Off Grid Homesteading.....the tools you'll need.

[Music] how's it going everybody my name is Dave Whipple and you're watching Busch for radical in the last couple episodes we've talked about the subject off-grid homesteading that is buying a piece of land moving on to the piece of land setting yourself up for a temporary living arrangement in this episode we're going to talk about the tools that you would need to have in order to have a at least a very basic kit to get started homesteading a piece of raw land so when it comes to homesteading basically you can look at it like this you're going to need three different categories of tools you're going to need land clearing and land development tools you're going to need construction and carpentry tools and you're going to need maintenance tools what we're gonna do today is we're gonna take a look at each one of those three sets of tools not only is there gonna be thought tool but why you would need that tool and at the end of this video I'm gonna show you possibly the most important tool that you can have stay tuned think about the 1800s imagine you're watching a Western and there's a covered wagon heading across the Prairie towards California the stuff that would be on a covered wagon in the eighteen hundreds is pretty much the same stuff you'd need today to clear land to clear timber to clear brush to prune trees to dig holes basically the tools are still exactly the same stuff that they'd use 150 years ago let me give you an example let's start with the very basics this shovel boom now this is a square nose shovel and a good shovel is about as good as a good shovel that's about all there is to it buy a quality tool it's hard to find a really poor quality shovel it's hard to find a super high quality shovel a shovels a shovel just make sure you like the handle and there's no cracks in it if you're buying used for a buck or two what you're going to want you're gonna want a square shovel and you're gonna want a round shovel generally you're gonna pay a dollar or two for a decent shovel at a yard sale or flea market you're gonna need a couple shells you probably already have them of all the tools that you're gonna need for homesteading nothing is more important than the shovel you're gonna find uses for it every single day you're never gonna run out of things you need it for you're never gonna come to the point where it's like I don't need to shovel anymore cuz I don't need to dig anymore you're always gonna need a shovel just beyond the shovel is a rake two kinds of rakes there's the big wide broad leaf rake and then there's the narrow steel kind kind of a garden rake our steel tined rake is in the Upper Peninsula on a piece of property that we're hoping to build a cabin on this summer and that rakes doing the duty it's meant to do up there which is kind of rougher rake work a posthole digger you're gonna want to post sooner or later for one reason or another or a hole in the ground there goes straight down not a whole lot of thought needs to be put into this buy yourself a set of post hole diggers the next time you're at a flea market or a yard sale and you see a set for five or ten bucks you take a look at these guys there's two different style of hoes for the garden now homesteading and gardening kind of go hand in hand a lot of people have it in their head that homesteading is all about growing your own food that's very legitimate other people might want to want cabin somewhere in the woods where there's not a ton of opportunity to garden and that's legitimate too but realistically I would put the hose on the must-have list too because they do a lot more than just garden work hoes are good for digging out roots of saplings around campsites and stuff not only that but here's a fun fact that a lot of people don't know the hole is better for digging yourself out of being stuck in the snow then a shovel there's a lot of times if you're high centered on a snowbank a shovel is only gonna get so far under a vehicle but with a hole you can reach under and scoop the snow out and let your vehicle get back down to solid ground so you can drive out so a hoe is kind of like the the super secret tool for for winter travel if you've got a shovel in your truck you've got a hoe in your truck you can not only dig yourself up but you can also get off high centre if you like get up on a snow berm or a hard pack snow bank or drift and your tires don't touch the ground the hole the tool very few things are synonymous with off-grid living as would heat and just like everything else in off-grid living when it comes to firewood you just need a simple set of tools let me run down a few things that I use that I think are pretty much essential items if you're gonna do firewood as a home heating source of course you're gonna need an axe why are you gonna need an axe you're not really gonna need an axe to fell trees unless you really want to work your butt off you're gonna need an axe to split wood now why do I say you need an axe to split wood I find and I've always found that a good blunt hardware store axe works better for splitting wood than a mall ninety percent of the time because it doesn't wear you out and if the wood is conducive to being split an axe will do the job there's a pretty small window in my opinion where a splitting maul really shines what I've always found over the years is if a piece of