What Is the Best Cheap Tool You Have Ever Bought

[CodyRhodes]

Not the most impressive or the most expensive. The tool that cost almost nothing, that you might have been skeptical of before buying, but that turned out to be genuinely useful and that you have used repeatedly.

Hardware, kitchen, garden, workshop, anything that works with your hands. Specific is better than vague.

What did you buy for almost nothing that has earned its place many times over?

[WildManSteve40]

A set of Japanese pull saws for about fifteen pounds. Changed how I approach any cut that needs to be clean and accurate. The push saw I had been using for years was actively making my work worse

[Odd Maverick]

A paint can opener that is also a stirrer. One pound from a hardware shop. Have used it on every project since. The number of times I have opened a paint can with a screwdriver and damaged the lid is embarrassing in retrospect

[Slay]

Telescoping magnetic pick-up tool. The kind that extends and has a magnet at the end. Paid almost nothing, use it constantly for dropped screws in awkward places

[Brandon18]

A digital angle gauge that goes on a saw blade. Costs almost nothing and completely eliminated the guessing about whether my cuts were actually at the angle I thought they were

[Solid Gary]

Rubber mallet. Sounds obvious. I kept using a steel hammer for things that needed a rubber mallet and breaking or marking things unnecessarily for years. The tool costs almost nothing and is the right tool for a wide range of jobs I was doing wrong

[Tundra54]

Cheapest recommendation in the kitchen: a bench scraper. Not expensive to begin with but the two-pound version from a catering supply shop works identically to the twenty-pound version from a kitchenware shop. Use it every time I bake

[Inland Sienna]

Cable ties. Not exciting, not clever, endlessly useful. The revelation was buying a large pack of mixed sizes rather than just the one size I happened to have. Having the right size cable tie for the specific thing you are tying turns out to matter