If you want to read articles and reviews that are trade-specific, try our Tool Reviews by Trade section. This organizes our site into topics suited particularly for a specific trade such as plumbing, electrical, framing, roofing & siding, concrete/masonry, and carpentry. Roofing and siding pros will find pneumatic roofing nailers as well as tools like cap staplers and hammer tackers. Tile & Flooring Pros will gain easy access to our tile saws, flooring staplers, and floor scrapers. As a painting professional, reviews of airless sprayers and cordless sprayers may interest you the most. You can count on one thing: whatever your craft, you need good tools. Our tool reviews by trade will help you drill down to quickly find the information you need. If you want to avoid anything that sits outside of your trade, this way helps you do it. If you can’t find a tool here, let us know.
The new Black and Decker LPS7000 Compact Saw uses a built in 7V Lithium Ion battery, accepts standard T-shank blades and is ideal for quick cuts in many materials that are up to one inch in thickness. The battery is designed to hold a charge for up to 18 months, a feature that will help make this tool be always on the ready for when you need it.
The Metabo HPT C8FSESM 8-1/2″ sliding compound miter saw was originally released under the Hitachi brand to coincide with the […]
Swanson took the age old framing square and made it into a folding, 5-in-1 layout tool they are calling the T001WZ Framing Wizard. This new tool makes space and functionality top priorities! Forget about trying to figure out where to keep your old square; now that you have this one available, you can fold it in half and throw it in your tool bag. With its versatile use, you can just whip it out and use it as a framing square, tri-square, miter square, angle finder or as a saw guide.
The new Swanson T04424 Wood Magnet is one of those types of tools that once you use it a few times, you realize how many times it would have come in handy on all your past projects! With low cost and highly versatile applications, this compact tool is able to combine a number of project leveling and layout tools into one. The simple design combined with a pretty rugged build should make this an easy choice for both DIY types and pros alike!
When you are working outside and want comfortable headphones that will both provide noise isolation and allow you to plug in your MP3 player, I can think of no better solution than the Ryobi Tek4 Noise Suppression Headphones. These phones provide over 25dB SPL of noise reduction. We used the headphones while trimming and mowing a 1/4-acre lot and found them to be extremely effective at reducing noise. There is a control knob on the right headphone that controls the volume for the microphones located at the front of the headphones. These microphones are filtered and allow and amplify only narrow-band speech while continuing to suppress external noise.
The Tek4 4V Professional Infrared Thermometer delivers a constant readout of temperatures ranging from below 0 to over twice the boiling point of water. We found that this tool is most accurate when you are less than 2 meter from your target, but the tool can also measure from quite a distance away. The key to using it correctly is to understand that it has a 10:1 spot-to-distance ratio, so the closer you are, the smaller your measurement sample and the less it will be affected by the surrounding air temperature. This is an incredibly handy tool, especially for air mechanical inspectors and installers.
STIHL (which is actually pronounced “steel”—or “shteel” if you’re European) has introduced the new FS 56 RC-E, the top-of-the-line model […]
TWI International is a Taiwan-based company that produces lots of forged products, some of which end up at places like Lowe’s. TWI’s Flaring Tool Set is a solid, durable product that will easily flare copper piping. The tool’s folding bar is made with heat treated alloy steel and it has a drop forged carbon steel yoke and wing nuts. The tool can be used to flare 3/16″, 1/4″, 5/16″, 3/8″, 7/16″, and 5/8″ OD copper tubing. We used it for a gas line and it was the perfect solution. At just over $10 at our local home improvement warehouse it was something we decided to try out and it really paid off in it’s performance.
The Lenox 21011 TC138 Tubing Cutters will handily cut pipe diameters from 1/8″ to 1-3/8″. We found that the four […]
When it comes to identifying circuit breakers in an existing home, using a circuit breaker finder may be the easiest way to make a difficult and tedious project as simple as possible. By using a transmitter and receiver, a circuit breaker finder like the A.W. Sperry CS550A quickly and easily identifies individual branch circuits at the panel box without interrupting power. It is quite simply the easiest, if not best way to accurately locate circuit breakers. The system is compact in size and extremely easy to use and locates both AC Breakers and Fuses.
