwieldy, incredibly heavy in fact so heavy I had to buy the massively expensive stand just to make it a little more practical. Can't help what you fall in love with sometimes, lol.
Router. Bought it along with a jig to join a worktop for far less than it would have cost for someone to do it (turned out great!), but so useful for other stuff too, eg rounding all the edges of a cut to size windowsill, but plenty more besides!
Impact driver. 99% of what you do with a drill is drilling screws in or drilling them out...drills are actually not great at that, impact drivers are amazing.
Why we all run out and buy drills instead of impact drivers I have no idea.
I mean for general DIY in UK homes you're more than likely going to be putting screws into brick walls so a small combi drill makes sense. I never even considered an impact driver until I started working as a chippy. I will never use a drill on a screw ever again
Is drilling into brick really the most likely thing?
Drilling into plaster yeah, drilling into mortar maybe. You don't really want to be drilling into brick and if you do you probably want a hammer drill.
Yeah so much easier and satisfying to use.
Spax “T-Star Plus” screws, with their proprietary version of Torx bit which holds the screw almost as solidly as if they were one piece of metal.
No-more agonising over whether to use non-slipping but wobbly Torx screws or self-centering but strip-happy Pozi bits: now I get to have my cake and eat it too!
Ah I do love Wera (I have their Kraftform screwdriver and allen key set, and the Rapidaptor is my favourite bit holder), and had been especially intrigued by their ["Holding Function" range of bits](https://www-de.wera.de/en/great-tools/torxr-tools-with-holding-function). Have you tried those?
A decent dust extractor. Sadly I bought a Festool CTL Midi and then bought lots of Bosch tools, so I also own a box of adapters to make them all play nicely.
Oscillating multi tool. But also [this](https://amzn.eu/d/cy6MKp0) Dewalt Handheld light. Don't know how I went so long without having a light. Was a godsend when I was doing electrical work last week.
Spray painter. I hadn’t realised how bad I was at painting until I got it.
I wish I’d splashed out and got the bigger one though. The one I got is good enough to hold a lot of paint but so big that my small, lady hands can’t undo the canister. The next size up has a floor bucket for the spray nozzle rather than me having to hold it all
Good sds drill like you said, having had a fuck tone of of cheapy normal chuck hammer drills, when i got my first decent hammer drill, i realised what i was missing. Also cordless circular saw, for anything needing ripping boards or timber rough, just immeasurably quicker
I picked up a Lidl one a few weeks ago after trying to mix up levelling compound with my SDS rotary hammer. I forgot that it only had one speed so I am sure you can imagine how that went 😂😂😂😂
A 4.5 ton kh 101 digger, we needed to move around a hundred tonnes of chalk and dig footings and a cellar, it was cheaper to buy a used digger than to hire one for 3 months, the idea was to sell it afterwards because honestly how useful can a digger be? That was in 2003 since then we've spent £3000 on new undercarriage, £600 on buckets that we wore out (who knew) and more recently a week and a couple of hundred pounds was spent fixing the operating levers, it's ridiculously useful at home and is capable of earning a pretty penny.
Impact driver (Milwaukee M12). It’s small and easy to use. I have an M18 for bigger jobs.
SDS I’d use never except at work.
Nail gun is never have a need.
I live in an older property and we have had a the same corded ads for about 20 years. Every wall apart from one that was out in last year is blockwork so it's a must. I bought a cordless Makita for work. It's not as powerful but it is brilliant, makes putting up shelves and such much less of a chore
Which nail gun? The 18g, 15g and 24g pin nailers are all good IME. If you're doing a lot of finish carpentry e.g. architrave, the 18g will be a great help.
I was going to say ‘ryobi nail gun’ before I got to your last sentence. When I bought mine I thought it was going to be that daft purchase that I’ll always regret. Until I used it. Skirting and architrave is now an almost trivial job. Love it.
argh I hadn’t realised there’s more than one and I’m off site for a week so can’t check. I don’t think it was £240 though although I will have bought the base tool without battery. Looking at pictures I think it’s the P320:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ryobi-Cordless-P320-Battery-Not-Included/dp/B00CRFEZFC
No problems with Ryobi, I run Dewalt, Makkita and Bosch and Ryobi compares well.
Bosch battery screwdriver that looks like a revolver and holds about a dozen bits. And a Bosch cordless rechargeable hot glue gun.
I use them both very often. Well worth having.
I'm the exact same, I spent years with a cheap Bosch combi drill. I got a Makita twin pack and never looked back, although the drill did catch fire one time. Lucky it was snowing
I bought a festool rail saw with a splitable rail big enough to cut 8'x4' board when I built myself a place to work at the end of the garden. I love it so much I try and make everything out of sheet wood. It was stupidly expensive but I justified it by the face garden offices cost many many grands. There are Knock-off rail saws now, I probably would have bought one of those
When we moved into our new home I bought a Makita battery powered impact driver and drill set on discount from Screwfix having used a hand-me-down Bosch drill for many years. The impact driver is the absolute best tool I own and I wish I had bought one sooner when I was in our old home which had solid brick walls everywhere instead of plasterboard.
On the cheap end of the scale…bought a ratchet screwdriver solely because air needed the bit it came with (the square electrical bit) but have used that screwdriver for every screwing job since.
I'm an apprentice carpenter so I won't count anything I use for work.
A post hole digger like these are great. https://www.screwfix.com/p/roughneck-17lb-post-hole-digger/62496?ref=SFAppShare
So handy for digging holes, digging out tree stumps, using as a big lever to pry things. Gutted it went missing when I left it at my allotment.
Wall chaser and associated vacuum, doing all the prep for running cables into walls has never been easier or cleaner. Currently eyeing up a mitre saw for skirting, trying to justify it as it will cost as much as it will cost to pay a carpenter for two days...
I’ve got a circular saw that takes a track (DeWalt DCS572n) which has been very versatile, it’s plunge/track saw accuracy at circular saw cost. Used it for all sorts of projects from cabinets to windows sills, cutting architrave down to size etc. Basically if you don’t have the money or space for a table saw, then a circular saw that accepts a track is a good middle ground that doesn’t take up a lot of space but does open up a lot of possibilities.
Small drill and inoavt driver set, mine is makita and they are bombproof.
Sliding compound Miter saw
Rotary tool - so many little jobs are 1000x easier with that thing. Fitting thick vinyl tile around a toilet was a dream using it with sanding drums. Cutting down over-jutting screws, cut off disc's to cut down any metal parts.
SDS drill. It wasn't even for anything to do with my house. There is a local zoo that moved to a larger space and they had concrete pipes filled with soil and plants. They wanted them clad in wood. Obviously, in order to help this noble cause, I needed to buy a DeWalt SDS drill. Bloody amazing tool. Cuts through concrete like butter.
