A List Of Hand Tools Names and Pictures | WG (2024)

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After starting to build-up my own homeowner’s toolkit post-house purchase, I started to wonder if I was missing anything. So, I did some research to compile the ultimate list of the different types of hand tools, what they are used for, and some visual aids to go along with it all.

What are hand tools and what are they used for? Handtools are classified as small, manual tools that are used to fix things byhand. When you use one of these objects, you are holding it in your hand, justlike the name suggests.

More specifically, hand tools are not electronic orautomatic. Anything that you do with a hand tool will require the use of yourown strength. Some examples of hand tools that you might be familiar with arescrewdrivers and wrenches.

No matter where you live, whether you are a home owneror a renter, it is very likely that you have some kind of hand tools layingaround somewhere. Even further, you have probably had to use some of them everyonce in a while. Hand tools are an important component of every day life, andwe need them more than we might think we do.

In this article, we will explore all of the differenttypes of hand tools that exist, along with what they are used for, theiroverall purpose, and some photos of each individual tool that will provide abetter explanation than words can. Keep reading to find out everything you needto know about hand tools from A to Z.

The Purpose And Importance Of Hand Tools

When it comes to discussing some of the most importantthings that we use in our daily lives, hand tools are rarely brought up in theconversation. Although many peopleoverlook the purpose and importance of hand tools, most of us would not be ableto live without them.

Just because hand tools are not the most glamorous orinteresting of objects that you could possibly think to talk about on a dailybasis, they certainly deserve a lot more recognition than what they currentlyreceive.

In this section, we will start off by talking aboutthe purpose of hand tools, or otherwise, what they are generally used for andwhy they exist.

The Purpose Of Hand Tools:

• Used to complete small tasks (usually around thehouse)
• Meant to be more reliable than electric tools
• Easy and accessible for everyone to use

Now that we have established the general purpose ofhand tools, it is time to get more into detail on the topic. Next, we will bediscussing the advantages that come with hand tools.

Along with being helpful in small, every day tasks,hand tools hold a much higher value than just this. In fact, some of them caneven be put above the modern conveniences of power tools in certain scenarios.

While this statement might come as a shock to anyonewho is living in such a technologically advanced world, it is very true thathand tools can do some things that power tools just can’t, and they can even besafer and easier to use along with it.

Take a look at the list down below to see some of theadvantages of hand tools for yourself, you might be surprised at how great theyactually are.

Advantages Of Hand Tools:

• Can be carried around almost anywhere (small andlightweight)
• Do not require any charging or plugging in
• Quick solution for emergencies
• Safer than power tools, can be used by anyone
• Inexpensive to purchase and last for years

First of all, hand tools are very small andlightweight. They usually don’t weight much, and you could fit about 5 of themin the same pocket and carry them with you all day if needed.

As a result, they can be moved around the housewithout any kind of strain or trouble. If you need to fasten one of the outletsin the living room, you can grab your handheld screwdriver and walk across thehouse with no problems.

In addition, they do not require any charging orplugging in to use them. With electric power tools, they will either be poweredby a battery or plugged into a power cord in the wall. Both of these optionsare non-satisfactory for a variety of reasons.

If you are using a corded tool, you will need to stayonly in the vicinity of your power outlet in order for it to work. There areplenty of safety hazards that come along with that as well, but that is anotherconversation.

There is very limited mobility with this type ofsetup, and you will not be able to move where you need to go without yankingthe cord or possibly moving it around to different power outlets as you adjustyour position.

The cordless power tool seems to solve this problem,however it brings more of its own. Even though there is no power cord attachedto these types of tools, they do have batteries that need to be charged.

On top of that, the batteries will die out quickerthan you might think. If you plan on doing a project all day, you might as wellpick up your hand tools now, because your cordless equipment won’t hold up aslong.

As a result of the hand tools not being powered by anykind of outlet or battery, you can use them in any circ*mstance, literally.

Imagine an emergency situation where all of the lightsgo off in your house for several hours, but something is leaking in the kitchensink and you need to prevent it from flooding.

If you had corded power tools in this situation, youwould be seriously out of luck. With no power, there would be no way to plug inyour tool to the outlet and draw electricity from it.

While it is true that you could use a cordless toolfor some time, there is always the big chance that you could lose the batteryat some point, or maybe you forgot to charge it the night before.

All in all, it is beneficial to have something that isreliable, such as a hand tool set, because you will never need to depend on anyother factors to use them.

Aside from being great for moving around and savingthe day in potential emergency situations, hand tools are much safer than powertools in general. Even though power tools are much more convenient in certaininstances, they come with their fair share of risks as well.

With any kind of electric wiring, you can run intoproblems with electrocution or yanking of the tool if anyone steps on it. Thiscan be dangerous for a variety of reasons that are quite self explanatory.

