Carpenters Tool List for Tool Belt and Bags: Master Carpenter Tool Kit!

According to carpenters’ job types and skills, they need a variety of tools. Whether you are a skilled or newbie woodworker, one in all carpenters’ tool lists is a must. All the carpentry tools aren’t equally important for all the woodworking tasks. If you don’t have enough experience, then you may be confused while organizing tool belts and bags.

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To lessen your burden, we have made the carpenter tools list with separate categories. Let’s see the carpenters’ tool kit list!

Essential Carpenters Tool List with Their Uses for Carpenters

As an apprentice carpenter or tool-loving guy, you may have a curiosity about knowing the names of tools used by carpenters. Basically, carpenters need various types of tools including hand tools, power tools, safety tools, and many other tools. Let’s go to the details of each category.

Basic Hand Tools for Carpenters

Carpenters need different primary tools. Most of these basic carpentry tools are a must-have for beginners as well as skilled woodworkers. For your easy understanding, we have categorized the apprentice carpenter tool list as marking and layout tools, cutting tools, sharpening tools, and utility tools.

Marking and Layout Tools

It is necessary to make a good sketch before doing your carpentry tasks. For this reason, layout and marking tools are very important for carpenters. These woodworking hand tools lists include-

Carpenter’s Pencil

This is one of the most essential tools for carpenters. You need a pencil to mark the job before every cut. It also allows you the erase the line and draw a new line. Usually, after drawing a few lines you need to sharpen the pencils. A pencil cutter or razor-sharp knife will help you to do that.

There are some mechanical pencils that needn’t be sharpened again, they look like knives. Sometimes carpenters draw with pen and marker also. Usually, this tool snugly fits behind an ear for easy access. But this is not a professional approach. We always recommend a handy carpenters tool belt for carrying your favorite carpentry tools.

Chalk Line

A chalk line or chalk box is another marking tool for carpentry and framing. It is used for marking straight and long lines for flat surfaces. However, two ends of the chalk line need to be taut and the string makes the line. A chalk line is a very cheap tool for carpentry. In some regions of East Asia, carpenters use ink lines instead of chalk lines.

Squares

Carpenters use various squares as a layout tool to mark and cut timber at different angles. They may be made from steel, aluminum, and polymer. Carpenters usually use two kinds of squares. The combination squares come with a ruler with an interchangeable head. It can easily measure 90⁰  and 45⁰ angles.

Another popular carpenter’s square is a triangular square or speed square or rafter angle square. This is a multifunctional tool combined with Try square, combination square, and framing square. Most of the carpenters and framing tool belt has devoted speed square slot.

Sliding Bevel

The T-shaped sliding bevel is another angle-measuring tool like a square. It has two legs that are joined by a screw. The sliding bevel or bevel gauge or false square will allow you to use a lot of angles. The handle is made of plastic or wood and is attached to a metallic ruler blade.

Marking Gauge

A marking gauge or scratch gauge is another layout tool. With the marking gauge, you can easily mark out lines for sawing or other operations. This tool scribes parallel lines to a reference surface. It consists of a headstock, beam, and scribing pin.

If there is a knife instead of a pin, it’s called a cutting gauge. The mortise gauge has two adjustable pins that can scribe two lines simultaneously. Wheel marking gauges are also available at the present time.

Utility Hand Tools for Carpenters

Carpenters need different utility hand tools. Most of them are needed after you have completed the layouts. They are-

Hammer

Hammer is one of the crudest and oldest tools. In carpentry, driving screws and nails are regular jobs. Most of cases, claw hammers or framing hammers having around 20 ounces of weight is great for carpentry. You need to take the claw hammer that correctly balances the head and the claw, you can’t work smoothly without a balanced hammer.

Fiberglass or wood handle hammers give you good support as they can absorb more vibrations.  The broad steelhead is used to drive screws and the claw helps to pull nails. There are many bulky and lighter hammers available such as a mallet, framing, claw, tact, club, and many more. Usually, each tool belt type has a dedicated hammer holder.