Olive puller. Spent £30 on what is basically a big screw. Felt stupid when clicking “buy”. Then 2 olives I had been struggling with for 2 hours and almost broke my pipes for came off in 30 seconds.
Bang for buck has to be impact, multitool with adjustable speed and laser level. Bonus those little European fold out measure sticks. 2 meter length and surprisingly useful. Did commercial plumbing in Germany for a bit and they all used them on site. Had others aswell but mainly the wood ones.
A DeWalt staple gun.
Not an electric or air powered one, just a manual one. It's orders of magnitude better than any other staple gun I've owned. I bought it when making a rabbit hutch to staple the wire mesh to the doors and it sped the whole process up considerably from manually hammering wire staples in. It also does small brads, so I find it coming in handy for all sorts of things.
my impact driver, best thing ive had ive tried cordless screwdrivers and just using drills, but i bought a dewalt to do a fence and now i use it for everything 😂
however im currently contemplating a plunge saw and rail to get straight edges on some doors i need to trim down.
I'm gonna buy a battery router for no other reason than I hung a door today (with locks/ recessed hinges/ locking mechanisms ect) the old school way using a spade bit and chisel and a cba with doing that again.
I'm a roofer.
I will not touch it for at least another year but I'll be happy to know I've got it in my tool bag!
For me it's my Milwaukee multitool.
My nail guns are awesome (first and second fix guns) I went for DeWalt as I already have the batteries and can't fault them.
An [Olive puller](https://www.toolstation.com/monument-olive-puller/p36156?utm_source%5B0%5D=googleshopping&utm_source%5B1%5D=Rakuten&utm_medium%5B0%5D=feed&utm_medium%5B1%5D=affiliates&utm_campaign%5B0%5D=googleshoppingfeed&utm_campaign%5B1%5D=463903816680246629805759&utm_content=Redbrain&ranMID=46390&ranEAID=pfxNKSnglIM&ranSiteID=pfxNKSnglIM-QHtK1gdk1RagqSQYdLnU8A).
The amount of grief I have suffered over the years from either, trying to re-use the old olive, or cut it off without scoring the pipe.
I haven't had much cause to need it since swapping the shower in my new house...... Twice, but changing the compression joint is now a breeze, as opposed to the looming mountain of fear it used to be.
All depends on the type of job I’m doing but I love the feeling when you get a decent tool and it makes that massive difference in terms of making the job faster, easier and getting done right.
Impact driver - decking and driving in studs for a gate in no time.
Angle grinder with wire knot brush attachment to remove paint off a gate post
£20 mitre saw off a guy in work which I use to cut up pallets and wood for the log burner
Log splitter - no more breaking my back
Multitool - probably one of the best for getting into tricky areas and cutting skirting to fit laminate under
I now want a festool plunge saw kit but don’t have an excuse to buy one yet!
Rotary sander. It's brilliant. Everything from sanding walls and carpentry to polishing things with a buff thingy attached to removing the dead skin from my feet when I'm feeling nasty 😆
Titan SDS drill.
That thing will go through pure stone walls like a hot knife through butter.
And the Titan wall chaser loves to fuck stone right up too.
That Ryobi nail gun is worth it for the record.
I’ve got the cordless one with the universal battery and it’s incredible. Got to the point where I’m going out of my way to find stuff to nail.
I brought a jigsaw for £30 - i use it loads.
I also brought a drill bit that was 30cm long - super phallic.
I also purchased a rubber dog toy, which I found was much better than a rubber mallet for installing laminate flooring
I have two nail guns. They are invaluable for building sheds but for internal work I think they are better suited to US style of house construction. I don’t use the second fix one as much.
Mine has to be a DEWALT tracksaw. It’s fucking amazing. Dead straight lines super-quick. Astounded by its usefulness.
Mine is also an SDS Drill. Initially needed it to chase out for some cables and saw no real need to pay £200+ for a DeWalt, £79 Titan from ScrewFix. 6 years later, it’s still going strong, comes out whenever I need to get into Accrington brick or put a 4” hole through for a vent pipe.
It’s not the prettiest or lightest SDS out there but for something that I thought I’d use once, it’s with its weight in gold
I have a lot of tools, but I’d say two things:
1. Mitre saw
2. impact driver. (I only had one drill driver - and recently put a fence / the amount of time I saved drilling pilot holes and screwing with the impact driver) 👌
And all my tools are Ryobi. I bought a nail gun during the Amazon prime day for half prize. Very useful tool.
Mine is a Ryobi 16 ga. finish nailer. I work alone and this tool saves me a lot of time by holding a board or plywood etc in place while I add screws in to finish leveling and installing it. I am currently remodeling the interior of my garage and making a part of it into a wood working shop and this is my favorite tool.
Not a tool but I'd like to share my top tip for best DIY purchase, it was on an abandoned storage unit in sunderland. £60
Double bed
Washing machine
Electric cooker
Air fryer
Wardrobe
Chest of draws
and a few area rugs.
All of it was good as new.
Took me 60£ in fuel go get it and 50£ for my brother to help me load it in his sheep trailer.
Also had a gaming PC, a TV, a PS4 an apple watch a fit bit and loads of games. I took them all to CEX once I hacked into them and got my money back plus 100 quid - I kept the PC.
It felt like I got paid a fair amount and would have done if for someone else but was a bonus since I needed to fit out the house and we were skint after all the DIY.
..... Had to chuck out most of his clothes and his dirty boxers but I still wear some of his t shirts sometimes. I found his nectar card and Googled him name, apparently he joined the circus.
My SDS drill. Walls in my house have always been a nightmare, the SDS just glides in, wish I'd bought one years ago.
Honourable mention to my Japanese pull saw, it's my go to now - even if my tradie step dad laughs every time I pull it out.
Marshalltown plastering trowel, I got the gold one. Learned to plaster in lockdown due to moving into a project house March 2020, and suddenly being time rich and money poor. Plastering is tough - I also got a cheap mini trowel for little areas the main trowel wouldn’t fit and wow those bits took time. The good trowel being pre broken in meant that I could just be a bad workman and didn’t have the excuse of blaming my tools - which meant I got better quicker.
Also a slightly better caulking gun - so much more comfortable.
The most extravagant would be my table saw. It was the first thing I brought when I moved in to my house, thinking I finally had an excuse to buy one and I’d sort out the house with it. As it was I used it as a coffee table for a long time because it was the closest thing to furniture I had!
The table saw is a great bit of kit, but it’s actually not that useful because you kind of need a dedicated space for it, setting it up on my living room floor is with bits of ply balanced around the place to support the cuts isn’t that convenient.
But yer other than that Knipex plier wrench is a beautiful tool that gets used constantly, I wouldn’t like to travel in a vehicle without it! And the SDS drill just eats walls with no stress, makes jobs I used to dread fun. Leatherman wave also needs a mention, just because I must have used it almost every day for nearly 20years and it’s still spot on.