When you are operating a power tool, there are so manythings that can go wrong if you are not careful. From power saws to electricdrills, you must check every step twice in order to avoid injuries.

However, when you use a simple manual hand tool, youcan rest assured that you would have to put forth a lot of effort to getseriously injured. This is not to say that it is not possible and you shouldnot be careful, but it is just much less likely than the alternative, which isan attractive point to most people.

Finally, manual hand tools are very inexpensive topurchase. If you want to get a single tool, you can find it for under tendollars at most retailers. There are additional deals for sets of them as well,and they are not bad with the price tag, either.

Not only are these types of tools very inexpensive tostock up on in large quantities, they are also known to last for years withoutmuch maintenance or care.

Most homeowners can agree that their hand tools arenot the most prized items in their homes, and might not always be the besttaken care of, but they are always around somewhere and are useful when theyare needed.

If getting an entire set of tools for well under onehundred dollars and keeping them for years and years in the future doesn’tsound like a sweet deal, then I don’tknow what does.

Types Of Hand Tools And What They Are Used For

Now that you have gotten a pretty good understandingof what hand tools are and the advantages of using them, it is time to get intothe main topic of hand tool types and what they are actually used for.

In this section, we will quickly outline the maintypes of hand tools and their individual purposes, before we go into the photosthat will be included toward the conclusion of this article.

Take a look at the list below, where you will find abrief outline of the names of these tool categories. You might recognize a lotof them from being in your own house, while some others are foreign objectsthat you have never heard of before.

Either way, you will be able to get some valuable information aboutthe types of tools that you might be able to use in your own home.

Types Of Hand Tools And What They Are Used For:

The first tool on this list is also one of the mostcommon that you will find in any hand tool kit: a wrench. The wrench is anessential hand tool that is used for a variety of tasks both indoors andoutdoors.

The basic purpose of this type of tool is to tightenand loosen different objects, usually nuts and bolts. A wrench has a handle andextends out with two open arms and an empty space in between both of them,which is a perfect fitted slot for a small bolt to be inserted into.

To use a wrench, you will place the top part over thetargeted object that you would like to tighten or loosen, and use force to turnit to the left or the right until it is completed. There are so many differenttypes of wrenches, and they come in a lot of assorted sizes to fulfill certaintasks.

Torque wrenches technically fall under the category ofa wrench, but they look much different. They still have the handle, but insteadof open arms at the end, it is more of an open-ended tube.

Torque wrenches are used to apply torque, or movement,to different objects. This is done by placing the targeted object, usually abolt, into the socket and turning the handle accordingly.

Both traditional wrenches and torque wrenches can beused inside the house for simple tasks like fixing a sink, as well as outsidein the garage to fix the engine of the car.

Pliers, on the other hand, are used for grippingthings mostly, but they can also be used to make cuts and separate materials. Apair of pliers has two handles that are held onto by the user, and ends with anopening and closing clamp with a sharp point on the very tip.

When you open and close the handles of a pair ofpliers, the end will open and close, allowing you to place an object in betweenit to get a better grip. The inside of the mouth usually comes with teeth foradded friction, and will help you to hold onto things and even pull them ifneeded.

Pliers can also be used to cut things if needed byapplying pressure with the clamp down on an object until it is completely separatedfrom the other side. An example of this kind of scenario would be a bolt thatis incorrectly screwed in to a surface.

If the bolt is crooked and won’t come out with anyother measures, you could use the pliers to cut off the head and remove thebody of the bolt from the surface. This should be done with a pliers that havebeveled teeth for the strongest grip and the sharpest cut.

Very similar to pliers, cutters are also used forcutting. They are designed in a similar fashion to the structure of the pliers,but they consist of blades at the end instead of teeth that are primarily usedto grip objects.

Cutters are usually very large, and look similar tothe shears that are used to trim bushes in the yard. With two long handles, theuser simply opens and closes them to manipulate the mouth of the blades on theopposite end.

Depending on the type of cutters that you are using,you might be able to cut into a variety of different materials, which will beindicated by the manufacturer at your time of purchase.

File hand tools are very similar to the file that isused to even out your fingernails, only they are normally made of metal gratesand are much larger in size. The average file will have a special handle forthe user, an a long extended body that is used for fine tuning a project.

The purpose of a file is to get rid of all of theextra materials on a surface. Again, this is very much like a nail file. Thiscan be anything from saw dust to metal scraps. Anything that is left loose onanother material can be filed off with this tool.

With a strong enough file, you might even be able tomake a few cuts with it. This is also depending on the sharpness and thicknessas well, along with what the material is that you are trying to cut.

Although it would be a very tedious task, it would bepossible to file away at something and eventually separate a piece from theentire thing.

