Essential tools?
 

My nephew has joined the Army, gotten married, rented a house, and adopted a dog.

He is 19. He just finished a slab coffee table. Looks great considering I didn't see ANY hand tools in the pics. This makes me think, you all are a bunch of DIYers. What is a list of the essential tools.

I will start with the obvious:

Screw driver set
Utility knife
Wrench / socket set
Cordless drill / bits
Pliers
Locking pliers
Adjustable wrench
Putty knife
Tape measure
Circular saw
Straight edge
Duct tape

Less obvious:

VOM
Impact driver
Stud finder


What other gems should a man who likes to work with his hands have?

Block plane and chisels.

Jigsaw.

Pull saw.
Several hammers.
Cordless impact.
At least two tape measures, not one.
Olfa knife.
A couple of bubble levels.
Speed square.
Side Cutters.
Wire strippers.
Lots of pencils....

Dremel with a flexible neck and variety of grinding/cutting blades.

A drywall patch kit.

All in the OP plus this ^ and a 4 foot level, a 2 foot level, a Sawsall. Prolly a lot more, but with the advances in battery technology I’m reticent to get too specific.

digital caliper

You can never have enough clamps.....

Set of electronics-scale tools - especially once kids come around.

Good (like Klein/Wiha) screwdrivers to keep locked away until that one glorious screwing opportunity comes along.

50-pack of good (makita/whatever) #2 bits to go with the drill/driver. Limping one of those bunged things up is miserable and will only lead to tears.

Not essential.

But a whole lot of fun.

I needed to drill a hole into concrete and brick so I researched it and bought a Rotary Hammer Drill. It's a big ugly thing that really works. It drills of course but has a massive hammer effect going on at the same time. My old hammer drill was pretty useless but his thing is like drilling into butter.

I'm still covered in dust. GF's renovation house need cork and Linoleum removed from the floor in a couple of rooms so I got a blade and took the drill function off. It carved the old flooring off in an hour or two. By hand would have been a few days work. It also smashed the concrete off where the toilet had been.

Router
Angle grinder
Belt sander

BFH and duct tape. End of story.

I'm quite the do-it-yourselfer, with a construction background.
I've never owned a stud finder.
As an ex-framer, I can tell where a stud should be, and I'm usually correct.

My game changed with a couple months of buying some cordless Dewalt tools. Just in the last two months to be exact.

Hammer drill, screwdriver, impact wench, tiny circular saw, saw's-all and a few others.

I put a new roof on my Mom's chicken coop, and best of all I built a 8x12 game-cooler. Can't imagine how long it would have took old school. Sure I could have done it but, I know I did all that in 1/4 the time.-WW

ps. Old school list I'd put a large compressor on the list of tools. And a quality med sized chain-saw, and a 2000watt Honda Generator.
The kid is in the service, for his moves they charge you by weight. It sucks you can't have a shop. So you use the base tools as much as possible.

I could have used you to help me install a TV wall mount last month. Completely irregular spacing of the wall studs. I would up finding two about 8" apart. Absolutely nothing was 16" apart from each other, as my 13 pilot holes through the drywall can attest.

I'd also recommend that pizza cutter thingie to fix window screens, especially if you have pets or kids.
Ladder. Also a folding stepstool.
Small floorjack. Every once in awhile it's useful as an extra set of hands when building, repairing, or replacing something.

Sawzall

Multimeter

Screw gun

Checkbook

Don't forget gardening implements (unless he lives in a skyscraper). Shovels, rakes, sledgehammers.

Keep them coming! Great ideas!

A whole lot of zip ties.

You need to go "Bare Essential Tools"...trust me. Every time I got re-assigned (every four years or so) you get charged by the pound. Basically family or not you only get so much stuff you can ship to your new unit. Go over your allowed poundage and it comes out of your pocket, plus extra. I will say this I got all kinds of cool stuff on the cheap as folks relocated. They couldn't afford to have it shipped. The higher you go in rank the more poundage you are allowed. But tools add up fast if you don't have some awesome place to stash stuff like I did on our family ranch. I shipped or drove the good stuff to my "real home"-WW

I was lucky and blessed and don't take it for granted one bit.

The most essential tools of all: Spare 10mm sockets.