Top Ten Tools I Use Every Day in the Shop

today we're talking about the top 10 tools that get used for virtually every project in my shop stick around welcome back to cloud42 i'm james i get lots of questions from people about the tools that i use in my videos what's that little rotary countersink thing or where'd you get that magnetic base with the fine adjuster is that saw any good so today we're going to go through a top 10 list of my go-to tools that i end up using on just about every project now to make the list a tool has to be something that i keep handy that i use all the time and that i would immediately go out and buy again if something happened to it so with that introduction let's get started starting out the list at number 10 is my 4x6 bandsaw it just lives back here between a couple of pieces of equipment underneath the drill press table and i only have to pull it out about this far and i can use it to cut off stock to start a project so virtually every project starts here slide in my material clamp it down make my cut and i've got my rough cuts for my material to go over to the mill or whatever other tool i'm going to be using now this is just a harbor freight 4x6 bandsaw you can get basically this model of saw from a lot of different places you know it's an inexpensive import saw a list price at harbor freight is something like 270 dollars but never pay a list price at harbor freight they almost always have at least a 20 off coupon active and oftentimes around christmas or thanksgiving they'll have 25 percent or sometimes even more and so you can pick one of these up in any harbor freight store or i assume princess auto in canada or in other places um for close to 200 which puts this at less than the price of a portaband so and it's because it'll cut off 4x6 stock it ends up being a lot more versatile you can also pop these up into vertical mode you can take out a couple of screws here and it comes with a table that you can screw on i don't ever use that i do use this for rough cutting especially sheet metal to size because i can just come up here and just make my cuts pushing it through the blade without having the table on it at all especially if i'm going to be taking that sheet metal over and then you know milligan or machining it in some other process now the one thing that you want to do with one of these saws immediately when you get it home is throw away the blade that comes with it and buy a good one the ones that i use and i'll put a link down in the video description are the sterit intense pro dye blades and these things are amazing i try to generally use a variable tooth blade so the tooth pitch actually varies over the course of the blade and that helps to break up resonance and helps it to cut more smoothly but with one of these stair blades on this thing it just cuts like butter it just cuts smoothly through anything i have used it on tool steel aluminum you have two or three speeds that you can change using the pulleys i actually have it on the highest speed which is 200 feet per minute and leave it there pretty much always unless i'm cutting something like 4140 pre-hard or tool steel but for aluminum and mild steel 200 feet per minute and this thing just cuts smoothly through anything that i've thrown at it and number nine is allen wrenches and when i say allen wrenches i mean actual allen brand allen wrenches and these are just you know l-shaped hex wrenches uh the allen brand this is a this is a good quality name brand i've used a lot of inexpensive tools harbor freight has t-handled hex wrenches as well and i had those for years and what i found is the steel is soft and i was constantly rounding them over these ones have a good quality steel they've worn very well for me there's a ball tip on one end the other end is just straight so they're marked nice and clearly this is a metric set this is an imperial set unfortunately since i work with both i need both but these have actually served me very well especially the the big ones i get a good bite and they're very comfortable in the hand and so you've seen these in a lot of my videos i would totally buy these again and i use them constantly and the fact that they have these nice little racks allows them to sit out on my bench i have a place for them in my shop and so whenever i need one i can just reach over and grab it or if i've got a fastener and i don't know exactly what size it is i can just take the fastener and just easily fit them on the ends so i find the right wrench grab it out of the rack and then when i'm done with it i have a place i can just set it back in the rack and i know where it is so i'm not constantly running around the shop looking for where i put the tool down okay i don't always put it back in the rack so i do actually spend a lot of time looking around the shop for where i put the tool down and number eight is knifex plier wrenches or kinipex depending on how sophisticated or german you are if you've never used these you are really missing out they're not cheap but they are very nice and really handy so this is an adjustable wrench and you can see they adjust over a fairly large range but it's also a parallel jaw plier so that when you squeeze it these squeeze down parallel so for turning nuts you can use it just like you would an adjustable wrench the difference is instead of rounding over the nut when you grab it you're actually squeezing and putting enough force on it that they just do not slip and so you can use these as what adam booth calls an all-16 wrench use it the same way that you would with a crescent wrench except it you're just never going to round anything over because they grip and the jaws are smooth so they don't mar surfaces so i often find myself using these to turn things that are smooth i've got this fixture that has these smooth round pins that are screwed in and i can grab one with