Your best friend in the shop #1: What is the one thing you use all the time and couldn't live without?

I’d be lost without my digital vernier caliper gauge [and was lost without it when the first one I’d bought went ‘haywire’]. eBay came up with a replacement for a very reasonable price.

-- Res severa verum gaudium - True pleasure is a serious business. http://www.folksy.com/shops/TreeGems

I don’t know if it’s my best friend or not, but I find myself reaching for my combination square every time I work on a project. I also feel warm and cuddly when I get near my cordless drill too :-))

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

I almost listed my square, it’s close between that and the Uniklamps.

Cajun you aren’t excited about LSU are you?

-- Dad to 5, Son of The One

My lab coat, gloves and goggles. Without them I’d just get all messy.

Actually, my best “friend” is my Chocolate Lab. We enjoy making piles of sawdust together and then tracking it into the house to show the wife our newest project. And then sometimes he’s a PIA. Like the time I was making chair rungs and came up one short…I looked all over for it…He was over in the corner chewing on it. Seems he pilfered it off the bench, or maybe it hit the floor. I dunno. But he loves maple.

Tool wise…I always have my 12’ tape measure on my pocket, so I would say that is it.

-- Bob Vila would be so proud of you!

My best friend is a dead blow hammer.

-- You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. (Plato)

I’d have to say my dust collector and other safety gear. Without it woodworking wouldn’t be as enjoyable if I had sawdust in my face and lungs and eyes. Without my ear muffs I wouldn’t be able to hear the birds singing outside inbetween cuts, either.

-- Jesus is Lord!

Tom, for some reason that doesn’t surprise me ;-)

I couldn’t live without my Irwin quick release clamps. And I just bought some of the Xtra strength ones yesterday which is very exciting to me. I need to see a shrink I think.

-- Better to say nothing and be thought the fool... then to speak and erase all doubt.

double bevel marking knife, 4” and 6” squares, a 16’ tape, my chisels and saws, a carvers mallet are some of my favorites – couldn’t join without ‘em! Leaving so much to the wayside – there are so many other hand and power tools that are just so dang necessary that it’s hard to leave anything off the list!

-- Dorje (pronounced "door-jay"), Seattle, WA

Keen1 I am absolutely excited about my LSU Tigers. As an avid football fan, and living in Louisiana with the New Orleans Saints representing our honor – I have suffered many, many disappointing years – in fact I’ve been a fan of the Saints since 1967, when they were announced – and out of all those years, I may have had 4 or 5 that I could hold my head up high. And now we have our Tigers – I think that they will be winners (not necessarily Champs) for many years to come. They are a solid club with long reaching recruiting arms :-)) Geaux Tigers!!!

-- Bill - "Suit yourself and let the rest be pleased." http://www.cajunpen.com/

I use a digital Caliper a lot, but I’ve also got a cheap plastic Harbor Freight ones, cost 1.99 and they are accurate to 1/128 of an inch. I keep them on the table saw and planer and jointer and lumber rack to do a quick check of lumber thickness. I must have 10 around the shop. I bought 3 more last Monday because I’m spending too much time looking for one. they move around the shop. I also have 15 12’ tapes. I bought 6 more on Monday for 1.00 each. I keep them stashed on the lumber rack, trojan horse, work bench, table saw. I just make sure that they all measure the same or they are trash. I can’t measure the hole with one rules and cut with a different ruler and end up with different sizes. Won’t do. So all tapes must show the same measurement both inside and outside maesurements.

-- What happens in the workshop stays in the workshop. No wait that doesn't sound right. Karson Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com †

My 6 inch diagonal pliers. I’m always pulling nails and staples when fixing my mess ups.

-- http://www.woodsongsfurniture.com

well im always the oddball but my best friend is whoever my current costomer happens to be !! lol right behind that would be my current helper, then i have a couple tools im fond of . my latest gadget that i got that i thought was pretty cool is a bobs rule tape measure. for those that never heard of this ,it is a measureing system someone came up with for woodworking . its kind of a cross between metric ans our standard system i think you could find it at bobs rule .com

At work I bend a lot of conduit and i couldnt live without my tape measure. At home in the shop my best friend is my 3’ metal ruler,(yard stick) I measure everything i do with it, from board thickness to the gap between the fence and the blade or router bit.

-- bryano

Mrtrim,

I’ve never hear of the bobs rule before. The more I look at the web site the more I like the idea of this measurement system. I think I’m going to have to order quite a few of their products.

-- Owen Johnson - aka IowaWoodcrafter

yes sir iowawoodcrafter i got a tape for myself and one for my helper and i like the system also it works well for measuring and building but if you have to follow measurements off something like a blueprint it wont help you

Being a newbie I’ve still got some time to figure out my favorites but as of now – my Irwin Quick Clamps.

I’ve got the regular assortment of C-Clamps, bar clamps, ‘clothes pin’ type clamps, etc. but these take the cake. I’ve used them 100 different ways – even just as clamps!

-- Tim D. - Woodstock, GA

Karson,
21 tape measures and 14 calipers?
Gads, why don’t you just attach them with strings to all of your tools?

-- Stevethepeeve -- I'm no rocket surgeon

My creativity and imagination.

Although tools are a vehicle for pursuing and experiencing various levels of applied imagination; for the most part they are clutter.

They are essential for the task of practicing our crafts.

I am slave to none, as a single favorite, and yet indebted to all of them.

-- Dusty

Definitely my pocket 6” square, then my calipers, then the Starrett combo square….Hmm, all measuring tools :)

-- Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan

Definitely my Starrett square. Use it for everything. After that it would be my quick wit for making light of all the mess ups I make.

-- You can't get a hug from Facebook.

I guess my favorite one is the one I need right now!

-- Thos. Angle

I’m not usually one for gadgets with 101 different functions (It slices, it dices, it peels, it’s a cheese grater!). Usually those gadgets don’t do anything well. But I love my Gerber Tools. I have one that lives on my tool belt right between the pencil and the tape measure.

-- http://www.north40custom.com -- http://north40studios.etsy.com --

Tape measure one’s always with me.

-- Only the Shadow knows....................

Incra Jig Ultra on the router table, Incra 12” square and Starrett Combination square. I’m learning to like my planes…

-- "Bordnerizing" perfectly good lumber for over a decade.

The Lumberjocks website.
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...Aww, now isn’t that sweet?

-- Check out my new website! http://www.blakeweberwoodworking.com

sandpaper!!!!!!!!!!!!

-- i can do all things through christ who strengthens me

I have to go with combination square also – although since I got my angle gauge and digital calipers a few weeks ago, I’ve used them an AWFUL lot. The great thing about the square, though, is that compared to all my other tools, I pretty much know what I’m doing with the square :-)

-- Nils Davis, Menlo Park, CA

Well tuned tablesaw.

my DowelMax!

-- ~ Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

Well, um, my heart! Couldn’t live without it, all my work is from it.

Then of course those foam sanding blocks, keep ‘em handy all the time.

-- Rob (A) Waxahachie,TX

• My 1959 DeWalt Radial Arm Saw.
• My collection of marking and measuring tools.
• My MP3 player hooked up to the stereo.

-- Check out my new website! http://www.blakeweberwoodworking.com

Charlie mentioned that he liked the looks of my work bench which shows in the project I posted yesterday. I’d say that’s my favorite tool. I’ve had it for over thirty years. It was somebody else’s before that and a bowling alley lane before that. Hard maple with a lot of wear and tear showing through and I’ve spent a lot of time standing next to it.

-- Rick Hackett