wood is too resistant to being split that the axe doesn't split it and you're beating yourself to death with the axe there's a good chance that a maul is probably not going to split it either and you're gonna have to go to a wedge now this is your basic splitting wedge and if you have a wedge and a maul to use as a sledgehammer you can split anything you could split anything under the Sun with a wedge and a sledgehammer so if you've got if you're cutting big timber and you cut a round off a big log and you tip it over you might be able to work your way around it with an axe but to try to split it into a half or into a quarter it's probably gonna be next to impossible and I would say the same thing with them all you're gonna have this small window where a ball is gonna work and then you're just gonna be beating yourself to death trying to use them all the same way you were beating yourself to death trying to use an axe but but a wedge will split that block would get it down into a quarter and then with a quarter if you have a log splitter you can get a quarter of a big round maybe up onto a log splitter and finish splitting it out let's talk about chainsaws if the less you live somewhere that doesn't have trees the chainsaw is one of the first things that you're gonna want now between Brook and I we have four chainsaws we have a steel Oh 25 steel Oh 34 which is a like a 60cc soft pretty good sized saw and we have two of these little echo chainsaws what you really need is you need a good reliable chainsaw that's gonna cut wood when you want to cut wood with it so what side do you buy I'm not gonna touch that with a 10-foot Pole you know it's like the ford chevy dodge thing I'm not gonna tell you to buy a Husqvarna I'm not gonna tell you to buy a steel I'm not gonna tell you to buy an echo or a Shindou or a dole Mar or whatever what I am going to tell you is buy a saw where there is a dealer locally that has all the parts that you might need if you go to the box store and you buy yourself a Poland or a McCullough those are old brands that used to make real saws and they sold the brand's off to some other big company I think Husqvarna owns a lot of those brands the saws are made in Vietnam and China and they'll work for a short amount of time maybe along by the time if you take care of them if you break something in them you're not gonna get parts for them you were going to you're gonna be in a situation where you go buy a good saw or you just go buy another junk saw buy a chain saw where there is a dealer locally that can get you the parts that you need for that saw they just don't have the parts available for makalah's and Poland's pull ons and what are the other ones you want to kind of go with like that big three or big four Husqvarna is probably getting to be the biggest player in the market they've bought up a lot of other salt companies Husqvarna has dealerships they've got parts I don't own a Husqvarna I don't have any real insight to pass on to you about Husqvarna I know a lot of guys own Huskies they love them they swear by the brand I'm just not as familiar with that brand but I would recommend it for the fact that it's a brand where you can buy parts for it if something breaks if something gets lost vibrates off what have you you can go to Husqvarna do and they will get you the parts they'll probably have them in store same thing goes for steel same thing goes for echo echoes dealerships their echo string trimmers are probably the best out there their chainsaws they're a little tame they could stand a little bit of dialing in what the they're just great saws I've really loved them now the other thing that's important to consider is you want a chainsaw that can take just a regular standard chisel chain a lot of size you buy are gonna come with an anti kickback chain any kickback chains are basically anti cutting wood chains they cut at half the rate they don't grab as well they don't kickback but you know if you're running a chainsaw all the time you you get accustom to the feel of the saw you don't need the anti kickback chain it's basically like a lawyer chain it's a safety chain that for people who might be maybe it's the first chain saw and they run it five minutes a year and they're just afraid of it the only reason you'd ever want on a chain saw at all is to cut through wood it doesn't have another perp its whole existence is based on cutting firewood so why would you put a chain on it that makes it cut wood slower makes you put more effort and time into it when you buy a saw if it's got any any kickback chain make sure that isn't one of these freak shows that only takes an anti kickback chain you won't be able to cut wood with the saw or why own one now if you're shopping for a chainsaw and you it's just all numbers you know this is the 450 X this is the 370 X P basically there's there's a range of chainsaws from about 30 CC's up to about 60 cc's that's going to be the homeowner saws a small small saws in that 30 35 CC range they're plenty good for for cutting firewood for working around the house once you get up to about 40 cc's you know that's a decent firewood saw that's lightweight easy to use it's gonna do fine you can't push it a ton but it's gonna be a good saw I cut a lot of firewood with this and it's under a 40 cc's we start getting into that 59 CC saw you've got a saw with a lot of power you might need that power