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The Wirecutter Show
How To Be Handier
00:13:58
Tool expert Doug Mahoney shares what every beginner needs to start fixing, building, and creating at home.
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Transcript48 lines
- [00:03]
Christine Cyrclassette
I'm Christine Cyrclassette.
- [00:05]
Kyra Blackwell
I'm Kyra Blackwell.
- [00:06]
Rosie Guerin
I'm Rosie Guerin and you're listening to the Wirecutter Show.
- [00:21]
Kyra Blackwell
Hey, y', all, it's Kyra. A few days ago we released an episode with actor, writer and woodworker, the famous Nick Offerman. It really is a fantastic conversation and if you haven't listened to it yet, you should definitely go find it. We talked with Nick about the tools he likes and the woodworking projects he thinks are good to start with, especially with kids. But here at Wirecutter, our tool expertise goes way beyond just woodworking. We have a team of home improvement writers who cover everything from power tools to simple hand tools to the best way to store tools. So in light of our episode with Nick Offerman, we thought it'd be helpful to bring you some more in depth information on how to build a basic toolbox, whether you're starting from scratch or a couple steps above scratch. Today we'll chat with senior staff writer Doug Mahoney. Doug has joined us on the podcast many times before to chat about everything from fire safety to pest control, and he's also been using tools professionally and writing about them for years. In a minute, Doug tells us what tools you really need to start being handy, what you can expect to spend, and what you don't need to invest in as a beginner. Be right back.
- [01:37]
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- [03:17]
Kyra Blackwell
With us now is Doug Mahoney, who is a senior staff writer on the home improvement team who specializes in hand tools and power tools. He also covers home improvement topics, outdoor power equipment and pest control, which y' all probably already know. And Doug owns a hobby farm in the woods of New Hampshire where he's constantly fixing up something his own home.
- [03:36]
Christine Cyrclassette
Doug, welcome back.
- [03:37]
Doug Mahoney
Hi. How is everybody?
- [03:38]
Christine Cyrclassette
We're great and we're so happy to have you back. So, Doug, you are someone that I think anyone would consider a classic handyman. I hope you aren't offended by that term, but I'm not. You know, you've remodeled your home. You've worked as a carpenter. You review tools for a living. But the level of handiness that you have achieved is beyond what most listeners would probably feel comfortable with. Tell us why you think most people listening to this should become handier in their own home.
- [04:06]
Doug Mahoney
For one, obviously it saves you money. It's also it's empowering. It sort of shifts your relationship with your home. You start to see your home as something that you can really kind of adapt to your needs. It's not sort of a static thing anymore. And you also, you don't have to rely on other people to fix things like, say if there's a plumbing issue with your faucet, you may have to wait a few days or a week for a plumber to show up. Whereas if you have, you know, a little bit of know how and confidence to do it, you can just dive right in and speed the timetable up.
- [04:37]
Kyra Blackwell
So even if somebody doesn't consider themselves super handy, what are the types of things anyone can do with a really basic toolkit?
- [04:45]
Doug Mahoney
Well, first, I mean, you can start just if you're really starting with no knowledge as far as any of this stuff, I think painting a room is a great place to start. It starts to kind of shift how you look at your house. You obviously every house has like a loose, wobbly hinges or handles, things like that you can tighten. Another pretty interesting thing. You could just swap out the hardware on Your kitchen cabinets, which is a very simple process, but it can really change the look of your kitchen.
- [05:14]
Kyra Blackwell
What if somebody has zero tools in their home right now? Where should they even start?
- [05:18]
Doug Mahoney
What I tell people is they're sort of like. It's almost like this trifecta of tools to start with. A screwdriver is a great starting tool. A hammer and a tape measure, those are three pretty essential tools that you can really do a lot, lot of little things in your house with. You can tighten hinges, you can hang pictures.
- [05:37]
Kyra Blackwell
Okay, I have two out of three of those, I think. What about like a pre made kit? I've seen a lot of those at like Home Depot.
- [05:44]
Doug Mahoney
Yeah, the pre made kits, they're okay. They're very, very limited. As far as I'm concerned. They cost more than what they're worth. They usually seem to be about $40 or so. I think they're probably worth more like 20. They are pretty poor quality tools to me. They're perfect for if like you're sending a kid off to college and you want them to just something. It's a place to potentially start. But I think that if you're approaching this work with any seriousness, you're going to bump up against the limitations of those tools very, very quickly. So I think that I would just recommend getting the individual tools. Get yourself a nice screwdriver, a nice hammer, nice tape measure, good utility knife, pliers, things like that.