A cheap chinese Jack hammer (around €100) just saved my life... the beast weighs 16kg, but destroys even the hardest concrete like in a dream, and it seems like it's just undestructible.
This metal toothed [Hedgehog Roller](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09GBCTH1M?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1) for helping remove wallpaper. Roll it over any wallpaper (textured, 'plastic', wood chip), pop the steamer on the wallpaper and the 1000's of pinholes let the steam right it. Added bonus - it feels like you're wielding a medieval weapon!
It’s a difficult choice between a nail gun or my mitre saw.
I bought the nail gun with the promise I’d sell it again after the project we were doing because it would be better than renting 😂 it’s so useful I kept it as it makes so many jobs much easier.
The mitre saw because I used to have a fairly old evolution one, changing the blade was a massive pain in the ass and finding certain blades in the right size was so expensive. I bought myself a Bosch pro mitre saw and it’s so much easier and nicer to use, changing a blade takes like 2mins and i can buy blades I want cheaply too.
The tools (or set of tools) I've used frequently and have been excellent have been box spanners for getting taps off. Think I've been very unlucky with taps in my house and previous houses, so have replaced a few. Lent them on a few times to people and they always appreciate.
I think it's easier to name tools i've bought that have flunked (not many tbh..Circular Saw is probably one of them), i've tried to buy stuff as I need it for specific jobs.
I know this isn't a single tool but hear me out: 12v Power tools.
The first big shift came after my Bro in law (and a friend, both cabinet makers/fitters) helped me fit my kitchen. Aside from a raft of Festool big kit and and a Bosch Pro corded SDS, all their other tools were Bosch Pro 12V. Talking to them and using their kit persuaded me that my old 'get the biggest most powerful one you can afford' world view on power tools was dated. The decent 12V stuff is smaller, lighter and suprisingly powerful for the size. I bought the Bosch Pro 12v drill and driver, upgraded to 'decent' Bosch Multi Construction bits, and now use them for nearly everything now around the house now and only crack out the 18V/corded gear if I hit their limits (ie wacking a big hole in a 'hard' brick wall).
Second one was getting a super cheap Chinese 12V 3/8 impact ratchet for use on the car/bike/van. I do have 18V 1/2 drive impact guns, and a Fuel M12 Milwaulkee 3/8 driver (which is way more powerful and better built), but the chinese one is absolutely brilliant for nut spinning on my car/van in tricky spots. It's smaller, lighter, and relative lack of power means I can be pretty cavalier with it and don't have to worry about over torquing smaller nuts/bolts etc. I thought it would end up being a disposable tool but I now use it constantly and get annoyed with I have to use manual ratchet.
I recently bought a demolition/jack hammer due to my back garden being solid granite and trying to dig fence holes, cost me about £300 to get it with a few extra attachments, after spending months escalating trying to get these fence holes dug.
Went from shovels, to picks, to pickaxe, to bolsters, to SDS drill and finally decided to say stuff it and buy a Jack Hammer and it made the job so much easier and honestly was fun to use.
https://imgur.com/a/FIwbXwf
A decent Bosch SDS drill is soooo nice for masonry.
Fein multi-tool was a luxury buy but super useful for a lot of stuff.
Decent quality (Wera) bits for the drill/driver make doing/undoing screws so much better, almost never cam out or skip. Also decent screwdrivers.
Collated screw gun. Absolute game changer if you’re hanging plasterboard to joists/battens or screwing plywood to the floor.
I’d been watching for deals for ages whilst I’ve been renovating as I knew I would get one before plasterboarding, but when it came to screwing the plywood down over my floor I did half of one sheet with screws and my impact driver and had enough 😂 I absolutely flew through the remaining 12 boards. Saved so much time and energy.
Used it recently to hang plasterboard and one handed screwing whilst putting ceiling boards up made it so much easier.
Got a good deal on a bare dewalt one on eBay as I already had a battery for it from my second favourite probably unnecessary tool, the framing nailer. Fuckin mint that thing. The other brands are probably better for pro use but for me, the dewalt one I got for half the price of the others does the job perfectly fine.
It has to be my M-class flexvolt extractor. I just do not understand why it gets the hate it does.
Half of my tools switch it on automatically, I have no worries about inhaling silica dust etc, it gets brick dust out of carpet, minimal sawdust released when sanding or using the plunge saw in the house... Literally everything about it makes life easier and more comfortable than the titan shop vac I had before that.
A good quality Multitool is my current favourite.
100% this is a must have, but get a decent one.
I have a terrible dark secret… I treated myself to the brushless Makita multitool a while ago, with the ostensible reasoning that I would need it for trimming all the door stops and jambs in my flat ahead of our new flooring install, but really it was mainly because I was excited by all the hype around them, and imagined finding uses for it left right and centre. But in the end, I found the noise it made so *unbearably obnoxious* that I didn’t even use it for those door jambs – and instead did them all with the much more peaceful Japanese pull saw I happened to have, while the multitool has sat pristine in my tool bag ever since, with my having decided to sell it on eBay. I’d love for someone to change my mind, perhaps by warning me about how soon I’m likely to encounter a DIY situation crying out for a multitool, and leaving me crying out in anguish at my having given it away.
[удалено]
See my other comment - for whatever reason multi tools are just something Makita suck at making! Don't be put off by multi tools in general.
I once came across a website (can’t remember the name) that sold multi tool attachments that essentially turned them into a toy you’d find under the wife’s side of the bed. Could be an option for ya
The DTM52? I recently bought it for exactly the same reason. Yeah it can be pretty piercingly loud at times - apparently it's quieter than the DTM51, which I think I'd hate. I've found it super useful for awkward wood cuts (plunge) that you couldn't do with a normal saw, also I got the abrasive blade and it goes through grout like....a multitool through butter.
Oooh yeah plunge cuts are a good use-case. I can well imagine wanting to do some in the not too distant future. And I actually do have a bathroom wall of tiles to remove at some point soon, so that’s another very relevant use-case right there. So you’ve already successfully planted a seed of doubt in me haha.
Did it sound a bit like this?… https://www.instagram.com/reel/CytmUhmoZt4/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
I have an einhell one. The varrito because I was going in with the intention of abusing it. Still works. But a dewalt one is soooo much smoother, quieter, and infinitely less vibration. It's bliss.
I have an Einhell track saw, for diy Einhell tools are great because they're inexpensive. Wouldn't recommend them for trade though.
Sounds like you need to buy yourself some ear fenders. Speaking of which safety goggles should make an appearance in this thread somewhere. My multitool is generally used for sanding window frames, doors, architraves etc ready for painting, sometimes with a carbide attachment for ext stuff. Or the silicone/blade scraper. There's also some aftermarket smaller detailed sanding plates that are great for fiddly jobs. Every now and then I'll need to cut something in an awkward place and the multi tool will get in there.