this and loosen it and work these in and out and it gets a good grip on the bare steel without actually marring it and leaving marks on it because they're not serrated they're smooth so you can use these for bending sheet metal or any other kind of operation where you need a good solid parallel grip with uh without marking the work i use these all the time for setups on the mill for the clamping kit or for like air or plumbing fittings around the house very very useful to have and number seven is my mini nogaflex indicator holder now this is a small indicator holder that i find actually be really handy for a lot of situations i do have a larger one this is not a noga this is just an inexpensive import and there really is a pretty big difference these these cheap ones in my experience they're pretty squishy they take quite a lot of force to get them locked down and once it makes contact you still have to run the knob down because there's like something inside that's compressing and you just get more and more friction as you go as opposed to the noga one which a quarter turn makes this thing completely floppy and then a little quarter turn locks it down nice and rigid and so the adjustment is much more crisp it's much easier on the the noga one to get it into the position that you want and lock it down without a lot of fuss the other thing about this one is that it has a fine adjustment on the base you can see there's a couple of ball bearings in here as pivots and then there's a an adjustment screw that allows you to adjust it from the base so instead of being out here on the end of the arm fiddling with it you can actually just turn the adjustment on the base and adjust the point on your uh on your indicator so this is just a little dial test indicator on the end here and you can see that i mean there's very little movement there because this thing is so rigid and i just gave it a quarter turn to lock it down and then i can adjust it from back here and so this ends up being really handy and really easy to use it's not on a flat surface here and it's not on a metal surface so it's not locked down so it's not sitting level here but and then it has their little popeye magnet which is a little tiny thing and you can clamp this you can stick this onto the side of the quill of the mill it'll actually sit on the side of the r8 spindle nose so you can spin it around and use this for centering i just continue to find all kinds of uses for this thing number six on my list is one two three blocks these are really versatile if you've never worked with one two three blocks it's just a block of hardened and ground steel that is one inch by two inches by three inches and you can use these for fixturing like you could set them up on the table of your mill like on the sides of the vise you've seen me do this then lay a long work piece across them and then clamp it in the vise jaws to provide lateral support and then vertical support on top of the blocks you can also set these up put parts over them and hold them down with toe clamps on the mill you can stack these in whatever configuration you need to get the heights and since they're nice even increments if you're working in imperial measures they're they're really handy and convenient you can get any height you want one inch three inches four inches five inches however you want to use them they also have tapped holes in them most of the holes here are just to make them lighter but there are tapped holes for 3 8 inch studs so you can use these with a clamping kit so you can actually bolt things to them or bolt them to each other though the smaller holes won't that the non-tapped holes will not clear a 3 8 stud which you know would be pretty useful you can also use these as a square so you'll often see me set one up on the surface plate and then take some part that i need to measure or mark and use it as a square to hold it vertically so that i can then take a measurement off of the top of it or i can set to some dimension and score a line on the side of it they're also really handy for offsetting parts for measurement when you don't have a surface that will sit down on the surface plate like these tts tool holders i need to measure the length of the tool from this register surface so i can just set this on a couple of one two three blocks it's a very precisely known height and then i can come in with the height gauge and take a measurement of the length of the tool subtract the two inches of the height of the block and i know exactly how long my tool is they're also really handy for use in a vise for angled setups so you can take a block clamp it in your vise at a known angle either using angle blocks underneath it or a sine plate or a sine bar or you can use a digital angle gauge to set this angle and then clamp your part to the block either using the threaded stud holes or just reaching around like with a can't twist clamp to do an angled setup so you can cut you can make angled cuts in a part without having to tilt the head of your mill and one of my favorite one two three block tricks is to just take a one two three block which we know is already ground flat so that it will run smoothly on a surface plate without rocking and then just stick a magnetic indicator holder to it with a dial test indicator and use it for inspections on the surface plate use this exactly as you would a surface gauge except that you have in general you tend to have with these arms a better adjustment experience and more flexibility than you would with the typical arms and snugs on a normal surface gauge coming in at number five on the list is my baldor buffer set up with deburring tools so i've got a scotch brite wheel on this side so it's a soft wheel with grit impregnated in it not a hard grinding wheel and on this end i've just got scotch bright pads so they're a little bit softer and can form a little