Four Essential Shop Tools (+1)

Having lived this way for nearly five years (!) I took some time to take stock, walking around the shop and just thinking "which of these things has proven most useful to me?"

Here are a few answers.

The Vise

The Columbian vise pictured above was in my grandfather's basement for decades, then my dad's garage for twenty years. As far as I know, neither of them ever used it. My grandfather was a junk-man and tinkerer. He probably bought the vise for its potential value as scrap steel. His basement was full of such things, and it's rather hard to imagine one making a living peddling junk these days, when our thrift stores are chock-full of ancestors' possessions no Millennial apparently wants to have.

But I digress. When I saw the vise the first time, I knew I wanted it. The solidity of the thing! It radiates the sort of sleeves-rolled-up, baseball-on-the-AM-radio DIY of a different era. And the metal is as formidable as the Battleship Wisconsin, another relic of that time.

My pipe-cleaner arms of my early teens could barley budge it. My dad knew its worth as a good tool, so after his father passed, dad stuck it in a corner of his garage. My dad's idea of DIY consisted of "call some guy" after his two tools--a claw hammer and 16d nail--would not solve the problem. All right, I'm exaggerating. Dad had a set of pliers too, if he could find them in the kitchen drawer.

When Dad passed, I grabbed the vise and asked my father-in-law to media-blast it. He then primed it, and I painted it with a heavy-duty monument paint that should last down the decades.  But the vise is not bit of hipster decor. I have used it many times for many projects. The jaws grip firmly enough for hammering metal into curves or bending bar-stock metal, though it occasionally serves the prosaic purpose of holding a #2 pencil that holds a spool of fishing line, when I restring my reels. The top of it can be used for cold-hammering metal flat, rather like an anvil.

So this tool is my #1 go-to in the shop. I could not live as I do without it.

The Drill Press

I've never owned one of these before, but my father-in-law left one on the property and it works wonderfully. The trick to a good press is that is spins slowly but has enormous torque. I've bored through sheet steel a quarter of an inch thick, with no problems. I use a cutting oil to make things go smoothly and the motor does not suffer undue wear.

I don't know much about modern drill-presses, but this one has real staying power. There are so many uses for it that I'd need a chapter of a book to list them all. But the press gives precision when precision is needed, or when very large bores for bolts need drilling. I used the press to make seat bracket adapters for a car I'm restoring and our 1950 John Deere M tractor.

Note the safety glasses nearby. Though the bit spins slowly, slivers of metal are no joke when flying through the air!

The Bench Grinder

These are salted around our property like Dandelions. I must have found six in various states of disrepair, including one very new and very cheaply made Chinese one in the box. It has no torque; if you press down on the wheel, you can slow it down! It is, however, perfect for light materials.

The best of the lot is shown, a vintage Craftsman from when Sears not only was the King of Retail, not a dying memory, the innovator purveyor of just about everything America's then burgeoning middle class needed for the good life.

The best grinders offer a work light, sturdy tempered-glass shields to protect one's face from sparks, and two grits of wheel or a wheel and wire brush (my favorite combo). As with the drill press, the torque on a good grinder can be immense. I usually have to hold work by hand to grind it, so I wear thick gloves to keep my hands from burning, and I never get distracted. Imagine having a finger pulled into the metal guard by the grinding wheel!

Grinders work for wood too; my first experience was as a 10 year old, making a Pinewood Derby car when I was a Scout.

The Miter-Box Saw

I own two, one of them a professional model Bosch with a 12" blade that is heavy and rides around on a folding stand. It  does great work, but the handiest saw of the lot I own is a little Hitachi, one that cost me less and $100. It is light enough to tote to the job site in one hand, and the 10" blade big enough to do all sorts of chores. It angles in both directions

and can accommodate lots of different sorts of blades.

I have used this little saw for wood (of course) but with a masonry blade, I've cut HardiePlank paneling for a siding job. An installer told me that his firm saves old saw blades and mounts them backward to cut such cement-board planking, as clever an adaptive reuse as I've encountered.

Safety with such a saw involves reading the manual and slowing down when making cuts. I wear googles and make sure I know where every finger is, so one day I don't come up, um, short.

That's four essential tools, but then I remembered my own example of adaptive reuse

The Floor Safe

I could not figure out what to do with a floor safe that had no working dial. Someone drilled all that

out years ago, but there it sat in my shop.

Recently I purchased a few fireworks for a 4th of July Party we didn't have. Where could I store them, safely? Then the old safe came to mind. I put them  and my jug of gunpowder for reloading in the old safe. There's a plastic jug of Alliant Bullseye pistol powder in there now.

The door shuts well and only needs to be pulled open. The thing weighs a few hundred pounds, incidentally.

So if you find a broken safe for sale, cheap, get some helpers to bring it to your shop.

Pro tip: If  you do reload, keep your primers elsewhere. Those can explode. Gunpowder only burns until it's confined in a cartridge or firework.

Get a second broken safe! Or even one that works for free. I see a 1966 post-office safe on Craig's List locally, an 1100 pound beauty. The catch?

It is "on wheels but is located in a small room in a basement that does have a walk out...however the walk out is into the yard not a driveway, so this is going to be a challenge. But if you want a cool big old safe and like a challenge, contact us."

Have at it! You can never have enough safes.