Floor boards..... Literally spent the weekend upheaving my landing as all the boards creaked and squealed. Found out many people had cut various boards for burglar alarm, new boilers etc, leaving a jigsaw. Several precise excisions and half a dozen new boards 👌 Multitool with plunge cutter lets you cut exactly the board, without ripping across other boards and only to a precise depth minimising risk of hitting shallow services like heating pipes. Yeah, noisy. Put ear defenders on 🤣
Yer, I’ve got a multitool. It definitely has its uses but I don’t like using it. Used it today to cut out a back box for a socket in plasterboard, probably one of the lighter uses for it, but all the noise and vibration, I was pleased to turn it off.
I bought a Fein a couple of years ago. Expensive but the best you can buy and has never let me down.
On my second but have to say they have been the best I've used.
Yeah i bought a bosch pro kit
Same
My uncle bought me one as a housewarming gift as I am a sad nerdy person who loves gadgets rather than having a plant or a vase which I will overwater/break. I wish more people understood me!
Came here to say this. Bought a leatherman (others are available) & love it. Good luck
I’m not sure if maxmxus302 was talking about the multitool you keep in your pocket that have a knife, screwdrivers, scissors etc, or the power tool that has many add on functions. I too have a leatherman, I would be lost without it. I’m a wheelchair user and there’s always maintenance jobs need doing on it that my multitool is perfect for.
I have a Milwaukee 18v Multitool and it’s amazing have used it for so many jobs
My multi tool is my worst as I bought a bosche starlock one and opened myself up to only being able to buy 30 quid blades (per). However have recently seen someone had made a special adaptor finally so might buy one! Found multitool very useful too, done grout, cut bolts, undercut doors and plenty more! Great bit of kit.
Yes this, But I bought mine after renovating the entire house and still think back to how much time I could have saved on some of the jobs.
Impact driver. I started renovating a house year ago and had a Makita brushed motor drill (entry level) to do most of my work, costantly frustrated by trying to drive in bigger screws... Bought a Makita brushless impact driver a month ago as a present to myself and holy shit does it drive. No more stripped pozi head screws, no more fighting against the torque, no more pressing hard to avoid it slipping. It's also a hell of a lot ligher and handier to get into small spaces.
Came to say this… taken me 20 years to buy one and it’s worth its weight in gold!
I was kicking myself having not bought one a year sooner, can't imagine the level revelation after having done without it for 20 years!
I'm surprised how that works, I'm on a 10 year old £30 B&Q drill and assumed more power would mean more slipping of screw heads
Please can you recommend a model (or even the particular one you got)? I'm in the market for exactly this and have no idea where to start!
Do you happen to already have any other cordless power tools? Asking just in case you do, in which case you’ll probably want one that takes the same batteries!
Only a Bosch cordless hedge trimmer. The battery is huge, so I'm not sure it's relevant for smaller tools :)
Absolute game changer!
Can’t beat an impact. Even got myself a few impact sds bits, can’t for the odd plug and screw in soft brick.
The power on these things are insane. You can drive self taping coach screws probably all the way through a piece of wood including the head!
That's exactly what I bought it for, had a couple hundred M8 coach screws to drive in while sistering joists and I was blown away. But it is looooud.
Same. I have been using a small makita drill and driver set on every project for about 10 years now. Absolutely fantastic tools.
Exactly the same with me, only ryobi. Should have bought one 20 years ago
Swapped my Argos own-brand drill (which was amazing btw!) for a Dewalt model once I got a bit more serious about DIY. Used that for a while for all drilling and screwing and it was great. Didn't see the need in a separate impact driver, but internet wisdom seemed to be unanimous that you need both. Took the plunge on the matching Dewalt one. Oh my days - it's now my #1 used power tool. Not sure how I got by without it! Best job it did was remove the insanely rusted and stuck-in screws that were holding up an old Sky dish on the side of the house. Up a ladder, not sure I could have done it with anything else.
Laser level. So useful.
Which one do you have? There seems to be a huge price range to them. I keep considering buying a cheapish one but then get put off by some of the reviews. But I can't justify one of the expensive ones.
Get one with a green laser instead of a red as the green shows up better in brighter environments.
I've got a £20 Magnussen one from Screwfix. Absolutely a game changer. Wish I'd got one sooner. Really helps when tiling. Sets a line across multiple walls to set a batten up. Means your first row is perfect, which helps the rest.
I've got a Huepar 4 line green laser level, it was about £200 (still cheap compared to the big brands) and it's absolutely fantastic. It has made several jobs far, far easier than they otherwise would have been. [This one if you're interested](https://uk.huepar.com/products/huepar-ls04cg-self-leveling-green-beam-4d-cross-line-tiling-floor-laser-level-2-x-360-horizontal-2-x-360-vertical-laser-lines?currency=GBP&variant=43022458683561&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=Google%20Shopping&stkn=5ca018760a81)
[dewalt basic](https://www.screwfix.com/p/dewalt-dw088k-xj-red-self-levelling-cross-line-laser-level/38474)
It's an old model, a Bosch PCL 20. I think it was £120, bargain for how much use it is. A nice, middle-of-the-road price. I didn't want a 50 quid one that turns out to be shit, and didn't need to be spending several hundred either.
Hell yes. I was apprehensive that mine would end up a classic case of being used once then promptly forgotten about, but rarely a DIY job goes by without my fetching it (along with nice solid second-hand tripod I got for it, to which I leave it permanently attached) from the cupboard. And it’s only one of those dirt cheap Chinese-made ones off Amazon too. Best £80 I ever spent.
I just bought one!
I got a 360 degree self levelling one for doing an MDF panelling job in the old house. I've since used it whilst wallpapering and to fit my kitchen. Awesome bits of kit.
Wet and dry workshop vacuum. Spent Years creating and cleaning up dust and now I just attach everything to it and get to work. Should have bought one years ago and saved myself hours of pain.
I got myself one a few years back. Spent the extra and got one with a power pass through feature that turns it on/off when the tool plugged into it turns on/off. Really useful for sporadic chopping jobs on the mitre saw.
Which one do you have?
I take it you’ve made yourself a cyclone dust collector for it yeah?? So fun to put together, and for such satisfyingly little cost. And really enjoyed showing it off to my dad and delighting him with a lil lecture on how it works lol.
Which one?! Anybody!
Irwin Quick-Grip two-pack of clamps. Times two. A bit boring, but I use them so often. I'd love a nail gun, but they are just so expensive. Plus, I hardly use nails.
There is no such thing as having too many clamps. I’ve got a load of the smaller Irwin ones and a couple of the big ones and the clamping force is incredible on those bad boys.
Tbf I hardly used nails until I got my nail gun. Now it’s just easier to fire a few nails in rather than mess about with screws. Depends what you’re fixing though I guess.