bit better to the surface of anything that you use these on now i haven't had this very long but since i've had it i have used it for everything i love how fast this thing spins up and how quiet it runs so anything that comes off the mill that i need to cut or that i need to deburr i just walk it over here i think it comes off the saw my saw is actually down here just probably just out of the frame and so after i cut something i deburr it before i handle it before i take it over to the mill and this is just so quick if i've got an edge that i just cut on the mill it needs to be deburred i walk over here it spins up quick i can take one quick little swipe and it just cleans up that edge without rounding it over and i love that it's so quick and so again i end up using this for just about everything on the the buffing side especially if i'm dealing with stuff that came from the mill that has marks on it and i'm not actually machining the surface like here's an aluminum extrusion it's got marks on it's got some dirt it's got some little scratches and i can clean this up very rapidly on the buffing end if i'm not going to be machining that surface scotch brite pads they just very quickly shine it up leave a nice smooth brushed finish take the mill markings off so i use this for just about everything and having it here so that i can just run over and make a quick deburring pass is is is really handy and it speeds up my workflow [Music] just like that coming in at number four is my wilton vice this is a wilton tradesman vice that i picked up a few months ago and compared to the harbor freight vice that i had before this thing is amazing there's basically no movement in the movable jaw so it doesn't rock it doesn't rock either way there's no play in the slide mechanism so the jaws come together squarely and they come together level every time and it moves smoothly and clamps easily and this has just been a joy to use it is strong i use it with the sheet metal break bending jaws you've seen in other videos i did make one modification to it pretty much nothing in my shop escapes modification and that is to put in a roller element thrust bearing instead of the thrust washer that was in here so from the factory this just had a thrust washer in here which of course looked just like one of these it's just a hardened washer that was greased and the inside surface of the screw here the shoulder just ran on that greased washer and i replaced it with this which is a roller bearing i'll put a link to the mcmaster car part down in the video description but the roller bearing is just has two hardened races and a number of roller elements in a little cage and this just goes in place of the thrust washer that was in there and has the effect then of reducing the rolling friction when you tighten down the vise now this made using the the bending brake jaws much easier because i could get a lot more force with a lot less effort and it makes using the vise a lot easier i can generally just spin the handle down with one finger and it will just snug up nice and tight with very little effort let me reassemble this now because the thrust washer pack or the thrust bearing pack is thicker than the original thrust washer i did have to make a spacer and this is actually just 3d printed and it just drops in here to give a little bit of extra space between the uh frame of the vise and the locking uh the little locking plate that holds the handle in and it's just to give the extra space that's needed because that thrust washer was thinner than the bearing that's in there now 3d printed part works fine here because there's really very little force on it when you're actually clamping the clamping is going through the the thrust pack there and the only thing that the keeper here is used for is to pull the vise jaw out and that force is actually opposite where that 3d printed spacer is but you could easily you know stamp or cut a piece of sheet metal to go in there as well i could probably just throw in some washers the end result of having that bearing pack in there is that just one finger will give you a tremendous amount of clamping force so in general using this thing i just kind of go jump like that and that's all i have to do because the force is so much higher with a normal vise with the normal thrust washer in there you gotta you know give it a pretty good crank or lean on it to get a good clamp this just even one or two fingers or just your thumb on top of it or just the inertia of the thing closing is enough to hold the part securely now i was a little bit worried that it would allow it to um to back off easily so there's very little force unlocking the vise because again you've got very little friction there it just unlocks very easily and i was worried that you know maybe even just the weight of the handle was going to cause it to unlock but in practice it just hasn't i haven't had any issues with it so i love this vice i would definitely buy it again and coming in at number three is the digital caliper you had to know this was going to be on the list somewhere this is a mitutoyo six inch and i use these for everything so if i'm making something on the mill anything where i'm going to be taking measurements i use them on the lathe any place where i need to move quickly and get quick measurements that don't have to be super precise if i'm working to within a couple of thousands of an inch these are just fine there's no point in pulling out the micrometers or using these for roughing is pretty handy these particular ones have an incremental mode so i can set a dimension that i want to go to zero it at that in incremental mode and then i can measure my part and it shows me how much further i have to go and i can work down to my zero and then when i'm done with that i can put it back into absolute mode and then i have my zero restored so these ones