Let’s say the worst happens, and civilization falls apart this weekend. Who would you rather have on your survival team: Rambo, or MacGyver? (Feel free to drop an actual answer down in the comments.)
All the preppers and homesteaders love to show off their pantries. There’s dozens of videos and articles out there on food storage.
I’ve never seen one about tools.
Have you?
We’re not talking about a multitool that goes in your bugout bag. Oh, you can also stab a marauder with that bottle opener? Cool, cool. But no. We’re talking about tools to build things. This fact doesn’t get much attention in all the commotion about surviving longterm disasters and emergencies. And yet, the preppers and homesteaders with the best information and the best chances of survival know the value of a good tool. A good tool means food. A good tool means water. A good tool means life. Even if you’re not planning for supply chain disruptions or disasters, good tools empower you.
We finally started making our own shelves and other stuff after we got sick of spending hours trying to find dimensions to fit our spaces. When plumbers pitched us thousands of dollars to install a simple composting toilet, we turned to our tools and our growing ingenuity. We haven’t done anything too fancy, and we still use brackets to hold things together. A professional woodworker would probably laugh at some of the stuff we’ve made. Here’s the thing:
They work.
Without these tools, there’s no way we could’ve customized our rain barrels and composting toilets or built the gear storage we needed. Once you have the right tools, the projects themselves become less intimidating and overwhelming. They become doable. You don’t have to acquire all these tools yourself. All around the world, communities are building tool libraries and communal sheds. You could do something similar. It’s becoming more than just a good idea.
It’s becoming essential.
As industrial civilization erodes, giving way to an era of supply chain disruptions and endless inflation, products will only become more expensive. The power to build and repair your stuff will save you money. In a few years, it could be the difference between having something and doing without.
If you didn’t grow up with the knowledge, it’s surprisingly difficult to learn all the tools that make projects easier. We’re going beyond standard tools like tape measures and screwdrivers. You already know about those. We’re focusing on the tools that maybe you don’t know about. If you know a good tool you consider a lifesaver, drop it in the comments. Let’s build a digital tool library.
Here’s mine:
A hole saw kit
Over the last year, we’ve drilled lots of holes. We’ve drilled holes in buckets and barrels. We’ve drilled them in doors. We’ve drilled them in different sizes, from half-inch all the way up to three. It’s probably one of the most underrated tools out there. If you think you’re going to want to install your own rain barrels, composting toilets, or atmospheric rain generators, you’re going to need one. When you need a nice, perfectly round hole, nothing else really does the job.
A standard hole saw kit covers all these different sizes, but check to make sure. Get a full-sized one if you have ambitious plans for DIY survival projects. You also might want to think about getting hole saws with bi-metal or tungsten carbide tips if you plan on drilling holes in metal. We wound up needing these when we installed a deadbolt on one of our doors.
A step bit
So you need to enlarge a hole for a bigger screw or a bigger tube. Or you want to be able to drill several different size holes with a single bit. Well, there’s a specific tool for that. It’s called a step bit.
A manual, hand-crank drill
Power tools are great, but think about our longterm future. The way things are going, maybe you won’t always have electricity when you need to build something. That’s where the hand-crank drill comes in handy. Many of them come with adjustable chucks that can accommodate the same bits as power tools, including hole saws. It’s more difficult, but I’ll take difficult over impossible any day.
Saws
You’ll need different saws for different jobs. Start with a standard hardpoint saw. It cuts through most types of wood boards. If you’re going to cut a lot of wood and just need rough cuts, use a panel saw. Hacksaws are great for cutting through metal and pipes, including PVC. Toothsaws and jab saws are useful for cutting shapes out of different materials. If you didn’t have a hole saw, you could use a jab saw to achieve a rough round hole, not perfect, but it gets the job done.
Sawhorses
For the longest time, we tried to get by without sawhorses. That was a mistake. Sawhorses made life much easier. Finally, we had something to hold the boards and keep them steady while we sawed or sanded them. Building shelves and beds suddenly became a doable task instead of a Tolkienesque quest.
Files
If you need to shave down a part to make it fit, files are your friend. You can use woodworking files, or you can use rougher and coarser files for plastic and metal. For metal, bastard files work great.
Dremels and rotary tools
These things are lifesavers.
Dremel and rotary tools can cut through just about anything if you have the right tip. They can sand and shave hard materials. They can cut patterns. We’ve used our dremel on door reinforcers, polycarbonate panels, and more. If you’re working with metal, get some tungsten carbide burrs.