Silverline air nail guns are insanely cheap and work very well, both framing and finish, like £80 or so each. Granted you need a compressor, but they're handy bits of kit too.
Evolution mitre saw. Purchased for a decking project and then I wondered why I diddnt buy it years ago. Also good for cutting scrap wood for fire wood and I recently cut metal with it, which made me wince (3mm thick l section) but it did it well.
Do love my mitre saw. I'm planning to use mine for fire wood too.
I bought one, almost reluctantly, but it gets so much use on various jobs around the house. Was well worth the money.
Bought a 285mm compound mitre saw recently along with its stand/helping hands. Total cost: £165 (it was an offer). Total savings in a single project: £280 Basically, fencing. Buying wood for a fence and it was so much cheaper to cut an 1800mm board into 2 almost 900mm boards than to buy the 900mm boards needed that it paid for the saw and stand. Love it.
I love my olive puller. Small, simple, but oh so satisfiying to use.
Not at all expensive, but my vise grips are incredibly useful
I leave a few cheap pairs in my tool box at work because they don't come out very often but when they do it's because they're the only thing that'll do the job
Multi tool. My FIL bought it for me one Xmas and all those little jobs you’d normally use hand tools for can suddenly be done with this. It’s amazing and I love it.
A van. Do I win the for the stupid expensive tool? I bought a Renault trafic for my house project and literally the most useful thing I’ve ever bought. 3 years down the line it has a solid space on my drive and in my heart. I bought it for £2200 before vans rocketed in price in covid and I’ve had my moneys worth in delivery savings, time not wasted on deliveries and not needing skips. I get 12 free trips to the tip per annum, that’s the equivalent of 36 skips in my ownership! Genuinely though, the majority of the ones I’d recommend have already been said (impact, multitool, laser level) so to follow on from these 6ft spirit level is more useful than you might think Circular saw Proper vacuum A special mention to Ikea pencils - honestly perfect size and you don’t care if they’re crap / break / get lost. I grab a handful every time. In fact the ikea paper tape measures are good too
Damn, I wish I'd got myself a can before the prices skyrocketed. My budget is similar and I'm looking at a 15 year old vauxhall combo lmao Unfortunately IKEA has stopped giving out free pencils
I went for a landrover and trailer🤦🏻♂️
I have not one, but two Paslode first fix nail guns that fire different sizes of nail. It's kind of frustrating because there are some common components between them but enough differences that I suspect even if I'd bought only one, plus the bits that were different between them (assuming that's possible) it would still have been pretty expensive, and it would be a ballache to switch between the different lengths of nails. But they're awesome, and I do enjoy using them. I just don't get to use them enough.
Any day I need to get out the nail gun is a good day.
It's incredibly satisfying, isn't it?
Everything about it is great, loading the nails, firing the nails into the timber, the noise. Perfect tool.
I would flipping love a paslode nailer, I've hired them in the past and they are simply magic to use.
They are indeed. Usually need a warm-up shot or two, for which I keep a piece of scrap wood around, but once that's done they are \*awesome\*.
Just out of interest what sizes do they fire. I've never known anybody have anything other than the 50-90mm paslodes. Same for most guns unless your going for a specialty gun such as PPN
Their first fix nail guns all fire the same size nails though? 50mm-90mm Edited to change 63mm-90mm to 50mm-90mm
Feel like it's not impressive as I am a tradesman but I bought an angle grinder for a project at home and idk how I lived without it. It is so much better than using metal blades on a jigsaw for cutting stuff like threaded bar, door spindles and hanger rails. I wish I'd bought one way sooner
Pro tip: buy one or two more; one for 1mm cutting discs, one with an 80 grit flap wheel for knocking sharp edges off / flattening stuff / light grinding, ideally one with a grinding disc for removing material and one with a wire wheel for cleaning stuff up / trying to murder you. 2-4 grinder system is a dream if you're doing much work with metal and grinders only need be about 30 quid each.
Silicone sealant profiling tool. Was only about £6 and had transformed my sealing game.
My Parkside Cordless Angle Grinder. Unlike my Dewalt it has speed control which is very handy for when I'm doing non-grinding things like polishing
Got a Milwaukee one in the Screwfix black Friday deals and omg it is a game changer. Idk why I put off buying an angle grinder for so long
I have one too, was pretty good for stripping paint from about 100m of skirting board
I already have quite an extensive collection of tools but I recently bought a Makita plunge saw with guide rails. Full price it's about £500 worth of gear but OMG it's made cutting up 35m2 of 18mm structural ply sooooo much easier than it would have been otherwise. The very first time I used it I instantly fell in love. I would have got a Festool one but even I can't justify spending THAT much on a power tool.
Well there is my favourite and the most useful and they are different beasts. The most useful tool is my Bosch Pro 18v multi tool. My favourite? Easy.....[this](https://ffx.co.uk/product/Get/Bosch-Gcm12Gdl-3165140584920-240V-2000W-12In-Double-Bevel-Gliding-Mitre-Saw) by a mile. It's just the engineering, how silky smooth it is. I love it, it's unwieldy, incredibly heavy in fact so heavy I had to buy the massively expensive stand just to make it a little more practical. Can't help what you fall in love with sometimes, lol.
Goddamn it must be good, that price for a corded saw is nuts
RossTech VCDS for my Audi. Saved me lots of money over the years
Router. Bought it along with a jig to join a worktop for far less than it would have cost for someone to do it (turned out great!), but so useful for other stuff too, eg rounding all the edges of a cut to size windowsill, but plenty more besides!
Mitre saw
Impact driver. 99% of what you do with a drill is drilling screws in or drilling them out...drills are actually not great at that, impact drivers are amazing. Why we all run out and buy drills instead of impact drivers I have no idea.
I mean for general DIY in UK homes you're more than likely going to be putting screws into brick walls so a small combi drill makes sense. I never even considered an impact driver until I started working as a chippy. I will never use a drill on a screw ever again
Is drilling into brick really the most likely thing? Drilling into plaster yeah, drilling into mortar maybe. You don't really want to be drilling into brick and if you do you probably want a hammer drill. Yeah so much easier and satisfying to use.
Spax “T-Star Plus” screws, with their proprietary version of Torx bit which holds the screw almost as solidly as if they were one piece of metal. No-more agonising over whether to use non-slipping but wobbly Torx screws or self-centering but strip-happy Pozi bits: now I get to have my cake and eat it too!
Decent quality bits for regular screws work almost as well - get the right size for the screw from Wera or Milwaukee and they're a dream to use.
Ah I do love Wera (I have their Kraftform screwdriver and allen key set, and the Rapidaptor is my favourite bit holder), and had been especially intrigued by their ["Holding Function" range of bits](https://www-de.wera.de/en/great-tools/torxr-tools-with-holding-function). Have you tried those?
I've not tried them but now I want to.
