Around 17 or 18, the age when most kids trade in their model cars for real ones, they also put away their hobby knives in exchange for shiny mechanic’s tools. But if you ever want to rejoin the model crafting ranks, you can grab a full set of hobby knives for less than you’d pay for one of the old Revel models you used to put together with ‘em.

Northern Tools sells this 35-piece set of hobby knives and blade attachments in a nice wooden box for $10. The set includes three different handles, two saw blades, six shaping blades, 17 cutting blades, three awl points, an edge trim guide, tweezers, a mini-planer, and a sanding block — you know, all that stuff you used to ignore when building models as a kid.

35-Piece Hobby Knife Kit [Northern Tools]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

A chisel is a useful hand tool or bench tool, but you don’t want to carry it around in your pocket.  You risk cutting your pocket and yourself, unless you can keep track of the plastic caps that sometimes come with them. FastCap has come up with a solution in their new Pocket Chisel.

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This set probably won’t replace any of your other tools, but it’s definitely worth grabbing one to keep in the trunk or on the boat. The set includes a universal ratchet driver, 12 SAE drive sockets, 12 metric drive sockets, 20 hex drive sockets, 17 slotted drive bits, seven star drive bits, four pozi drive bits, four Phillips drive bits, four square drive bits, a 42-piece picture-hanging kit, and a carrying case.

You can get it from ToolsNow, via Amazon, for $5 — add $7 for shipping and handling, for a total of $12.

130-Piece Screwdriver Set [DealNews]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Blind or “sliver” nailing is an old technique of hiding nail heads in finish carpentry. You raise a thin sliver of wood, leaving it attached; drive a nail, and set it in the depression left behind; and glue the sliver back into place — no filler needed. Lee Valley designed a modern tool to help make this antique practice a bit easier.

Made of stainless steel and brass, the specialized plane clamps a 1/4″ high-carbon steel chisel at a 15° angle. The gouge-shaped edges of the hardwood-handled chisel minimize tear-out and leave a clean shaving. To change the thickness of the shaving, just adjust how far the chisel protrudes from the sole of the plane.

Along with the non-marring plane and the chisel, the Veritas Invisible Nailing kit includes a small container of fish glue.  For only $28, this kit’ll help you lend an air of professionalism to your woodworking projects .

Note: Check out page 432 of Woodworking for Beginners: A Manual for Amateurs By Charles Gardner Wheeler at Google Books for a 100-year-old description of “sliver” nailing. While you’re at it, take a look at some of the other great woodworking techniques from 1907 that this great, public-domain book describes.

Invisible Nailing Kit [Veritas]
Invisible Nailing Kit [Lee Valley]

If your tin snips start feeling a little heavy, check out a pair of Wiss lightweight aluminum snips. They’ll make straight or curved cuts in light metal, flash, vinyl siding, or rubber. The 3-1/2″ rust-resistant blades will handle materials as tough as 23-gauge, low-carbon steel.

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Needlenose pliers excel at precision work: those times you want to grab that small screw, bend that wire, or pick up that button from the small hole in the floor. Any old pair of needlenose will work for those tasks, but what if you need to grab wires so fine you can barely see ‘em? You don’t want some clonky pair of needlenose pliers whose jaws don’t even touch — you want the strength of pliers, plus the precision of a pair of tweezers. Xuron’s Tweezernose pliers give you just that.

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Archimedes once said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Most people don’t need to move the world, but occasionally they might need to replace their alternator. This indexable pry bar from Innovative Products makes it easier to get a lever into the ever more-packed engine compartment.

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Often our best tools come to us for free. This chisel was such a case — judging from its crusty condition, it lay abandoned for a long time before it was found under a porch.

Its new caretaker decided to claw it out of the dirt and clean it up a bit to see what he actually had. With the mantra “There are very few really hopeless cases,” reader ghb624 cleaned the old chisel up and prepped it for action. He didn’t remove all its character — though he certainly could have — but chose to clean off just enough of the dirt and grime so he could use it.

A great story, a newfound tool, and a bit of cash saved — this strikes us as a win all the way around.

Toolmonger Photo Pool [Flickr]

Although Innovative Products of America designed this tool especially for oil drain plugs, you’ll find plenty of uses for the eight sockets sized from 12mm to 19mm on the Multi-Wrench — especially after you pay about $35 for the tool.