Utility Knife

This is a great asset to carpenters. It has lots of uses for carpenters such as making pencils sharp, cutting string, scribing wood, cutting drywall, and many others. There are many kinds of them but disposable blades are the most common ones for woodwork. They are cheap and small in size that fits your pocket or bag. This is a basic tool for any carpenter’s tool belt list.

Moisture Meter

The moisture meter can measure the percentage of water in the woods so that the woodworkers can understand if it is suitable for the work. This determines whether the wood is dry or wet and it’s very important for woodwork. The superb moisture meter can accurately measure moisture within 0.1 percent of the wood’s moisture content.

There are mainly two kinds of moisture meters – pin-type and pinless meters. The pin-style has two metal probes or pins that must penetrate the surface of the word. On the other side, the pinless moisture meter uses electromagnetic frequency using sensor pads that lay flat on the wood.

Tape Measure

A measuring tape is an important instrument for carpenters. Usually, retractable tape more than 25 feet long is good for carpenters. Be sure of taking that one having both units of meters and feet, because you need that badly for different situations. You also check whether there is a hook or not. The hook helps to attach the tape while measuring.

Most of the carpenters’ tool bags even the roofers’ tool belt set has a dedicated tape holder. Some carpenters use laser measuring tapes nowadays. They provide more accurate readings, but expensive than the usual ones.

Calipers

The slide calipers are used for precise measurement. This type of caliper can measure both the internal and external diameters of the object. It looks like a double “F”, one side seems a capital “F” and another side appears a small “f”. You can accurately measure slot diameters, dado widths, hole diameters, and much more precise dimensions within seconds.

You need to consider the Vernier constant while using the analog Vernier calipers. Nowadays, digital calipers provide the actual readings, so no need for calculating the Vernier constant there.

Clamps

Clamps are very important for carpentry to hold or secure any object in place. There are different sizes and types of clamps for various woodworking purposes. This will make your hands free so that you can make layouts, cuts, saw, etc. Quick clamps are very convenient for 45⁰ and 90⁰-angle cuts. Large clamps are used for holding big jobs.

Level

It is necessary for carpenters to know whether the surface of the job is horizontal or vertical perfectly. Usually, carpenters use the spirit level having bubbles as an indicator to check the surface level. It also helps them to cut perfectly or punch nails.

There are different levels are available from large to small sizes. The torpedo level is a good small leveling instrument. For larger woodworking tasks, the 4 ft level is a good option. Nowadays, you can easily determine the level by the smartphone’s level.

Screwdriver

Screwdrivers are valuable hand tools for carpenters. For woodworking, they need different kinds and sizes of screwdrivers and nut drivers such as flathead, Phillips and slot, star drivers, and Torx. You also need lots of torque generating square blade long screwdrivers and tight space functioning medium and small slot drivers.

Pliers

Pliers are handy utility hand tools for carpenters where pins need to hold firmly. They are also good for cutting and bending sometimes. Basically, pliers are developed from tongs. There are varieties of pliers for different purposes. Some of the carpenters’ favored models are- end-cutting pincher pliers, cutting pliers, etc.

Nail Sets

A nail set is a unique carpentry tool kit that is used for any woodworking purposes. It looks like an awl and drives nails head slightly below the wood surface. To use this, you need to set the piercing end onto the nail head, then hit the other end with a hammer. After the nail is flushed, you need to fill the hole with wood filler or caulk before staining or painting.

You should take different diameters and lengths of nails set for dissimilar nails. Some suspenders’ tool belts have a devoted nail set holding slot.

Pry Bar

A pry bar is a metal hand tool comprising of flattened end and a curved end. It is used for many purposes i.e. separating two layers of wood, removing nails, loosening rusty screws, etc. This tool has many other names- crowbars, wreck bars, jimmy bars, and many more. Usually, flat bars are mostly used as pry bars in carpentry.

Nail Puller

The tool’s function can be easily understood from the self-explanatory name. It is also called the cat’s paw or cat’s claw sometimes. Through this tool, you can easily remove the nails from timber and occasionally it also helps to drive nails. The steelhead comes with a curve shape. If the handle is pushed down, the other end pulls the nail from the timber.

