Roy Berendsohn

A simple tool packed to the gills with versatility.

These tools let you quickly strip weathered exterior paint, remove a finish, smooth a tabletop, and do basic metal prep.

These new and improved brushes can revolutionize how you paint.

These cordless electric saws are light, quiet, fast, and ideal for pruning and other yard jobs.

Two pieces of 2 x 12 and some screws are all you need.

Everybody loves neatly trimmed shrubbery. But the job of trimming? Not so much. To get those bushes from shaggy to sheared as quickly and as easily as possible, you need a tool uniquely designed for speed, mobility, and power. There’s only one that fits the bill: the battery-powered hedge trimmer. A cordless hedge trimmer is relatively lightweight and arguably easier to use than one with a roaring gas engine, hot muffler and cord that can get tangled. It’s powered by small-but-mighty electric mo…

You can capture table saw dust with a lawn mower's grass bag. Really.

It’s a workshop axiom: If you can’t hold the workpiece securely, you can’t work on it well. Sure, there are lots of times when you can hold something with one hand and cut or drill it with the other. But there are other times that the workpiece has to be firmly clamped because you need two hands to operate the power tool or hand tool.A firm hold on the workpiece is no problem in most cases when you’re working in a fully-equipped shop with a workbench. But it can be maddeningly difficult to keep…

Whether you’re cutting plywood sheets, dimensional lumber, or breaking down hardwood pieces to feed through a table saw, a circular saw is an invaluable tool to have on hand. These handheld cutters feature large circular blades and powerful motors that slice through wood, so they’re more efficient and versatile than manual hand saws and smaller jigsaws. Circular saws are also relatively compact, lightweight, and easy to transport—especially compared to bulkier table saws—and are available in bot…

Sometimes it’s faster, easier, and a lot neater to shoot a nail rather than hammer it.

These achieve the rare feat of making lawn mowing fun.

Portable table saws take the precision cutting function of this full-size wood shop workhorse and make it mobile, so you can take it to the worksite or your backyard. Unlike the stationary table saws contractors use, these relatively lightweight options rest on top of a workbench or come equipped with a folding metal frame with wheels for easy transport.The vast majority of portable table saws are equipped with a 10-inch blade that provides more than enough height above the table to cut thick lu…

Whether you call this a cedar sleeve or a planter is up to you (maybe it’s a planter sleeve) Its purpose is to disguise weather-beaten flower pots. I call it a sleeve because, unlike a planter, it holds no soil. I can swap flower pots in and out of it easily to suit the season or for maintaining the plant. All it takes is adding some form of a bottom to make it a planter.Also, unlike a planter, this project is quite small and simple. Wood is expensive. A full-on cedar planter can easily set you…

These cordless cutters are powerful, convenient, clean, and quiet.

Spring. There’s excitement in the air. The snow is gone and the grass goes from mottled to gloriously green. At Popular Mechanics, this is the season we test the latest products for our annual Yard Garden Awards. We roll up our sleeves (well, assuming it’s warm enough to roll them up) and have at the newest batch of chainsaws, mowers, string trimmers, a variety of brush-busting tools, hand tools, wet-dry vacuums, grills, pressure washers, and watering tools. We tackle everything a landscape can…

A fire extinguisher is more than a tool that puts out a fire. It can be the arbiter between life or death. Putting out a fire early can mean the difference between a small, smoky mess and widespread wreckage. Consider this: Fire with access to air and fuel, will double in size every 30 seconds. In three minutes, a fire that starts out the size of one 5-gallon bucket becomes the size of 64 burning buckets. Just 180 seconds after it begins, a fire can be transformed from a nuisance to a room-size…

Not all yards are the same, and not all mowers are either. Find what’s best for you!

The lubricant you purchase for home and shop maintenance is some of the most expensive oil you can buy. In terms of chemical products, it’s among the most expensive materials that you regularly purchase, on a per-weight basis. Eight dollars will buy you a quart of motor oil, but will get you only about 8 oz. of spray lubricant used for home and shop maintenance. Essentially all of the motor oil will be put to use lubricating the engine of your car. It’s anybody’s guess how much of that spray lu…

For more than 120 years, Popular Mechanics has been a heavy duty brand. We see no reason to change that now. That’s why producing our annual Tool Awards package involves countless hours of staff time, as we search, cross check, test, speak with manufacturers, write, and critique our results. It’s worth it to us, because tools are important. And we know that tools are important to you, too. Sure, we’re tool users here and we enjoy tools in their own right. But they’re important because they help…

Removing a door from its hinges is about as simple a DIY job as comes along. Yet more than one hinge pin has refused to budge even after employing a variety of tools and methods. If this has happened to you, we’re here to help.There are two sources of trouble that cause a hinge pin to be difficult to remove:Inability to hit the pin squarely and on targetFrictionWe show you how to deal with both, neatly and efficiently.Hit It SquarelyThe old technique of putting a big common nail under the hinge…