you might not need that power if you're running like a chainsaw jig like a grand spurge jig you're gonna need a 59 CC Andover if you're running like a head and lumber jig like you've seen in my videos where I was - siding logs you can Teesside Logs with any chainsaw it doesn't have to be a big one but the grands burger you're making boards that has to be a bigger saw when it comes to saw maintenance basically all you're gonna need is something to loosen up the nuts that hold your bar on and you need something to adjust your chain now that tool is a scrunch it's a t-shaped branch it's got two different socket sizes on one end then a screwdriver I'd show you but you probably already know what I'm talking about anyway I don't have one with me at the moment as far as chain maintenance goes you can sharpen your chain just with a standard old chain saw file which I've used for years a friend of mine who passed away unfortunately a few months back sent me this chainsaw sharpener this is a still brand chainsaw sharpener now this guy is a little confusing to use because it's got like four different weight but what it does is it sharpens the tooth of the saw and it cuts down the raker or the depth gauge at the same time so it's kind of once you figure it out it's it's pretty much idiot-proof and it does a good job the other thing about this sharpener that I absolutely love is it's almost kind of aggressive when you're taking the rakers down it takes them down a pretty pretty fair amount so your saw bites and and cuts good and quick generally a very skeptical of new products because a lot of them just have this stupid nanny factor built in where you know it needs to be safe and it needs to needs to have its on a little bike element on the tool this one actually cuts the breakers down so the chain bites pretty good I'm pretty happy with it it's it's a it's a tool made for people that want the saw to cut firewood not just be safe quote-unquote it's a chain saw it's not safe inherently and the better it cuts the quicker I'll be done so this is actually a really good tool kind of offensive much more expensive than this but if you're just using a regular chainsaw file you'll need a small flat file to touch those rakers and you probably need a jig to get them all the same or you're just eyeing them this is a good choice I definitely can endorse this tool it's saying you know this is way better than I thought it would be a hooker hoon like this is kind of a handy tool too if you're loading a lot of wood because you can take and hook a piece of wood and pick it up with a hooker rune and then fling it into your wagon or onto your truck or whatever and it saves you bending down and picking it up bending down and picking it up I wouldn't say it's essential but it's an absolute joy to use a hooker room or a picker own for saving your back now the other tool that you see here this is a can't hook a lot of people call it a PV they're not exactly the same tool but they do pretty 90% of the same function and the idea behind a can't hook is it's just so you can handle moving larger logs like this by yourself say you have this section a tree trunk which probably weighs seven eight hundred nine hundred pounds and you cut it with your chainsaw into useable sections that you can split up well the problem is is you can't cut down into the dirt with your chainsaw or you're gonna be sharpening it and ruining your your chains all the time so you cut almost down to the ground in each one of your cuts and then with your can't hook you can roll the log over and continue the cuts I've made all my cuts through this log now I need to roll it over now with a can't hook or PV any kind of a log rolling tool with a big hook on it that was a very easy thing to do and now I can do all of these cuts from underneath without getting a whole lot of dirt on my chain nothing grabs onto a log and gives you the leverage that you want like a can't hook or a PV you lock on it with the jaw and you've got all the leverage in the world you can roll that log if you've got big timber I would say that a can't hook or PV is a must-have item if you've got a lot of stuff that's 10 inches around or a foot around or or you know anything smaller than 16 inches you're probably never going to use a PV you can probably get away without owning one but once you start getting into trees that are 20 inches trees that are 24 inches 30 inches you know that's that's a massive chunk of wood and if it's a fairly straight tree on fairly straight ground it's just gonna lay there and there's really it's hard to find a spot where you can cut all the way down through the wood and get a piece of log cut loose and what happens more often than not is you're trying not to run your saw into the dirt but there's really nowhere to make a cut to sever two logs apart to where you can roll a big block over so having a can't hook like this it totally solves that problem saves your chains saves your back and and it's a really good way to handle big locks if you don't have big logs on your property if you've got a lot of small stuff this is one you could skip let me say one more word about axises are a very sexy tool lots of people love axes they like to collect taxes by axis it's a tool that has a collectible market and being a tool the collectors like it's got its own folklore around the tool the axe and lots of people have a lot