- [06:29]
Rosie Guerin
Doug, if I'm standing in Home Depot in front of a wall of hand tools, I'm. It can be overwhelming to know which ones to buy. What is the difference between, for instance, a mediocre hammer or a screwdriver and really good ones? Why would you want to spend more for hand tools versus getting the cheaper thing?
- [06:51]
Doug Mahoney
Yeah, so the thing with tools is that the cheapest thing usually does still work, but it's just not going to be a very good experience. A better tool, you're going to notice it just feels better in the hand. The grip is going to be much better. The overall design will be better. Like a really nice set of wire cutters will cut with much more power than a cheaper set. The jaws might be designed differently to give a cleaner cut. Things like screwdrivers are going to be made of much better steel so they don't become mush and become unusable. So it's just going to make your work a lot easier. And it's definitely more of an investment. You know, you'll probably be paying anywhere from 15 up to say, $30 per tool. If you're buying the tools individually, but they're going to turn into lifetime tools. I think it's worth leveling up to the good stuff.
- [07:39]
Rosie Guerin
So once someone has the core tools, what other tools would you recommend they consider adding over time? So if you're doing this ad hoc, what are you adding to your collection as you move forward?
- [07:52]
Doug Mahoney
Once you have those basics, I would then sort of move on to the plier wrench category. So adjustable pliers, adjustable wr. Those are great for adjusting bike seats and tightening faucet. Obviously they're very good plumbing tools. Then you have locking pliers, which are vice grips. Stud finder, that's a pretty basic one, especially if you're hanging a heavy mirror on the wall, things like that.
- [08:14]
Rosie Guerin
Okay, so level stud finder could be potentially helpful. What else?
- [08:17]
Doug Mahoney
Allen wrenches are good. They're another one used especially if you have kids who have bikes. Seems like half the adjustments on bikes are with Allen wrenches. I think a headlamp is really good, especially if you have a basement. If you have a nasty crawl space like I do, headlamps are pretty helpful to be able to work hands free and still get some light on what you're doing. Then if you get into any electrical work or you start figuring out your electrical system in your house, a non contact voltage tester is a good one. And what you do is you can place the tip of it against a wire and it will tell you if that wire is live. You can also stick them into an outlet to see if an outlet is live. So it's a good troubleshooting thing. Like, okay, my lamp doesn't work, I've changed the bulb. And then you can take a non contact voltage test there and you can test the outlet to see if the outlet's working.
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Christine Cyrclassette
This sounds both incredibly handy and advanced. I think I'd be scared to be like, oh, here's a wire. Let me just see if it's.
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Doug Mahoney
No, no, it's.
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Kyra Blackwell
Let me stick this thing in. A live outlet maybe.
- [09:13]
Doug Mahoney
Well, it's a non contact thing, so you can do it. You don't even need to touch the wire. You just get the tip of it close to the wire.
- [09:21]
Christine Cyrclassette
When do you think it's worth graduating from hand tools into power tools? Things like an electric drill or power sander or a saw?
- [09:32]
Doug Mahoney
Well, getting into those tools, that's when you really start taking on a proactive approach. You're not really just reacting to the loose handle or the jiggly towel bar. That's when you're like, I'm going to fix this rotted deck board. I want to maybe put in a screen door, things like that. So it kind of depends on where you're at, what projects you have. If you're a renter, you may not need to. Although I think a cordless drill is probably essential for anybody who's interested in taking on this kind of work work. From there, you can graduate up into saws, circular saw, jigsaw. You can get pretty much everything you need done with those two tools as far as cutting goes, and then an orbital sander after that. That would be kind of like the first basic kit, I think, of power tools to get.
- [10:19]
Christine Cyrclassette
So you said earlier, most people should have a power drill. What does that unlock? What can you do that you couldn't do if you don't have one?
- [10:25]
Doug Mahoney
Well, first, it can save a lot of time even from what a screwdriving task is. Like if you're putting in a door hinge instead of sitting there. Screw, screw, screw, screw, screw. You can get it done in like less than a second. And you're not really relying on hand strength. You're not exhausting your hand. And secondly, you can start really, like putting things together. Like, you can drill holes, you can drive screws. So you can start to like, replace the deck board. You could, as far as drilling holes, anything from like a birdhouse opening to drilling the holes you need to put in a curtain rod or a knife rack. It really opens up a huge, huge arena of things you can do.