don't have to be zeroed every time you turn them on now if you didn't know everybody knows you can take calipers and take a measurement between the jaws and you also have inside jaws on the top so you can take measurements inside a part and you know this is approximation for diameters because especially for small diameters the way the edge interacts with the curve on the inside is not always perfect but so that's outside measurements and inside measurements and then most people also know about the depth rod on the back so you can take a depth measurement that tells you how far that rod is extended so for like a hole depth but one thing that a lot of people are not aware of is that the ends of the jaws are actually ground flat so that you can take a step measurement between this surface and this surface so if i want to know how wide that step is for example i can just measure it like this so what i'm doing is if you look at this on the back i'm bringing the bar up and touching and i can measure that step and because you've got a large surface area it's easy to get it nice and square and get a good clean measurement as opposed to trying to do it with the depth rod and not necessarily having it perfectly square being able to control it so that's a handy little trick that a lot of people didn't realize their calipers could do and coming in at number two is my noga deburring kit and this is probably the one thing that i get the most comments about and the most questions about on the channel so this is a little noga rotary holder with a number of tools and the one that most people ask about is this little rotary countersink so i use it primarily for deburring holes so if i got a hole here this one actually is a thread and i can just stick it in there spin it around and i get a nice clean little tiny chamfer or takes the burr off of the inside of that hole it also has an external deburring tool so this is just a conical cup with a single deburring edge on it so you can use this to deburr the outside of a cylindrical parch throw it on there a few swipes and you cut a nice neat little chamfer on the outside and taking the burrs off and this works on the end of like you cut off a bolt give this a spin on the end or a piece of threaded rod or a threaded part it puts a nice neat little lead in chamfer on the end and of course you can use ordinary deburring tool blades in it as well so this is just a normal edge deburring tool and i can just you know grab a piece of stock here and i can feel there's a burr on the edge here from the saw cut and just come right down the edge and peel that off and deburr that edge there's also you can get very small deburring tools same concept but it comes down to a very small point and so this is sometimes handy if you have a little place where you've got really tight quarters and you're trying to debur something if i wanted to debur this edge around the outside i can do it with this little tool where i would not with the larger tool actually be able to get the blade onto that little lip also comes with a reverse tool that can go through a hole if i needed to deburr for example that hole down there in the bottom and i couldn't get to that edge i can actually put this through from the back and then i can go around that edge with the tool from the back side so often if i've got if i've drilled a hole into something i can't easily get to the inside of it this tool is really handy for reaching through and then of course you can just buy these in bulk because these are the ones that i use the most and these are the ones that wear out the fastest and i believe this one can probably be honed or sharpened and it's getting to the point where it's in need of that soon but this whole thing is just a little kit i just picked it up on amazon and it's all the deburring tools that i ever use and so you see this in pretty much every project pretty much anything that i touch that comes off a cutting tool ends up with one of these used on it and the number one most used tool in my shop that i use on virtually every project is safety glasses now these are not ordinary safety glasses these are safety glasses with bifocals in them and there are all kinds of small things that i need to be able to see or i need to be able to read when i'm in the shop and my eyes are getting old and they don't read this fine print so well anymore and so having a pair of safety glasses with bifocals in them is great and you can get these with different powers i just picked these up off of amazon these are actually dewalt brand safety glasses but these have changed my life in the shop i used to use a jeweler's loop for looking at small things but every time you want to look at the end of an end mill to see if you chipped it or check your lathe tool or grab a number out of the machinery's handbook or try to hit a scribe line with a center punch these are just invaluable if you've never used them pick up a pair and see see what you think see if you like them like i said they have been just an amazing thing for me in the shop and it means that i don't have to have some other kind of magnification most of the time hopefully there was something in there that you found interesting or maybe even a little bit useful if you did give the video a thumbs up and leave us a comment let us know what your favorite shop tool is that you can't live without and if you discovered something new today that you now can't live without there are links to most of the tools that i showed down in the video description so check that out if you're interested thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Clough42

Views: 73,820

Rating: 4.9418569 out of 5

Keywords: Top 10, Top Ten, Tools, Machine Shop, Baldor, WIldon, Knipex, Noga, Allen, Bandsaw, Shars, Mitutoyo

Id: BE8sER-WgrI

Length: 27min 40sec (1660 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021