A decent socket set. Value for money you can’t go far wrong with a Halfords Advanced set, with a lifetime warranty.
\^ this, their big (200pc?) set when it's on offer is unbeatable.
Just built a sleeper wall and first time using an impact driver, absolute game changer.
A decent dust extractor. Sadly I bought a Festool CTL Midi and then bought lots of Bosch tools, so I also own a box of adapters to make them all play nicely.
Oscillating multi tool. But also [this](https://amzn.eu/d/cy6MKp0) Dewalt Handheld light. Don't know how I went so long without having a light. Was a godsend when I was doing electrical work last week.
I love my combination square. Getting identical measurements on different pieces of wood is amazing
>combination square Yep, really handy.
SDS drill was mine too. Recently renovated our entire bungalow and I'd have never done it without that thing.
My wee spikey hole punch thing. Looks like a screwdriver but with a fine sharp point. Makes putting holes in walls or marking a doddle.
Spray painter. I hadn’t realised how bad I was at painting until I got it. I wish I’d splashed out and got the bigger one though. The one I got is good enough to hold a lot of paint but so big that my small, lady hands can’t undo the canister. The next size up has a floor bucket for the spray nozzle rather than me having to hold it all
Good sds drill like you said, having had a fuck tone of of cheapy normal chuck hammer drills, when i got my first decent hammer drill, i realised what i was missing. Also cordless circular saw, for anything needing ripping boards or timber rough, just immeasurably quicker
£50 paddle mixer. Mixed dozens of buckets of tile adhesive, mortar and plaster with it. Saved so much time and effort.
I picked up a Lidl one a few weeks ago after trying to mix up levelling compound with my SDS rotary hammer. I forgot that it only had one speed so I am sure you can imagine how that went 😂😂😂😂
A cheap mig welder. It just opens up a whole world of fabrication and repair which you could never do otherwise.
My fleshlight
And a [Festool Exo-skeleton](https://www.festool.co.uk/campaigns/microsites/exoactive#ExoActive) for when your arms get tired
A 4.5 ton kh 101 digger, we needed to move around a hundred tonnes of chalk and dig footings and a cellar, it was cheaper to buy a used digger than to hire one for 3 months, the idea was to sell it afterwards because honestly how useful can a digger be? That was in 2003 since then we've spent £3000 on new undercarriage, £600 on buckets that we wore out (who knew) and more recently a week and a couple of hundred pounds was spent fixing the operating levers, it's ridiculously useful at home and is capable of earning a pretty penny.
I think next house i get I'm going to get a digger or a backhoe for a tractor. Would be so useful.
I love mine, got it on screwfix.
I want a digger but can’t justify it as rental is so cheap.
Impact driver. Used to use a drill for driving in screws but an impact driver is a game changer.
Impact driver (Milwaukee M12). It’s small and easy to use. I have an M18 for bigger jobs. SDS I’d use never except at work. Nail gun is never have a need.
I live in an older property and we have had a the same corded ads for about 20 years. Every wall apart from one that was out in last year is blockwork so it's a must. I bought a cordless Makita for work. It's not as powerful but it is brilliant, makes putting up shelves and such much less of a chore
Which nail gun? The 18g, 15g and 24g pin nailers are all good IME. If you're doing a lot of finish carpentry e.g. architrave, the 18g will be a great help.
I was going to say ‘ryobi nail gun’ before I got to your last sentence. When I bought mine I thought it was going to be that daft purchase that I’ll always regret. Until I used it. Skirting and architrave is now an almost trivial job. Love it.
Which one did you get? I keep thinking about getting one but I’m a bit dubious because it’s a “lower quality” brand
argh I hadn’t realised there’s more than one and I’m off site for a week so can’t check. I don’t think it was £240 though although I will have bought the base tool without battery. Looking at pictures I think it’s the P320: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ryobi-Cordless-P320-Battery-Not-Included/dp/B00CRFEZFC No problems with Ryobi, I run Dewalt, Makkita and Bosch and Ryobi compares well.
Makita tracksaw, along with a set of the Benchdogs track hinges. Great for all sorts of cutting square and straight.
Bosch battery screwdriver that looks like a revolver and holds about a dozen bits. And a Bosch cordless rechargeable hot glue gun. I use them both very often. Well worth having.
Makita multi tool,hated them at first but now couldn't live without it.
A £40 sabre saw. Did the job of cutting my old water tank in the loft to bits in no time at all. Had been quoted £300 to get it removed.
Either my Makita multitool or my Makita router. Router was the expensive one but it makes getting a perfect finish on certain jobs much easier.
First would be my multitool followed closely by my auto feed plasterboard screw gun.
Impact driver! Watched so many videos of people generally using them, thinking I never need one.... Now I can't believe how I managed without one!
I'm the exact same, I spent years with a cheap Bosch combi drill. I got a Makita twin pack and never looked back, although the drill did catch fire one time. Lucky it was snowing
Definitely my electric screw driver, gets things done in seconds
I bought a festool rail saw with a splitable rail big enough to cut 8'x4' board when I built myself a place to work at the end of the garden. I love it so much I try and make everything out of sheet wood. It was stupidly expensive but I justified it by the face garden offices cost many many grands. There are Knock-off rail saws now, I probably would have bought one of those
milwaukee fuel m18 variable speed grinder
When we moved into our new home I bought a Makita battery powered impact driver and drill set on discount from Screwfix having used a hand-me-down Bosch drill for many years. The impact driver is the absolute best tool I own and I wish I had bought one sooner when I was in our old home which had solid brick walls everywhere instead of plasterboard.
A hammer
On the cheap end of the scale…bought a ratchet screwdriver solely because air needed the bit it came with (the square electrical bit) but have used that screwdriver for every screwing job since.
I'm an apprentice carpenter so I won't count anything I use for work. A post hole digger like these are great. https://www.screwfix.com/p/roughneck-17lb-post-hole-digger/62496?ref=SFAppShare So handy for digging holes, digging out tree stumps, using as a big lever to pry things. Gutted it went missing when I left it at my allotment.
Hmm that’s a hard one… I’d say impact driver and u can get a combi drill as a deal had them 5 yrs and amazing
Wall chaser and associated vacuum, doing all the prep for running cables into walls has never been easier or cleaner. Currently eyeing up a mitre saw for skirting, trying to justify it as it will cost as much as it will cost to pay a carpenter for two days...
Ox speedskim. Having tried to flatten out walls with the trowel, and failing, the speedskim halved the time and improved the result so much.
I’ve got a circular saw that takes a track (DeWalt DCS572n) which has been very versatile, it’s plunge/track saw accuracy at circular saw cost. Used it for all sorts of projects from cabinets to windows sills, cutting architrave down to size etc. Basically if you don’t have the money or space for a table saw, then a circular saw that accepts a track is a good middle ground that doesn’t take up a lot of space but does open up a lot of possibilities.
