Wood chisels are used to shape or smooth wood surfaces. They come in a variety of widths and can be used with hand power or tapped with a mallet when deeper cuts need to be made.

Electric drills utilize a chuck to hold the drill bit. A chuck's size indicates the largest diameter drill bit that will fit. A chuck is tightened and loosened using a chuck key.

Drill bits remove material to create holes. They come in a variety of sizes, maxing out at ¼" for woodworking and ½" for metalworking. The majority of drill bits are right-handed which means they cut while rotating in a clockwise direction.

A nail is a short pin-shaped shaft of steel that's typically used to fasten pieces of wood together. It has a flat head on one end and a point on the other. A rivet consists of a cylindrical shaft with a head on one end and a tail on the other. When the rivet is installed, the tail is expanded and reshaped to form another head, creating a dumbell shape that will hold two surfaces together semi-permanently.

A hacksaw has replaceable blades and is used to cut metal. The blade type is chosen based on the material that is to be cut. Blades with larger numbers of teeth per inch are more appropriate for cutting thinner materials.

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.

A miter box utlizes a back saw (a fine toothed saw with a rigid strip of steel opposite its blade edge) to make cuts in wood at a specified angle.

Pincers provide a mechanical advantage that's used to cut, pinch or pull an object. The force applied to pincers is concentrated to a point or to an edge of the tool which allows pincers to be brought very close to a surface. Pincers are typically used for removing objects from a material to which they've previously been applied, for example, to pull nails from wood.

Rulers are used to both measure distance and to draw straight lines. Tape measures are flexible rulers made from cloth or metal and are useful for measuring longer distances and in tighter spaces. Both rulers and tape measures provide similar accuracy, commonly down to \({1 \over 16}\) or \({1 \over 32}\) inch. A steel framing square is made up of a shorter ruler (tongue) and a longer ruler (blade) that meet at a 90° (right) angle. A framing square is often used by carpenters when framing stairs and roofs.

Soldering is a low-temperature process by which two or more items (typically metal) are joined together by melting a filler metal (solder) into the joint. An electrically powered soldering iron or soldering gun is used to melt the solder which is an alloy of lead and tin that has a melting point below the melting point of the items being joined. A chemical cleaning agent called flux is also used to clean the surfaces before soldering.