of opinions let me give you the skinny on axis so you don't go down 500 rabbit trails listening to people tell you their opinions on axis when it comes to splitting you want an axe that's not sharp you don't want to be able to cut yourself with the axe that you're going to split with if you're gonna be felling with it that's chopping down trees if you're going to be living with it you want an axis sharp so what does that mean it means you want two axes you want one that's thinner and sharper for doing your cutting work and you want one that's thicker and dull for doing your splitting work splitting with a good sharp axe there's no need for it it introduces a danger that's you don't need to have in that particular chore you want your splitting axe to be dull enough that you can't cut yourself with it farce hatchets go your hatchets gonna depend on what you use it for if you have if you're gonna be just splitting Kinlan get a fat hatchet that's dull if you're going to be living branches off the tree get it then Lynette's sharp that's the whole subject in a nutshell here's the standby the wheelbarrow there is no homestead in the world that couldn't benefit from owning a wheelbarrow you're gonna find a million uses for a wheelbarrow well hey what's going on buddy look at this guy he likes it wheelbarrows - anytime you need to take a large amount of something something more than you aren't putting your arms and move it from point A to point B a wheel bar was probably gonna be the first thing you're gonna reach for unless you own a utility trailer and something to pull it worth now this is one of the most important utility items you know it's not a necessity but it's so close to a necessity I would say it's kind of a must-have and that's just a little utility trailer this is for hauling wood it's for hauling junk out to the back for tea pollen brush hauling whatever now a utility trailer like this is basically a wheel barrow 2.0 if you've got a quad or if you have a lawn tractor this is gonna do not 89% of the work that you would use a wheelbarrow for this wagon really has no purpose unless you have something to pull it with so let me show you my preference for something to pull it with now when it comes just to all-around utility I don't think you can do better than a garden tractor a garden tractor can double as a lawn mower it can double as a small little tractor to rototill with with a rotor tiller attachment you can plow snow with one throw a set of wheel weights on the back a set of tire chains and I put my small plow on the front it takes about an hour and a half to plow a 200-foot driveway and a large parking area so a little tractor like this has has just so many varied uses to it there's there's so many things you can do with it not just hook a wagon to it to pull it around but that is a very important aspect honestly I think I have maybe 275 dollars into this wheel horse the other wheel horse I have I've got maybe 150 in it including a new battery I've had both these tractors for I don't know three or four years now I never run out of things to do with them the reason I like a wheel horses I think it's probably the combination of the simplest garden tractor to work on but also the one of the toughest we've got a big cast iron rear end big cast iron Kohler engines in them they're just pretty bulletproof for a few hundred bucks you can pick one of these up it'll do a lot of the work that you'd have to do manually otherwise all lawn tractors have plenty enough power to pull around the cart full or whatever you want to stuff in it if you don't have a quad and you don't have a small pickup that can get in and out of tight places lawn tractors a wonderful thing to add to the tool pile definitely not a necessity but you know for a couple hundred bucks it's a big upgrade ironically when it comes to living off-grid one of the most important tools that you're ever going to need is a generator now for some people they're gonna be like no you can't have a generator being off-grid is about no electricity well not to me it's not being off-grid is about not paying a bill every month to the electric company not paying a bill to the water company because you've got your own water figured out it's about having the the ability to take care of those things yourself in-house as you see fit not paying 40 bucks a month just so the power company's got a line to your house no matter how much power you use but a generator will run all your power tools for building make your building process go much much smoother give you a kind of a a modern building process as opposed to running hand saws and hand tools generator will also charge anything that you need to charge battery chargers for your car you know if you're if you don't have grid power and you leave your lights on or something like that the next day you don't have you know your battery's totally dead just a little battery charge or plug it into your generator charge your battery up at home just a million things you know lights you just want to hook it into a wired system in in an off-grid house kick it on for a few hours light the place up listen to the radio whatever a generator is pretty much an essential item and if you happen to be a that group of people that are so against electricity I just they want to be totally totally rustic totally old-fashioned for those people that are in that camp just