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2018’s Best of Cool Tools, Part 2: Unpowered

There should be a word for this in German: That particular joy you experience when, after suffering for a long time with the wrong tool for the job, you finally acquire the right tool for the job. It’s even more satisfying when you didn’t even know this wondrous right tool existed.

Here are some tools you may not have heard of, that are all vast improvements over the conventional way of doing things.

In the video linked here, master carpenter Matt Jackson demonstrates an old-school goodie, the slide hammer nail puller.

Another old-school tool is this ingenious, spinning implement for cutting accurate, repeatable inlays.

Michael David Young might have three names, like a serial killer, but he’s actually an industrial designer who invented this brilliant nail-dispensing hammer.

Greenlee’s ratcheting PVC Pipe Cutter provides clean, quick cuts and tool-less blade changes.

The Paperpot Transplanter isn’t a singular tool, but an entire system invented in Japan that makes farming way easier.

Another outdoor tool that makes a big difference: LogOX’s brilliant 3-in-1 back-saving forestry multitool.

If you need to lift something heavy, like a riding mower, by yourself, here are two different approaches to the problem: The MoJack and the Jungle Jack.

Sheetrock isn’t terribly heavy, but it’s darn unwieldy. For the lone worker trying get it up onto a ceiling without a panel lift, this hanger invention from the UK fits the bill nicely.

For studio-bound designers cutting foamcore for modelmaking, this new Perfect Cut tool, which lets you cut at precise angles, is the mutt’s nuts.

Need to draw a perfect ellipse on a piece of material? Traditional furniture makers used to accomplish this task with this nifty wooden ellipse jig.

While not a tool in its own right, the simple addition of a bendy straw to a can of WD-40 makes it way easier to spray the stuff into tricky places.