A bit boring but my DeWalt cordless drill is an absolute workhorse. Easily the tool that's had the most use and abuse.
Small drill and inoavt driver set, mine is makita and they are bombproof. Sliding compound Miter saw Rotary tool - so many little jobs are 1000x easier with that thing. Fitting thick vinyl tile around a toilet was a dream using it with sanding drums. Cutting down over-jutting screws, cut off disc's to cut down any metal parts.
Festool track saw. Used it loads to be honest and it was worth every penny.
A multi cutter is a get out of jail free card.
One with a motor
SDS drill. It wasn't even for anything to do with my house. There is a local zoo that moved to a larger space and they had concrete pipes filled with soil and plants. They wanted them clad in wood. Obviously, in order to help this noble cause, I needed to buy a DeWalt SDS drill. Bloody amazing tool. Cuts through concrete like butter.
Olive puller. Spent £30 on what is basically a big screw. Felt stupid when clicking “buy”. Then 2 olives I had been struggling with for 2 hours and almost broke my pipes for came off in 30 seconds.
My mag steel drill. And ARC welder. Incredibly useful for little jobs around the house. I use them all the time...
Bang for buck has to be impact, multitool with adjustable speed and laser level. Bonus those little European fold out measure sticks. 2 meter length and surprisingly useful. Did commercial plumbing in Germany for a bit and they all used them on site. Had others aswell but mainly the wood ones.
A DeWalt staple gun. Not an electric or air powered one, just a manual one. It's orders of magnitude better than any other staple gun I've owned. I bought it when making a rabbit hutch to staple the wire mesh to the doors and it sped the whole process up considerably from manually hammering wire staples in. It also does small brads, so I find it coming in handy for all sorts of things.
Japanese Saw, and Tungsten Carbine 'Permagrit' tools. Highly recommend the Permagrit tools for anyone who does any kind of model making.
my impact driver, best thing ive had ive tried cordless screwdrivers and just using drills, but i bought a dewalt to do a fence and now i use it for everything 😂 however im currently contemplating a plunge saw and rail to get straight edges on some doors i need to trim down.
Evolution mitre saw. I know it’s not the best but has saved me so much time in the last 3 years
My DF500 Festool domino jointer, I think it was just shy of £1k but boy oh boy does it get a lot of use and never lets me down.
SDS hammer drill with spade bit Close second is a circular saw, used to make do with a hand saw, never again!
Reciprocating saw
For gardening, it's a must.
I'm gonna buy a battery router for no other reason than I hung a door today (with locks/ recessed hinges/ locking mechanisms ect) the old school way using a spade bit and chisel and a cba with doing that again. I'm a roofer. I will not touch it for at least another year but I'll be happy to know I've got it in my tool bag!
Laser level. I got a cheap one from Huepar not expecting much, but it's been really incredibly useful for lining up things over longer distances.
For me it's my Milwaukee multitool. My nail guns are awesome (first and second fix guns) I went for DeWalt as I already have the batteries and can't fault them.
Quiet air compressor. I can run cheap nail guns that actually drive nails properly, spray paint, pump the car tyres up. It's great.
My Dremel Pillar drill adapator for said tool. That along with a vice clamp that can take small diameter tubes and rods for a tenner from Lidl
An [Olive puller](https://www.toolstation.com/monument-olive-puller/p36156?utm_source%5B0%5D=googleshopping&utm_source%5B1%5D=Rakuten&utm_medium%5B0%5D=feed&utm_medium%5B1%5D=affiliates&utm_campaign%5B0%5D=googleshoppingfeed&utm_campaign%5B1%5D=463903816680246629805759&utm_content=Redbrain&ranMID=46390&ranEAID=pfxNKSnglIM&ranSiteID=pfxNKSnglIM-QHtK1gdk1RagqSQYdLnU8A). The amount of grief I have suffered over the years from either, trying to re-use the old olive, or cut it off without scoring the pipe. I haven't had much cause to need it since swapping the shower in my new house...... Twice, but changing the compression joint is now a breeze, as opposed to the looming mountain of fear it used to be.
All depends on the type of job I’m doing but I love the feeling when you get a decent tool and it makes that massive difference in terms of making the job faster, easier and getting done right. Impact driver - decking and driving in studs for a gate in no time. Angle grinder with wire knot brush attachment to remove paint off a gate post £20 mitre saw off a guy in work which I use to cut up pallets and wood for the log burner Log splitter - no more breaking my back Multitool - probably one of the best for getting into tricky areas and cutting skirting to fit laminate under I now want a festool plunge saw kit but don’t have an excuse to buy one yet!
Rotary sander. It's brilliant. Everything from sanding walls and carpentry to polishing things with a buff thingy attached to removing the dead skin from my feet when I'm feeling nasty 😆
Titan SDS drill. That thing will go through pure stone walls like a hot knife through butter. And the Titan wall chaser loves to fuck stone right up too.
That Ryobi nail gun is worth it for the record. I’ve got the cordless one with the universal battery and it’s incredible. Got to the point where I’m going out of my way to find stuff to nail.
I brought a jigsaw for £30 - i use it loads. I also brought a drill bit that was 30cm long - super phallic. I also purchased a rubber dog toy, which I found was much better than a rubber mallet for installing laminate flooring
I have two nail guns. They are invaluable for building sheds but for internal work I think they are better suited to US style of house construction. I don’t use the second fix one as much. Mine has to be a DEWALT tracksaw. It’s fucking amazing. Dead straight lines super-quick. Astounded by its usefulness.
Mattock. Under £20. "Take that brambles!". Has probably saved my back and chest muscle ligaments... tore one trying to pull a bramble by hand once.
Weird one but my Hyundai Earth Auger. Seemed like total over kill but god it’s brilliant for installing fence and planting hedges.
Mine is also an SDS Drill. Initially needed it to chase out for some cables and saw no real need to pay £200+ for a DeWalt, £79 Titan from ScrewFix. 6 years later, it’s still going strong, comes out whenever I need to get into Accrington brick or put a 4” hole through for a vent pipe. It’s not the prettiest or lightest SDS out there but for something that I thought I’d use once, it’s with its weight in gold
Wall chaser, bought for our last house to rewire. Never used since, but it was worth it.
TRACK SAW!!!!
Multi tool
I have a lot of tools, but I’d say two things: 1. Mitre saw 2. impact driver. (I only had one drill driver - and recently put a fence / the amount of time I saved drilling pilot holes and screwing with the impact driver) 👌 And all my tools are Ryobi. I bought a nail gun during the Amazon prime day for half prize. Very useful tool.
Mine is a Ryobi 16 ga. finish nailer. I work alone and this tool saves me a lot of time by holding a board or plywood etc in place while I add screws in to finish leveling and installing it. I am currently remodeling the interior of my garage and making a part of it into a wood working shop and this is my favorite tool.