realize that you're watching a video on the internet about off-grid living so you're not that serious about being completely disconnected anyway so when it comes to the three groups of tools that you're gonna need in a homesteading project you got your mechanic tools you've got your your land and farming type of tools and then you have your building tools if you're gonna build anything you're gonna need to set a building tools the good news here is that the tool list that you need for building is pretty small it doesn't have to be fancy it can be very limited and it can get the job done let me show you what a minimalist tool set looks like that you're gonna need to build a garage or a cabin I think you'd be surprised now almost every building I've ever built has used this particular set of tools or some variation of it you can't build anything without a tape measure a nice little small hand square or a speed square is even better but I don't have one handy I'm not sure where I put it a chalk box for chalking a line on sheet goods like plywood and OSB very very handy pretty much a necessity a level this is a two-foot but I generally always use a four-foot level good solid framing hammer a handsaw an extension cord and then over here a set of paddle bits and a set of hole saws not exactly something you're gonna use all the time but you're gonna find that you do have a use for that link down here to the bottom just a standard corded drill you'll find a million uses for it you'll use it all the time just a standard circular saw nothing fancy there now up in Alaska where I've done 90% of my building I use a good heavy-duty worm drive skill saw but this does just fine it worked and it very is an affordable model probably cost you $50 in the store although it's not a necessity in building projects due to the fact that I've built lots and lots of log homes I'm gonna add a chainsaw into that group of essential tools because building log houses the chainsaw is pretty much a go-to tool use it all the time for everything now there's a lot of stuff that you could add to that kit one of the first things you might want to include would be like a sheetrock t-square what a t-square does is anytime you've got a sheet good like plywood or OSB you just set the t squared on the material and you can you can use it as a straightedge to make a good 90 degree cut whether you're cutting sheetrock with a knife you hold the hold the square in place and just use your knife along the edge or if you're cutting plywood you can you can use it you know put it up against the edge and then you've got a 90 degree surface to mark with with a pencil basically a drywall t-square like this takes the place of a tape measure and a chalk line measuring out two spots and chalking the line between them this is a lot faster it's like a $15 tool it is beneficial to have it's definitely not a must-have I would say one of the most beneficial things about a tool like this is it's a good usable straightedge but if you have a four-foot level which you should there's your straightedge anyway not a necessity kind of nice to have two other tools that I would add to that list ear protection a good set of headphones like you'd use for for shooting pistol or running the chainsaw ear protection is one of those crossover tools that it finds its way into all the different categories of homesteading tools good just that just a regular said it earplugs works fine a lot of times I'll keep a set rated in my hip pocket in my pants they get dirty they get dusty in your stick a minute out of yours not ideal but it's good to have them on your person sometimes it's better just to have a set of earplugs in your pocket because they're always on you and you don't have to go looking for them the other thing I would say one of the must-haves construction tools is our short handled sledgehammer this could be a long-handled sledgehammer - doesn't have to be a short-handled sledgehammer whether its land tools worth hurts but maintenance tools mechanic tools or whether it's construction tools a sledge hammer is gonna find a place it is a must-have tool now when it comes to a hammer basically what you're gonna want is you're gonna want a hammer that you feel comfortable with hammering that feels good in your hand something you just like the ergonomics of it doesn't feel too heavy it doesn't feel too late this particular hammer has been on every single construction job I've ever been on so that's the summer of 2000 this thing has been through hundreds of concrete jobs and a dozen home building projects this has probably had I don't know eight or nine handles on it it's just as good as the day I've bought it's like a twenty one ounce bond it costs me 19 bucks just picked the hammer out that you like now another tool you're gonna find a lot of use for is a saza or a reciprocating saw a sawzall is not a must-have tool but it's close enough to it you may want to just add it to your kit before you get started you will find a use for it it's going to come in handy it's going to be the tool that's the right tool for a specific job at a given time not to say you couldn't work around not having one of these but you know if thirty bucks isn't isn't a big deal to you go pick one up now when it comes to construction tools that's about all you really need you can pretty much get everything done that you're gonna need to do in