Chisels, on the other hand, are a bit different fromall of the tools that have been mentioned in this section so far. While it isconsidered to be a hand tool, it is not really a standalone object that can beused to fix something on its own.

Instead, it is used in combination with another toolthat can apply blunt force: either a hammer or a mallet. A chisel is basicallya long, cylindrical object that is usually made of a solid material and has apointed end.

The purpose of using a chisel is usually to breaksomething apart that is large or firm, such as a block of stone or a largebrick. To use a chisel, you hold it in your non-dominant hand toward the middleof the body.

The chisel will be held against the object that youare trying to break, with the point resting directly on the surface. With yourother hand, you will swing the hammer or mallet onto the upper end of thechisel, and the bottom point will break into the material below, causing cracksto form until it completely breaks.

Speaking of mallets and hammers, both of those itemsare next on this list of convenient hand tools.

The hammer is something that most of us are familiarwith, and probably have laying around all of our houses somewhere. It is one ofthe oldest and most basic tools in existence, but there is a good reason why itis still around to this day.

Hammers come in a lot of different varieties, but themost basic form is the claw hammer. This is the tool with the wooden handle andthe head with the claw in the back. It can be used to both hammer nails into asurface and dig them out with the other end.

There must be hundreds of individual types of hammersthat exist, with some of them fulfilling extremely specific purposes.

The mallet happens to be one of these types ofhammers. Although mallets and hammers are not the exact same thing, they belongto the same family of tools.

Just like hammers, there are tons of different typesof mallets as far as the materials that they are made of and what they arenormally used for.

Mallets come in wood, metal, rubber, and more, and areused for applying blunt force and evening out surfaces. They essentially applyforce to a general area without any specific target, so you could pound adented metal surface without creating a new one.

Screwdrivers are another one of the most basichomeowner’s hand tools. With an oval-shaped handle at one end and a long,pointy, metal stick with tip on the other, they are primarily used to loosenand tighten screws into another surface.

When you are looking for a screwdriver, there are twomain types. One of them will have a flat top, while the other will be moreintricate, with four indentations on the tip. This is due to the fact thatthere are two main types of screw heads, and the screwdrivers will fit intoeither one.

Other than this small limitation, screwdrivers can beconsidered universal. As long as you have one of each in your home, you shouldbe set for anything that comes up.

Vises and clamps are both very similar tools, but theyare used for slightly different purposes. A vise is normally used on a tabletop work space to hold a material or piece of equipment in place.

The clamps, on the other hand, are more of a hand-heldtool that are used similar to pliers. Their main purpose is to hold things inplace while working on them.

Punches are almost exactly what they sound like. Theyare usually used for materials that are more easily bent and manipulated likemetal. When you use a punch, you place the material into the mouth and squeezethe clamps together.

When you release, you will have a brand new hole orindentation on the area that you lifted it up from.

Snips are also exactly what they sound like. With avery fine-tipped point and two handles, you can make tiny and precise cuts onalmost anything that you need to. These types of tools, however, are best usedfor the ends of wires and other small materials that are similar in structure.

The saw, or hand saw, is a classic addition to anyhand tool set. There are plenty of different types of manual saws that can beused, with a variety of blade sizes and thicknesses.

Some of them are meant to cut precisely in smallareas, while others are supposed to roughly chop wood with crosscut teeth.

The next item on the list, the drill, might seemconfusing being that we are talking about hand tools. This type of drill,however, is something that can be twisted and turned with just the fingers, andwill produce the same results as the power tool.

Last but not least, we have the knife on our list ofreliable hand tools. Knives can be used to create precision lines and cutthrough all types of material, both indoors and outdoors. If all else fails,you can direct the blade of a knife and manipulate it to do what you need itto.

List Of Hand Tools With Pictures

After getting a more in-depth explanation of thedifferent types of hand tools that exist and how they are put to use for avariety of tasks around the house and yard, you might be wondering what a fewof them look like.

While you might be familiar with the majority of thelist already due to personal experiences, there are probably a few items thatyou have never heard of before.

In this section, we will clear up all of the confusionwith photos of each type of tool next to the name that you read aboutpreviously. Whether you are learning something completely new or just needto refresh your memory, the photos down below will help you do that.

• Wrench
• Torque Wrench
• Pliers
• Cutters
• Fiels
• Chisel
• Hammer
• Mallet
• Screwdriver
• Vises
• Clamps
• Punches
• Snips
• Saw
• Drills
• Knives

As you can see, there are so many different types ofhand tools that exist in the world, with some that you might have never seenthe entire time.

After reading this article, you should have a betterunderstanding of the types of hand tools and their importance in every home.With all of your new knowledge, you’ll be on your way to creating the ultimatehomeowner’s toolkit in no time!