Pliers
You’re going to need a strong grip for different projects. Combination and lineman pliers work for most jobs—but not all jobs. We already had to do some maintenance on our water harvesting pump. To get the impeller out for cleaning and lubing, I was glad to have slip joint pliers that clamped evenly on both sides and let me pull it straight out. Pliers are also helpful for gripping screws with worn heads. Needle-nose pliers are also commonly used for different jobs.
A T-Square
If you plan on sawing boards to build shelves or garden beds, it’s really nice to be able to mark straight lines. That’s where a T-Square comes in handy. You fold it out. You place the top along the board. It forms a perfect right angle, letting you mark those straight lines to guide your sawing. These are bigger than a standard carpenter’s square, so they can handle bigger projects.
Corner and angle clamps
If you’ve ever tried building your own standalone shelves, you know what a lifesaver these are. Holding wood boards together while you glue or fasten them is a massive pain in the rear. These clamps hold your boards together at right angles for you, letting you drill pilot holes and screw them together easily. They turn an onerous task into something simple and procedural. You could also use these clamps to make a quick job out of building raised beds.
A speed square
These help you measure angles for cutting seats into boards, when you need one piece of wood to sit in another. (For example, rafters.) They help with several other situations when you need to cut straight lines and curves. You’ll want one if you plan on building anything like an outdoor food dehydrator or a shed.
Pipe cutters
You can make a lot of different, temporary structures with PVC pipe. You can also make sturdier structures with steel pipe or conduit. Down the road, we’re thinking about making a greenhouse with metal conduit and polycarbonate panels. It would be cheaper and more resilient than most kits you get online. You can cut pipe with a saw, but it’s difficult to get a straight edge and takes a lot of energy. Pipe cutters make the job way more manageable. You use PVC pipe cutters to cut PVC pipe. You use steel pipe cutters to cut metal.
A pipe bender
If you want versatility in making different types of structures, pipes can work wonders where wood becomes a liability that rots over time. If you’re going to be making things out of metal pipe and conduit, you need a heavy-duty pipe bender. They’re easy to use. They bend pipe to any angle you need.
Shovels
You know what a shovel is, but did you know there’s at least ten different kinds of shovels? You have your standard digging shovel for piercing ground and scooping soil. You have flat and pointed digging shovels for different types of soil. If you’re just moving a lot of dirt, you want a flat scoop shovel or a transfer shovel. If you’ve got tougher ground or a lot of grass and roots, then you want a pointed or spade digging shovel. Rounded shovels are better for gardening and looser soil. Then you have your edging shovel for… forming clean edges. If you’re digging a trench, you need a trench shovel. If you’re installing fencing or posts, you want a post-hole digger, and they’re also good for moving dirt out of deep, tight spaces.
Trying to use one shovel for everything is probably one of the biggest mistakes we made when we were starting out.
A mattock
If you’ve got very tough ground, then mattocks save your back. Never swing them like they do in the movies. You slide and drop. Keep yourself low. Let gravity do the work for you. That’s how you break up soil.
A digging bar
If you’re digging deep into hard ground, a shovel might not be enough. A digging bar is something you simply lift and drop. Use the digging bar to break up the dirt. Use the shovel to move it.
A list of other tools
So we’re not leaving out the obvious ones: Yes to hammers. Yes to screwdrivers, bolt cutters, tape measure, wrenches, Allen wrenches, drive socket wrenches, mallets, scrapers, sandpaper, hand sanders, sanding blocks, crowbars, and chisels. What’s your favorite tool? Let everyone know.
Duct tape
Who could forget?
Walk around the hardware store
There’s no way to list every different kind of tool you might need in the years ahead. That would take a book. Just take some time and walk around local hardware stores. Look at the tools on the shelves. Follow your curiosity. Half the time, it’s not just about the tool and its intended purposes. It’s knowing how the tools function and having a mental library to draw on.
You might find a new way to use an old tool.
You also don’t need to own every single tool. You just need to know what they do. If you know what tools do, then you can improvise one.
When everyone else is focused on diesel export bans and billionaire bunkers, you’ll be wise to build your tool shed and develop the skills to use them. In the end, it doesn’t matter how much gold or silver someone has locked away in a safe, and it doesn’t matter how many guns they have.
Does the world need more Rambos, or MacGyvers?
I know my answer.
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