the world of construction with just a basic set of tools like that you know your project is your project if you wanted to take a project from the ground up with nothing but hand tools the kit would be about the same maybe the paddle bits you'd replace with a brace and bit and auger bits and the hole saw you know you'd have to figure that out too other than that you'd be running a handsaw for everything a sawzall would do running a handsaw for everything that a circular saw would do and the drill would be replaced with a brace and bit and everything else is basically the same framing walls sheeting walls cutting or afters nothing has really changed in the last 500 years in those regards and a simple tool set like this will get the job done now you could step that game up with a table saw nothing wrong with that I don't find that I need a table saw as much as you would think you would in a construction project with a couple saw horses you can rip plywood and OSB with a circular saw just as easy and it's not as much of a hassle because you're working the saw along the material not the material along the soft if a compound miter saw or a chop saw would come in handy I find that those really shine when you're doing a lot of production and you can set them up in a stationary area and make all your cuts you know at one time and set your angles on your on your miter saw I never have felt like I was missing something by not having a miter saw on a small project basically any tool that you want to add to this group can make your build more efficient but I think there is definitely there's a point of diminishing returns where this widget is going to make this part of the project go faster but it's gonna cost as much as something that's way more valuable for instance you bought a sliding compound miter saw you could do a lot of your angled cuts and your rafters but that's gonna cost as much as two hundred and fifty gallon water tank to do like a rainwater catchment system so in my mind I could forego a tool like that and put that money towards something that would maybe be more important in my mind for an off-grid cabin choice is yours but a minimalistic tool kit like this is basically all you need to get the job done let's take a look at another must-have tool or tools in this case these two tools are absolutely indispensable a good file and a good sharpening stone when it comes to a sharpening stone this is a norton india stone I've had this sucker for years and years it's sharpened thousands of knives it's a good quality fine grit stone when it comes to stones there's no way to waste money quicker than to buy a cheap jump Chinese stone buy a good quality stone Norton is a great brand for abrasives in general get a good sharpening stone you don't have to buy it new buy it used on eBay now in the world of files it's very easy to waste your money on on a pack of files that seem to be a bargain but what you really want a file to do is to file metal if it doesn't file metal it has no purpose whatsoever it doesn't have another use so you want a good quality file basically you're looking at a Simon's file or a Nicholson file there's a thousand companies out there that sell files Great Neck sells files and Stanley sells files and probably Arwen and then every stores got their own store brand files they're probably all made in China in a factory that could make the world's best file but that's not what they make they make a file that they can sell for $3 at a box store and it's not gonna be the best file you want a really good file get a Nicholson or get assignments and just be done with it put it out of your head it's going to be a quality tool it's going to be as good of a tool as you can buy in that particular category and every time you need something sharpen you've got a good useful tool you didn't waste your money on you know some Asian rimmed manufacturers version of a file that doesn't really work well so at this point we've talked about the tools that you're going to need to build we talks about the tools that you're going to need for your land now let's talk about the tools that you're going to need for maintenance and that's mechanical maintenance butter sooner or later everything you own and yourself included we're all falling apart you're constantly going to need to be repairing things that are mechanical and if you're living off-grid you have to have a mechanical aptitude or you have to be willing to learn or you have to have a bunch of money to give to other people to have them fix your problems for you one of those three things you really can't get around it everything that we have that has an engine that has nuts and bolts it's all gonna fail at some point and it's up to you to make it work again so let's run through a good basic set of mechanic tools that you're going to need to keep all the nuts and bolts in your life bolted and nutted together so when we talk about screwdrivers you're gonna want a very basic set at the minimum and that is a heavy-duty regular and heavy-duty Phillips a medium-duty regular and medium-duty Phillips a smaller fell up it's a smaller regular which I'm short one screwdriver and then you're gonna want a couple small screwdrivers and just a regular blade being probably more important the reason for the small screwdriver is everything that as a carburetor is going to need adjustment that's line trimmers lawnmowers