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Short answer: on your first day you need a duct board knife and a good attitude. Not even a tool belt. What to buy your first year is not day one.
As you work along, the impact driver, a few offset snips, an 11-1. You will get there. Now a tool bag, it starts weighing down your pockets.
Day One
Nobody is handing a first year the layout on Monday. You are going to be doing something simple. Wrapping duct. Applying duct seal. Stocking ductwork. Holding the other end.
So buy a duct board knife and show up ready to work. You can use your back pockets as a tool belt if you are careful. I am not telling you to go buy a bag and fill it before you have put in a shift, because you do not know yet what you reach for.
Pro tip: get a knife where the metal runs the whole length of the handle. The ones that stop partway break, and they break at the worst possible time.
The Line You Have to Cross
When you start buying power tools there is one real decision and it is not the brand. It is cost
When I started, I had corded tools. Getting those to work took effort and hundreds of feet of expensive extension cords. You spent half your morning finding power and the other half keeping somebody from unplugging you. Then batteries got good enough to be useful and tools got affordable enough to actually buy one.
Cross the line when you are ready. It is not day one.
What I Actually Bought, In Order
My first impact driver was a Ryobi. It came with two batteries and a charger and I spent a hundred dollar bill on it. I used it until it did not go anymore. About a year and a half.
Then I bought a DeWalt kit. The drills were nice. The impact driver was super useful. The sawzall was so helpful. I did not know how useful a grinder would be until I had one. Even the flashlight was awesome. I used all of those things and used them up over the next several years and they all wore out.
By the time I was replacing them the batteries were not interchangeable anymore. Everything had gone to lithium, which was for the better. Makita really kicked off the lithium wave and they are still around.
I do not use tools like I used to, so now I buy them as I need them. All battery powered except my paint sprayer and hammer drill. A battery sprayer would be too heavy and would not get through a canister of paint before the battery died. I am usually drilling on concrete and batteries don’t give it the juice it needs.
Where Cheap Is Fine and Where It Is Not
This is the part most buying guides will not tell you straight.
If you really do not want to spend money on an expensive brand name, go to Harbor Freight and buy an impact driver. Then go to a big box store and buy quality bit sets. Cheap tool, good bits. That order, not the other way around.
The tool spins. The bit is what touches the screw. A ninety dollar driver with a good nut setter puts screws in straight. A three hundred dollar driver with a worn out bit does not.
Impact driver nut setters (paid link)
If you are year one and you need a drill, buy something affordable. When the batteries wear out or the trigger breaks, have some money saved up to buy the brand you want. That is how you end up on a battery platform on purpose instead of by accident.
What Actually Wears Out
Here is everything I have broken or used up, so you know what to expect instead of thinking you did something wrong.
- Bits. Lots of bits. The magnets fall out. The hex shape strips. The shaft twists off from torque. They get bent when you drop them and then they do not screw straight anymore.
- Drill bits. Torqued the head right off the drive shaft more than once.
- A hammer. Broke it chipping concrete.
- A hammer drill. Burned it up coring concrete. Smoke came out of the motor.
- Snips. Snapped a blade clean off a pair. Snapped the hinged bolt on another pair.
- Offset hand seamers. Snapped an arm off one pair. Sheared the center pin bolt on another. Spring disintegrated on another pair.
- Diagonal cutting pliers. Burned a hole in a pair cutting electrical wire hooking up a furnace. They are pretty useless after that.
- Needle nose pliers. Broke a needle.
- An 11-in-1. Lost too many parts for it to be useful and had to replace it.
- My duct board knife blade. Dulled and sharpened it so many times the serrated edge is gone.
None of that was abuse. That is a tool doing its job until it is done. Budget for bits like you budget for blades, because that is what they are.
New, Used, or Pawn Shop
Nobody writing these pages answers this one, so here it is.
If you want to start real cheap and you do not trust a discount store tool, a pawn shop is worth a look. I bought my first nail gun from a pawn shop and it worked decent for a few years. I did not use it heavy. Eventually it just wore out, and when the manufacturer replaced all the seals and gaskets it never really worked right again. I also found a battery at a pawn shop once that was not worn out, which is rarer than it sounds.
There are good finds in there but you have to find them. With a new tool you know you are not inheriting somebody else’s problem, and that is peace of mind when you take it to work. A new tool can have a defect too. The difference is you know where to take it.
What You Do Not Need
Straight snips. I carried them for years and every time I used them I scraped my knuckles on the edge I had just cut, because your hand runs right down the line of the metal. They were no good for long cuts either. They were a tool that weighed me down. When I bought a pair of bulldogs to cut s-cleats, the straights came out of the bag and never went back in.
A straight duct stretcher. Somebody will sell you one. If you need one, borrow it from the old guy, he has all the tools.
Word of the day: gang box. The big locked box on the job where the shop’s tools live. Somebody is going to tell you to go get something out of the gang box on your first week like you already know where it is. Now you do. You will probably find the foreman standing there to.
Two Tools You Should Use and Probably Will Not Buy
Cordless swivel head shears. 18 gauge, battery powered, and the head turns so you are not fighting the piece. Most tinners will never buy a pair and most of them should.
20V cordless 18-gauge swivel head shears (paid link)
A spin-in cutter. It needs a drill with an adjustable chuck, so check what you have first. The first time I used one I shook my head at how hard I had made my life cutting all those spin-ins by hand.
What Your Hands Are Going to Do
You will build up a callous on your palm and between your index finger and thumb from holding the drill most of the day. No joke. Your skin gets pretty tough when you use it for manual things all the time.
In the winter your skin dries out and cracks and your knuckles bleed. That is not a tool problem, it is a glove and lotion problem, and I wrote about what I wear and when the gloves come off.
Questions I Get
How much should I spend my first year?
A knife and a bit set to start. One affordable impact driver when you need one. Spend the real money in year two on the brand you want to live on, once you know you are staying in the trade. Your first year, you are an easy $500 to $600.
Does the shop give me tools?
Ask when you are interviewing, before you buy anything. Shops differ. Some charge you a markup for letting you buy them from the supply house. Others give you a list. Some let you figure it out from the people you work with.
Which battery platform should I pick?
This really depends on how much you want to spend. Not just right now but over time. And that should be considered in this decision. Go with any quality name brand and you pay big up front. The lower tier’s are cheaper now but in the long run, are they? If you are unsure, get something cheap to limp along. Invest in the battery that makes sense for you. Having the same brand as your workmates is convenient if you can all share. It is also a double edged sword. I have had things go missing on jobsites. If everyone has the same brand label your tools well with engravings, not just a marker with your initials.
Where to Go From Here
The full list of what I carry and why is on the duct tools page. If you are shopping the one power tool that matters most, start with the impact driver.
And when you start taking your own small jobs on the side, you will need a way to bill them. I built Quick Draw Invoice for that.