- [11:01]
Christine Cyrclassette
What is our top pick?
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Doug Mahoney
Our top pick is a little 12 volt DeWalt.
- [11:04]
Christine Cyrclassette
And how much does it cost?
- [11:05]
Doug Mahoney
The 12 volt drills usually go. That's actually the smallest class of cordless drill. They usually go for less than 150. They're often on sale to about 100, which comes with a drill, two batteries and the charger.
- [11:17]
Christine Cyrclassette
And at this point, we only recommend cordless drills, right? We don't really have any corded drills that we recommend.
- [11:23]
Doug Mahoney
No, no, definitely not. Corded tools are definitely on their way to becoming extinct at this point. Battery technology has gotten just phenomenal. There's really no point in having a corded drill.
- [11:35]
Kyra Blackwell
Let's say that you buy a really nice power drill and you're feeling emboldened. Do you just jump right in and buy every power tool there is at once? Or the dreaded question, do you buy a kit?
- [11:46]
Doug Mahoney
Well, in the case of power tools, a kit is a great place to start, I think, unlike what we were just saying with hand tools. So for one, it's a way to get a lot of tools at a fairly low price. So the way to think about power tools is that, and this is certainly the way manufacturers think about it, is that you're buying their batteries like you're buying into their battery system. So they want you to buy their tools, because then you're going to be more likely to buy other of their tools which are compatible with the same battery. Which also makes sense from the consumer point of view too, because once you have a couple DeWalt batteries, you can also buy another DeWalt tool as a bare tool, which means it comes at a reduced price and it doesn't have a battery or it doesn't have a charger. So the kits are great. You can get a wide variety of tools. Often they come with a drill, a circular saw, maybe reciprocating saw, Oscillating multi tool, which is a phenomenally useful tool, maybe a flashlight. And then you get two batteries and a charger. And sometimes that's for as little as like $200, which is just a fantastic price. It's a good place to get started. You kind of get a little bit of everything, so you kind of have everything you may need.
- [12:52]
Christine Cyrclassette
And an oscillating multi tool, I have never heard of that before. What is it? What does it do?
- [12:57]
Doug Mahoney
Yeah, so oscillating multi tools, they're pretty interesting. So for a long time, one company had the patent on this tool. It's a company called Fine, it's a German company. But what it does is it's. You can put a lot of things on it. You can put a blade on it, you can put a sander on it. But what it does is it oscillates back and forth slightly. So there's a lot of benefits to that. If you put a sanding pad on it, it's a triangular sanding pad. So you can get it right into, like an inside corner. If you have a saw blade on, and these saw blades are only like an inch wide, you can plunge cut like directly straight into a wall. So it's not like a circular saw, which is going to make a huge mess. So if you're cutting in for like an outlet or something like that, you could just kind of plunge in and then just make like a really tight, nice little box. There's also little heads on it, little grinder heads, so you can kind of clean out grout with them, too. So Fine had it for a long time, and then, I don't know, 10 years ago or so, their patent wore out. And so then there's been a flood of other companies. So now everybody pretty much has one. They're really good. They're definitely like a renovator's tool for sure.
- [13:59]
Rosie Guerin
Doug, do you have any final pieces of philosophical advice for people who are interested in becoming handy?
- [14:07]
Doug Mahoney
You've got to seriously think about safety with these tools, especially saws. Just try not to get in over your head. I mean it's probably going to happen at some point and YouTube is a great resource. But make sure if you have a project in mind, you're replacing your toilet, for instance. Like watch 10 videos on people replacing their toilets and not just one. And that way you can kind of get a sense of sort of what the the truth is of the process, what kind of things everybody deals with, what kind of things you might run into. If you have an old house, good luck to you because everything goes sideways very quickly on an old house. I know my house is 250 years old and nothing is to any standard, but keep a good attitude about it and don't let my brother in law, he says this, he says don't let perfect get in the way of pretty good.
- [14:54]
Rosie Guerin
Well, thanks Doug. Always love having you here. It's the best. Thanks for joining us.
- [14:59]
Kyra Blackwell
Thank you Doug.
- [15:00]
Doug Mahoney
It's fun to be here.
- [15:04]
Kyra Blackwell
We'll drop links in our show notes to Wirecutter's top picks for hammers, screwdrivers, drills and other tools. And we'll also link to some safety equipment like eye protection and dust masks that you should use when you start getting handy. That's it for us. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Thanks for listening.
- [15:29]
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