lawn tractors chainsaws you're gonna need a small screwdriver just to do carburetor adjustments on a lot of different things you're also going to need a full set of wrenches that is a full set of sae wrenches and a full set of metric wrenches same goes with sockets you're gonna need a full set of sae sockets a full set of metric sockets deep well sockets are very important anything that's got a long bolt with a nut towards the end you're going to need a deep well socket for as far as ratchets go you're gonna need a ratchet to match your sockets whether it's a 3/8 or a half or a quarter I would say in a perfect world you'd have a set of half-inch sockets and ratchets you'd have a set of three eights and you'd ever set a quarter because some things you're going to need a smaller ratchet to get into areas and you can use a quarter inch or maybe it's just a light duty application you use a 3/8 or a quarter heavier stuff that's gonna need a lot of torque that you might throw a cheater bar on you're gonna want a half-inch drive you're also going to want a breaker bar this breaker bar is just to get a bolt or a nut to come loose without putting so much strain on your ratchet you're also gonna want a full set of extensions short extension medium extension long extension you got to have extensions because you're going to need them sooner or later you can add to that a couple specialty tools this is an adapter that goes from a three h drive to a half inch drive it also has a hole in the middle where you can stick a pipe through it and just use it as a breaker bar this is a universal adapter this allows you to basically use a ratchet kind of around the corner' helps to get to some of those hard-to-get-to areas or you can't just go straight on to a nut or a bolt you kind of got to be off at an angle very valuable thing to have and as far as adapters go of course this is the other adapter that goes from a half inch to a three H Drive all of these are they're not must-haves but you'll probably find that you need them sooner rather than later you might as well pick them up like that half inch drive set this is a three H drive set and this is pretty much complete it's got standard it's got metric deep wells it's got extensions it's got adapters to go from quarter to three eighths it's got a quarter inch driver and a ratchet and the set of Torx bits nice nice a little set I use this more than my other set but it is pretty light for heavy work that's why the half-inch drive set that I just showed you is it's just as important as this set because they will both find their own things that they're better at than the other set let me give you a little piece of advice about sockets and wrenches you probably will need every socket in your socket set at some point you're probably going to need every wrench in your set of wrenches at some but certain sizes are looked standard when it comes to just manufacturing in general you might as well have three or four half-inch wrenches there's P a lot of times where you're using two at the same time same thing goes with ten millimeter in metric and thirteen millimeter in metric make sure you've got a few 10 millimeter sockets a few 10 millimeter wrenches same with 13 millimeter and and in the the SAE I would say half inch make sure you've got a few half inch wrench it's a few half-inch sockets because so many times you're you're gonna be using more than one at the same time also because you're using that tool more than other tools it's the one you're gonna lose the most it's kind of a joke in the mechanic world of locating your 10 millimeter socket you're always using them so they have much more of a chance of being lost in this place now unfortunately I would say that this is another must-have set of tools and what this is this is a set of Torx head driver bits now a Torx head looks like this basically a star patterned bit that fits inside of the head of a Torx bolt lots of times you'll find a Torx screw or a Torx bolt as an anomaly it's just in the middle you're in the middle of fixing something and there's a Torx head where everything else has been a screw or a bolt there'll be a Torx head in the mix you know truthfully I'm not really sure what the benefit of a Torx Drive screw or bolt is but manufacturers seem to like to stick them in certain places for certain reasons I don't know how many times I've been working on something and everything's going fine you're just turning wrenches and you're getting the job done and then BAM there's a Torx head bolt if you don't have a full set of Torx head drivers or if torque at least Torx head bit kind of gonna be dead in the water so you might as well face it right up front get yourself a set of Torx drivers and you're good to go now one tool that's kind of a luxury item but you definitely find use for it is a cordless drill there's simply a million things you're gonna do with a tool like this from drilling holes to drive in screws to cutting holes with a hole saw and you don't need a cord you don't need a generator all you do need is a way to charge the battery pack which you can do with an inverter in a car it's no problem whatsoever to plug the battery charger into the inverter in your car or pickup truck plug in your inverter and then charge your battery pack this can't do anything that a drill can't do but it is super handy but again you know it's expensive and you