To fit eight sockets on the Multi-Wrench, IPA designed the tool with a rotating head sporting four sockets on each end of the wrench. The laser-etched sockets click into place as you rotate the heads.

Made from drop-forged steel and finished with chrome, the Multi-Wrench also features a built-in rare-earth magnet with 11-lbs of holding force that allows you to stick the Multi-Wrench to your oil pan and accidentally leave it there.

Multi-Wrench [IPA]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon(B000Q6RZSS) [What’s This?]

Maybe you’ve lost the original pin wrench that came with your grinder, or maybe you’re sick of keeping up with a different wrench for each grinder you own. If so, you’re in luck — you can choose from several replacement options.

Harbor Freight sells a cheap adjustable pin wrench that may fit the bill. It adjusts to fit grinder hubs from 3/8″ to 1-1/16″. For only $4 this cheap-ass tool of the bunch could be yours.

If Harbor Freight tools make you cringe, try an almost identical model from Garrett Wade for four times the price. Don’t fear, you’re getting something for the extra dough — this wrench can accommodate a wider variety of grinders, with hubs from 3/8″ to 1-9/16″.

Amazon also sells an adjustable pin wrench that looks like a pair of dividers. For $15 this 7″ long wrench fits a much larger range of grinder hub sizes. Made of chrome vanadium steel, this wrench features 5/32″ diameter pins. Customers have complained that these pins are too large for their grinder — but that’s nothing a few minutes on the grinding wheel can’t solve.

Adjustable Pin Wrench [Harbor Freight]
Adjustable Pin Wrench [Garrett Wade]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Just when you thought your multi-talented angle grinder couldn’t get any “multi-talented-er”, along comes the Grizzly Industrial angle grinder stand. This cool grinder accessory effectively turns your 4-1/2″ angle grinder into a mini metal-cutting chopsaw.

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Got a stuck screw or a screw with some wacky security head? Don’t reach for the extractor kit; wrap these $25 screw pliers around the head, and simply twist the screw out. Made by one of Japan’s leading hand tool manufacturers — Engineer Inc., formerly Futaba Tool Mfg. — these pliers remove tamper-resistant, rusty, stripped-head, or otherwise damaged screws.

Engineer makes their 6″ long screw pliers from industrial quality steel, hardens them to HRC56±2, and rubber-coats the handles. The rounded nose design and specially shaped jaws allow the screw pliers to grab nearly flush screw heads firmly enough to twist them when a normal screwdriver fails.

Screw Pliers [Engineer, Inc.]
Screw Pliers [Corporate Site]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Sometimes a hacksaw just won’t cut it — it can be too large to fit into small spaces. For confined spaces you could use a blade holder with a naked hacksaw blade, but it’s difficult to keep the unsupported blade from bending. To solve this problem, Headway Innovations designed the Boa Versa Saw. The Versa Saw incorporates into the handle a spring-loaded sliding frame that supports the hacksaw blade close to the cut.

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These sockets work where deep sockets just aren’t deep enough. Kobalt’s Thru-Ratchet sockets and ratchets are hollow down the center, so they can fit over any length of bolt.  In a lot of cases you could get the same performance out of your ratcheting wrenches, but this system allows you to get into deep recesses that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Thru-Ratchet sockets plug right in to the ratchet handle, instead of attaching to a square drive. Integrating into the handle reduces overall height by up to fifty percent over a standard ratchet and socket — which is good for areas with low clearance.

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Every tool collection needs a good hand plane.  Without taking up too much space, it can quickly and quietly tweak your woodworking projects.  And it doesn’t have to be an elaborate tool — Woodsmith offers a kit for making a simple wooden hand plane.

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Garrett Wade sells a crescent wrench that’s been stripped down to its skeleton — all excess metal has been whittled away to leave a wrench they claim is 20% lighter than similar sized wrenches but still maintains 100% of its strength.

Made by one of Japan’s best-known professional toolmakers — if anybody knows who that is, let us know in the comments — these lightweight adjustable wrenches come in 8″ and 10″ versions.

Right now Garrett Wade is discounting each wrench by $10 — that puts the 8″ wrench at $20 and the 10″ wrench at $30. In situations where every ounce counts, these might come in handy.

Lightweight Adjustable Wrench [Garrett Wade]

Tighten or loosen hose clamps in hard-to-reach places without worrying about the driver slipping off the nut. SMC Corporation designed their locking nut driver to lock onto a nut with the flip of a lever.

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