5 Small Tools With Surprisingly Big Uses

The 5-in-1 is a staple in painters’ toolboxes, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a stiff putty knife with a few extra shapes ground into the blade, and in practice it ends up doing a little of everything: scraping loose paint, digging out old caulk, filling nail holes with spackle, and prying open a paint can.

The half-round cutout is the part people don’t expect. Run it down a paint roller after the job and it squeezes out a surprising amount of paint, which makes cleanup much faster.

Pro tip Dry the blade right after washing it. A few drops of oil on carbon steel keep it from rusting in a damp toolbox.

A speed square looks like a simple triangle, but it replaces several tools on a DIY project. Hold it against the edge of a board and you can mark a square line, a 45° line, or any angle on the protractor scale. Press it against the board and run a circular saw along it, and it’s a saw guide for clean, square cuts.

The row of notches is the hidden trick: put a pencil in a notch and slide the square along the edge to draw a line parallel to it, which is handy for ripping a board or marking a reveal.

Pro tip To make a square cut with a circular saw, hold the square’s lip firmly against the far side of the board and keep the saw’s base plate pressed against the square’s edge for the whole cut.

Plenty of DIY projects start by taking something apart: an old baseboard, a piece of trim, a crate, a stubborn picture-frame nail. A hammer claw is too blunt and too big for that. A small flat pry bar slides into a thin gap and lets you lift things gently, so you can reuse the trim instead of splitting it.

At 7 inches it fits in a pocket, and the right-angle claw with three nail slots pulls nails that a hammer can’t get under.

Pro tip When removing trim you want to reuse, pry against a putty knife or a thin scrap of wood held on the wall. It spreads the force and keeps the bar from denting the drywall.

Fitting a floor tile or a piece of laminate around a door frame is where many DIY projects get ugly: lots of measuring, a cut that’s almost right, and a gap that shows. A contour gauge skips the measuring. Press its row of pins against the shape, lock it, and trace the copied profile straight onto the piece you’re cutting.

It works the same way for pipes, molding profiles and any other shape that’s hard to measure with a tape.

Pro tip Trace the profile onto a strip of cardboard first and test the fit. A cardboard template is free; a tile cut wrong isn’t.

Drill bits wander. On metal, tile or smooth plastic, the tip skates off the mark and you end up with a scratch and a hole in the wrong place. A center punch fixes that with a small dent where the bit can sit and start cutting.

The automatic version does it with one hand: press down until the spring releases and it snaps a dent into the surface. The other hand stays free to hold the part or the ruler, which is the whole reason it’s easier than a regular punch and a hammer.

Pro tip On tile, put a strip of masking tape over the mark first, punch lightly, and start drilling slowly without hammer mode. The tape helps keep the bit from wandering on the glaze.