could put that money somewhere else but if you've got extra cash and you probably already own one of these anyway it's a fantastic tool and you'll find yourself grabbing it all the time here's another group of tools that you cannot do without in any repair kit and that is pliers you're always going to need a set of needlenose pliers for something I would add to that these are a set of kind of duck-billed needlenose they're kind of a flat fin type of set of jaws I use these all the time and other great set of pliers this is a set of side cutters a lot of people call them dikes these are these are for cutting wire I would not say that these are a must-have plier but you will definitely find a use for them these are satellite men's pliers this is one of the reasons I would say that a set of dikes are not essential because lineman's pliers have a nice set aside cutters they're going to do the job that these do but they also have a nice sturdy set of jaws on the end so this is actually there's a set of pliers you're gonna use for a lot of different things its descent you're gonna use to cut wire and pretty much nothing else and of course the ubiquitous vise grip I have probably ten sets of vise grips every one of them is a little bit different and if in case you have no mechanical aptitude and you're totally unfamiliar these are just a locking plier they have basically a kind of a locking action where they will snap down tight and and lock there's a million uses for vise grips if you don't have at least a few sets of vise grips in your tool kit you probably want to put that on your list because you'll need them at some point they're they're pretty much an essential tool and when you talking about essential tools one of the must-have tools and an off-grid homestead is a set of lineman's pliers and a roll of Taiwan there's actually a roll of wire inside here and it's it's wrapped in duct tape just to keep it from unraveling and spooling all out you'll find tie wire Lowe's or Home Depot in the in the concrete section it'll be by the rebar it'll be about steel stakes its number one application is in like structural steel iron workers use this to tie rebar together and then they pour concrete on top of all of it so it's generally you always find it in the concrete section it's just a utility wire now if you have a roll of wire and you have a set of lineman's pliers you can fix a million things this will do everything that duct tape won't do if the transmission falls out of your car you can put 50 strands of this wire together and make a cable and hold it up you can fix leaky hoses that are loose on the end by putting a couple wraps around and giving it a little twist there are a million things that you can do with tie wire and a good set of pliers so I would say that this tool or combination of tools is an absolute must-have and the last set of pliers that I would say you'd want in your kit is a set of wire pliers now these are for anything that you're doing where you're stripping insulation off wiring whether that's wiring lights or whether it's working on the wiring systems in your car or in your lawn tractor or whatever I know this is a video about off-grid living but unless you're 100% electricity free your life is still full of wires and this is the tool you need to work on anything with wires so as you can see throughout this video a lot of tools are just multifunction tools that you're going to use whether you're clearing land or whether you're building or whether you're doing maintenance on your other equipment let me give you guys what I think is probably the number one tool that you can own during an off-grid homesteading project a pocketknife now you don't have to have a pocketknife you can have a you can have a belt knife you could carry a utility knife it's just one of those things you're never going to not need some kind of a little cutting tool you might have trees to trim and you've got a tree trimming knife used a couple times a year you might have brushed that you're cleaning up using machete a couple times a year what a utility knife or a pocket knife or or a small belt knife you're gonna use it probably every day probably several times a day doesn't have to be fancy doesn't have to be expensive all it's got to be is good quality as sharp as you can get it and in your pocket when you need it there you have it those are the three categories of tools whether you're just moving onto a piece of raw land and developing the land whether you're developing the land to build on whether you've got something built and you're kind of settling in as a homestead those are the three groups of tools that you're gonna always find need for and of course your idea of what you want to do on your off-grid homestead is gonna be different than mine and you can add to those tools as you see fit but you probably won't subtract from them because those are the tools that everybody needs if they're gonna build an off-grid homestead thank you guys so much for watching Bush Radical my name is Dave Whipple be radical I see you soon [Music]

Channel: Bushradical

Views: 157,715

Keywords: Off grid, off grid living, off grid homesteading, living off the land, cabin in the woods, cabin, log cabin, tiny house, prepping, prepper, back to basics, back to the land

Id: QoaOkdxVggk

Length: 45min 15sec (2715 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2020