Workbench

Carpenters need durable and big workbenches or saw horses for different tasks. Some people use the table saw sometimes, but they aren’t large enough. The workbench should be lightweight, portable, locking, and unlocking opportunities. It is also recommended to take the clamp-equipped and adjustable surface benches.

Sandpaper

Sandpaper or glasspaper is used to remove excess materials from the surface. This consists of sheets or papers with glued abrasive materials to one face. Sandpapers are available in varieties of grit sizes that are used to finish the surface. According to grit sizes, the sandpaper polishes the surface. You need to use a larger grit size first followed by the medium and small grit size sandpaper to make the surface plane.

Carpenters Cutting Tools

Cutting, punching, and hole-making are vital tasks for carpenters. These tools are essential for finishing (just like the framing ones) the carpentry tool belts. The necessary tools for these tasks are-

Hand Plane

A hand block plane is a woodworking hand tool. It has a sharp adjustable blade that can remove timber. This is often used for paring end grain. Some of the other uses are chamfering, square, removing glue lines, etc. According to your cutting style, you need to choose the blade.

Make sure, the blade is sharpened nicely, if needed hone with the whetstone. Most of their bodies are metal-made, but wood-bodied block planes are also available. Nowadays, electrical planes are also found that ease the carpentry job.

Hand Saw

When it’s necessary to slice the wood jobs, then you can’t overlook the importance of hand saws. This hand blade will give you the extra feeling of the response of the timber. There are different sizes and varieties of saws- hacksaw, traditional saw, rip saw, crosscut saw, coping saw, etc.  As a beginner, the fretsaw will be good for you. You also need a mini saw, a good tenon saw is nice in this regard.

Hacksaws are necessary where removing bolts and frames are necessary. Rip saw’s coarse teeth are designed for cutting along the grain and crosscut saws are good for cutting wood perpendicularly. Backsaws work great when you need wood joints cut. Coping saws are used for rough cutting like roof rafters, floor joists, headers, and cripple studs.

Hand Drills

The manual hand drills are considered an old-fashioned tool, but it’s useful where power drills don’t work. When you rotate the cranking handle the motion of the crank will transfer into the drill bit through the main shaft. You can change the drill bit according to your needs.

Chisels

Chisels are very important tools in woodworking jobs for chipping out wood. They come in different sizes from 1/4″ to 2” long blades. There are corner chisels that use for hole punching and removing wood with one hammer blow. Chisel blades of 3/4” and 1” are great for door hinges and 1½” chisels are good for chipping out. For mortise work, the small sizes of chisels are a pretty choice.

Good chisels are made of high-alloy carbon steel or chromium-vanadium alloy steel. Hardwood-made grips with metal caps are durable handle options. You must keep the edges sharp and oily for getting the best outputs and making them long-lasting.

Feather Board

If you want to achieve smooth and quality cuts feather board will be handy. You can use it with all kinds of saws and any kind of cutting surface. It is mainly used to apply pressure to the workpiece by placing it against a flat work table. Feather boards are also used to join edges and mold-making on router tables.

Sharpening Tools for Carpentry

There are some hand tools that are used to sharpen woodworking tools, especially cutting tools. These tools are very important to rebuild the blade’s edge. They are-

Whetstone

Carpenters need whetstone or sharpening stone to sharpen several cutting tools such as chisels, blades of block planes, knives, and much more. These sharpening stones make the cutting edges like new one. There are electric sharpeners nowadays that help to rebuild the edges greatly.

Sharpening Files

You can’t sharpen the teeth of the saw with the usual whetstone, you need a special tool in this regard. Files can do a lot of sharpening tasks such as chisels, blades, saws blades, axes, and much more. There are different grit sizes and types of sharpening files that can make your cutting tools edge sharp like new buying ones.