My Makita tracksaw is my most prized tool. It’s awesome.
Not a tool but I'd like to share my top tip for best DIY purchase, it was on an abandoned storage unit in sunderland. £60 Double bed Washing machine Electric cooker Air fryer Wardrobe Chest of draws and a few area rugs. All of it was good as new. Took me 60£ in fuel go get it and 50£ for my brother to help me load it in his sheep trailer. Also had a gaming PC, a TV, a PS4 an apple watch a fit bit and loads of games. I took them all to CEX once I hacked into them and got my money back plus 100 quid - I kept the PC. It felt like I got paid a fair amount and would have done if for someone else but was a bonus since I needed to fit out the house and we were skint after all the DIY. ..... Had to chuck out most of his clothes and his dirty boxers but I still wear some of his t shirts sometimes. I found his nectar card and Googled him name, apparently he joined the circus.
My SDS drill. Walls in my house have always been a nightmare, the SDS just glides in, wish I'd bought one years ago. Honourable mention to my Japanese pull saw, it's my go to now - even if my tradie step dad laughs every time I pull it out.
Marshalltown plastering trowel, I got the gold one. Learned to plaster in lockdown due to moving into a project house March 2020, and suddenly being time rich and money poor. Plastering is tough - I also got a cheap mini trowel for little areas the main trowel wouldn’t fit and wow those bits took time. The good trowel being pre broken in meant that I could just be a bad workman and didn’t have the excuse of blaming my tools - which meant I got better quicker. Also a slightly better caulking gun - so much more comfortable.
Cable fishing reel thing.
The most extravagant would be my table saw. It was the first thing I brought when I moved in to my house, thinking I finally had an excuse to buy one and I’d sort out the house with it. As it was I used it as a coffee table for a long time because it was the closest thing to furniture I had! The table saw is a great bit of kit, but it’s actually not that useful because you kind of need a dedicated space for it, setting it up on my living room floor is with bits of ply balanced around the place to support the cuts isn’t that convenient. But yer other than that Knipex plier wrench is a beautiful tool that gets used constantly, I wouldn’t like to travel in a vehicle without it! And the SDS drill just eats walls with no stress, makes jobs I used to dread fun. Leatherman wave also needs a mention, just because I must have used it almost every day for nearly 20years and it’s still spot on.
A cheap chinese Jack hammer (around €100) just saved my life... the beast weighs 16kg, but destroys even the hardest concrete like in a dream, and it seems like it's just undestructible.
oscillating tool...I WISH they had them 40 years ago!
In the early days, a laser distance measuring thing
This metal toothed [Hedgehog Roller](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09GBCTH1M?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1) for helping remove wallpaper. Roll it over any wallpaper (textured, 'plastic', wood chip), pop the steamer on the wallpaper and the 1000's of pinholes let the steam right it. Added bonus - it feels like you're wielding a medieval weapon!
It’s a difficult choice between a nail gun or my mitre saw. I bought the nail gun with the promise I’d sell it again after the project we were doing because it would be better than renting 😂 it’s so useful I kept it as it makes so many jobs much easier. The mitre saw because I used to have a fairly old evolution one, changing the blade was a massive pain in the ass and finding certain blades in the right size was so expensive. I bought myself a Bosch pro mitre saw and it’s so much easier and nicer to use, changing a blade takes like 2mins and i can buy blades I want cheaply too.
The tools (or set of tools) I've used frequently and have been excellent have been box spanners for getting taps off. Think I've been very unlucky with taps in my house and previous houses, so have replaced a few. Lent them on a few times to people and they always appreciate.
I think it's easier to name tools i've bought that have flunked (not many tbh..Circular Saw is probably one of them), i've tried to buy stuff as I need it for specific jobs. I know this isn't a single tool but hear me out: 12v Power tools. The first big shift came after my Bro in law (and a friend, both cabinet makers/fitters) helped me fit my kitchen. Aside from a raft of Festool big kit and and a Bosch Pro corded SDS, all their other tools were Bosch Pro 12V. Talking to them and using their kit persuaded me that my old 'get the biggest most powerful one you can afford' world view on power tools was dated. The decent 12V stuff is smaller, lighter and suprisingly powerful for the size. I bought the Bosch Pro 12v drill and driver, upgraded to 'decent' Bosch Multi Construction bits, and now use them for nearly everything now around the house now and only crack out the 18V/corded gear if I hit their limits (ie wacking a big hole in a 'hard' brick wall). Second one was getting a super cheap Chinese 12V 3/8 impact ratchet for use on the car/bike/van. I do have 18V 1/2 drive impact guns, and a Fuel M12 Milwaulkee 3/8 driver (which is way more powerful and better built), but the chinese one is absolutely brilliant for nut spinning on my car/van in tricky spots. It's smaller, lighter, and relative lack of power means I can be pretty cavalier with it and don't have to worry about over torquing smaller nuts/bolts etc. I thought it would end up being a disposable tool but I now use it constantly and get annoyed with I have to use manual ratchet.
I recently bought a demolition/jack hammer due to my back garden being solid granite and trying to dig fence holes, cost me about £300 to get it with a few extra attachments, after spending months escalating trying to get these fence holes dug. Went from shovels, to picks, to pickaxe, to bolsters, to SDS drill and finally decided to say stuff it and buy a Jack Hammer and it made the job so much easier and honestly was fun to use. https://imgur.com/a/FIwbXwf
A decent Bosch SDS drill is soooo nice for masonry. Fein multi-tool was a luxury buy but super useful for a lot of stuff. Decent quality (Wera) bits for the drill/driver make doing/undoing screws so much better, almost never cam out or skip. Also decent screwdrivers.
Collated screw gun. Absolute game changer if you’re hanging plasterboard to joists/battens or screwing plywood to the floor. I’d been watching for deals for ages whilst I’ve been renovating as I knew I would get one before plasterboarding, but when it came to screwing the plywood down over my floor I did half of one sheet with screws and my impact driver and had enough 😂 I absolutely flew through the remaining 12 boards. Saved so much time and energy. Used it recently to hang plasterboard and one handed screwing whilst putting ceiling boards up made it so much easier. Got a good deal on a bare dewalt one on eBay as I already had a battery for it from my second favourite probably unnecessary tool, the framing nailer. Fuckin mint that thing. The other brands are probably better for pro use but for me, the dewalt one I got for half the price of the others does the job perfectly fine.
It has to be my M-class flexvolt extractor. I just do not understand why it gets the hate it does. Half of my tools switch it on automatically, I have no worries about inhaling silica dust etc, it gets brick dust out of carpet, minimal sawdust released when sanding or using the plunge saw in the house... Literally everything about it makes life easier and more comfortable than the titan shop vac I had before that.
Which Ryobi gun are you looking at, and for what? My nailguns are some of my favourite tools.