What are your most used tools in your shop?

[Imabass]

I am just curious what your most used tool is (homemade or not.)?

I have a 2000# walkie style forklift that I picked up on craigslist a few years ago. I use this thing all the time and it really makes working on large heavy things much easier. I have made a motorcycle lift attachment and I have a pallet with plywood that I use as an adjustable workbench. Last night I was using it to separate a engine transmission out of a subframe that I previously removed from a parts car. Also using the forklift to remove the sub frame with suspension and engine/transmission was a pretty easy task. I use the forklift so much that I am considering upgrading to a larger regular forklift. I am also planning on salvaging and old forklift mast to attach via 3 point to my tractor for use outdoors.

Other than that the torch and welder get a lot of use in my shop to make or modify other tools.

Outside the shop, my old green tractor with some of the implements that I made have been getting quite the workout. I have probably pulled up 500 scrubby trees that range from 1" x 6' tall to 6" x 30' tall with the jaws on my tractor. The boom pole has also been doing some heavy lifting in moving large trees that I cut down.

[C-Bag]

One of my favorite tools/equipment when I was still punching a time clock was one of those walk behind forklifts. I don't work on that heavy of stuff now and I'm also working out of my 2 car garage so space is limited. But I've seen a couple of those little lifts on CL and thought wistfully about it. I would use the little lift over a regular lift because it fit in really small places a regular lift can't fit.

Probably my most utilized unit is a harbor freight 1k# hydraulic lift table that is my main work table with a heavy duty top on it for welding/fab. The other is a HF work cart I put a Formica top on that was left over from our kitchen remodel. Those are my work benches. Everything in the shop except my 9x20 lathe, even my RF30 mill/drill are on castors to make the best use of my small space.

Most everything is set up as work stations. The main work station is an ancient 3drawer toolbox that was given to me. It has my heavy duty benchtop drill press, 6" bench grinder with wire brush and disc and belt sander on the other side. Then a 8" bench grinder with a fine and coarse stones for sharpening drill bits and HSS lathe bits. Along with mounts for 5" angle grinder, die grinder, and vices for the drill press. The top drawer is for the tons of used nuts, bolts, washers and weird stuff I couldn't toss. Middle drawer is tooling for the workstation along with the big bottom drawer and bin underneath.

I got totally into workstations when I worked as a welder fabricator for my father in law. All his stuff was in workstations that could all be pulled into an old telephone trailer and towed to the work site and fab the packing house equipment in place. Love the idea of having everything close to where I'm working and working around the stations instead walking all over to wherever a machine/tool is mounted on a wall.

[Frank S]

I would have to say that my most used tool is completely homemade. being born partially dyslexic and called educationally stupid by one of my early primary school teachers causing me to become for the most part an autodidact, would be the mass of grey jelly inside my head although it does not always work as well as I remember it doing years ago. Perhaps it is getting close to time for me to send it out to be defraged and optimized, my next most used tool not homemade but home remade several times is my laptop after that it would be paper & pencil or soapstone , further down, my Leblond 19 x 60 lathe, and welders from there the list would fill the Pacific basin to overflowing

[C-Bag]

Thanks Jon for removing the spam that was here before. Just wanted to explain as it would look like I just made a more odd or random comment than usual