Power Tools for Carpentry

Besides hand tools, carpenters need some power tools also. These tools will ease the woodworking processes. The carpenters’ power tools are-

Electric Drill

If you need lots of boring, then power drills will ease your project. They are more expensive than hand drills. You need to carry lots of drill bits for varieties of nailing tasks. There are also some battery-operated cordless drills that are handy for outside areas. Some carpenters’ tool belts and most electricians’ tool belts have a power drill holding facility.

Circular Saw

The circular saw is one of the most important power tools for woodworking. It can do what a table saw does. Moreover, it can cut circularly which the table saw can’t do. A lot of teeth can cut smoothly to the job and fewer teeth design circular saws are used for the rough cut.

Electric Planer

The electric power planers can easily flatten the rough surface to a smooth place within a short time. This will save energy and time greatly. But you need to acquire the technique first before using the power planer.

Nail Gun

The nail gun, nail gun, or nailer is a nail driving tool into the timber and some other materials. It has almost replaced the use of the hammer. There are different models that are powered by highly flammable gases, electromagnetism, and pneumatic. With this nail gun, an operator can nail more than 50 nails in a minute. Some of them have the capacity of nailing 400 to 600 per minute.

Jigsaw

A jigsaw or Sabre saw is another great carpenter power tool. It is used for making straight and curved cuts to any building materials. The electric-powered jigsaw is great for you definitely but you can use the battery-operated ones for thin material.

Router

Routers are advanced-level power tools. It is used by pro carpenters who are serious about making different shapes like making holes, contours, slots, grooves, bevels, dados, and many more purposes. Some of the router types are plunge, double knob handled, D handled, etc.

Metal Detector

This is an important piece of equipment for carpenters to find out hidden nails in the wood surface. If the blade touches the nail, the blade’s edge might be ruined. The metal detector scans the surface quickly and lets you know if there is any lodged nail or screw there.

Palm Sander and Random Orbital Sander

They are two good carpenter’s power tools collections used for finishing purposes by removing access materials. The palm sander or finish sander usually moves in an orbiting pattern or back and forth. This tool uses rectangular sandpaper on the bottom of the sander. It is used for light-duty finishing work.

The random orbital sander uses round sandpaper and can move circularly and back and forth. This can smoothen rough surfaces, paint removal, and finishing purposes.

Woodworking Safety Equipment

As a carpenter, you need some basic protective equipment and accessories to protect yourself from undesirable dangers and coincidences. Some of the protective tools are-

Woodworking Apron

Professional carpenters always prefer apron-style tool belts that will protect their bodies from chips and dust. If you need to use drilling and saw on a daily basis, then you should wear this apron. It works as protective clothing for carpenters.

Carpenters Gloves

You need to grab small tools and nails frequently. On the bare hand, it may be difficult for you to grip them sometimes. A good pair of gloves will be great in this context. This will protect you from severe damage and tools poking also. For instance, if the hammer hits your hand the gloves will support you as a shield.

Safety Glasses

Woodworking areas are full of debris, wood chips, and small nails. You need to wear safety goggles that will protect your eyes from entering these small particles.

Rubber Boots and a Hard Hat

When working with heavy tools and logs, suddenly any of them fall and hurt you severely. But, wearing ideal rubber boots and a hard hat on the head can give great support. Boots also protect from piercing any nails to your foot.

Woodworking Mask

Dust and timber chips may damage your respiratory system if they enter your lungs. To protect your bronchioles, you need to use a mask when there is plenty of debris and wood swarf in the air. Masks are great choices for pro workers’, such as HVAC installers need this very much.

Hearing Safety

If you work in a noisy environment for a long time, it will lessen your hearing power. So, earplugs or muffs may be a good solution for your hearing protection.

Conclusion on Carpenters Tool Lists

Carpenters need great assortments of tools for doing their jobs. A combination of hand tools, power tools, and safety tools is needed for successful carpentry projects. Out there, we tried to assemble the essential ones here. Also, we categorized the tools according to their functions and carpenters’ skills, which will help to choose the suitable stuff largely.

Hopefully, you got the long-cherished carpenters’ tool lists for thrilling woodworking. Enjoy carpentry with these basic tools!

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)