My favourite tool is my brain.
Depends on what I’m doing.
Craft studio: steel printer’s ruler and a 12"X12" cutting mat w/ 1/4" grid markings.
Kitchen: a 2 qt. Pyrex measuring cup/mixing bowl with a pour spout and cover.
Around the house: an inexpensive B&D AA battery operated screwdriver. Kept in the junk drawer, it’s perfect for when I don’t want to get the drill out of the tool box and it takes the same batteries that I keep around for a dozen other things.
Camping: a combo hammer/hatchet. There’s a blade cover for when I want to use the hammer for pounding in tent pegs and the like and a small hatchet for firewood and kindling.
I carry a 4" “Perfect handle” screwdriver in the pocket of my jeans. It is a full steel screwdriver with wood scales ( the handle coverings), made in Germany about 80 years ago! It is perfect for small jobs and can even fit in many phillips screw heads as well.
I buy and sell vintage hand tools, and it is my most favored tool.
I also carry a 3" “bicycle” wrench in my watch pocket. It is also about 80 years old and made in England. In the old days a person would carry one of these in his pocket and it would fit on most fasteners on a bicycle.
For sheer tenacity and endurance I’m not sure any tool I’ve ever owned has been as much of a dependable workhorse as my bow tree saw. I’m not sure who made it, probably TrueTemper, but I’ve likely had the thing for 30 years now. It’s light weight, won’t break and chews up smaller branches faster than a chainsaw. Plus, in all that time I don’t remember it ever ‘biting’ me.
This may not quite be what you are after, but my favorite tool is Kedit, a PC version of the decades-old mainframe Xedit text editor.
There is nothing I can’t get Kedit to do. If I have to, I can code up a bit of Rexx and make Kedit sit up and beg.
I routinely create very large (25,000 line) batch files to do certain types of sequential file imports and exports. I’ve never run across an editor which can handle block and columnar operations with anywhere near the power.
Kedit. Don’t leave home without it.
I love, love, love my hammer/screwdriver tool. It’s a little hammer and the base unscrews to reveal a screwdriver! Then that screwdriver unscrews to reveal another, smaller screwdriver. And so on. It is both useful and awesome to show to your friends.
My Czech chisels that my wife bought me for Christmas about 10 years ago out of the Wade Garrett catalog. Oh, sure, there are other tools that are more utilitarian, or more versatile. But these chisels are perfect at doing what they do! I don’t even use a mallet when I use them – they’re so sharp, so true that I just guide them by hand through the wood. Pine, oak, maple, even walnut – they just glide where I want them to go, as if they read my mind. God, I love to use those chisels!
A screwdriver from Wal-Mart that can be either flat or philips head. You just insert the long, cylindrical piece of metal into the shaft and a grooved magnet holds the opposite flat/philips head in place when it reaches about halfway. It’s always by my computer and I think it was $1.00 + tax.
My actual favorite tool is my Swiss Army knife, I actually got it from Switzerland. Mine is apparently an “Explorer” model, as seen here: http://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Swiss-Explorer-Multitool-Knife/dp/B0019CT4CS
I like the fact that it has scissors, magnifying glass, tweezers, and also will also work as a screwdriver.
But since pocket knives don’t count, another vote for the Fubar. Not only does it function as a hammer, nail puller, and general tool of destruction, but it’s also handy for leverage and prying.
