The most common striking tool is the hammer and the most common variety of hammer is the claw hammer. The claw hammer has two ends, one to drive nails and one to remove nails. Ball-peen hammers replace the claw with a rounded end that's used to round off the edges of metal pins and make gaskets. A sledge hammer is a two-handed long-handled hammer with a large steel head used for heavy duty jobs.

Pliers are designed to provide a mechanical advantage, allowing the force of the hand's grip to be amplified and focused with precision. Pliers also allow finer control over objects that are too small to be manipulated by the fingers alone. The standard configuration is combination pliers which provide a fixed maximum jaw width. Other styles include adjustable joint pliers that allow selecting jaw width, needle nose pliers for holding small objects in tight spaces and locking pliers that will lock in place to hold or clamp objects together.

A punch is narrow and is used to drive objects like nails (pin punch) or for making guide marks for drilling (center punch) or patterns in wood or metal.

Welding is a high-temperature process that involves melting the base metals in the objects to be joined to fuse them together. A filler metal is used to provide additional material to make up a joint that, depending on the weld type, can be stronger than the base materials alone. Oxyacetylene welding is a welding process that uses a torch fueled with oxygen and acetylene gases. Electric-arc welding utlizes electric current in a safer welding process (it doesn't involve burning explosive gases) that enables a wide variety of specialized applications like stick, MIG (metal inert gas), and TIG (tungsten inert gas) welding.