10 Tools You Never Use And Can Probably Get Rid Of

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Tool collections rarely stop growing. This can be especially true for people who like estate and garage sales or inherited an older relative's collection. There always seems to be another useful tool you can use to fix or build something. But while the drive to accumulate an ever-expanding variety of tools is both real and understandable, there are probably quite a few tools that many of us don't need or could stand to get rid of.

For every garage or workshop that could use a little spring cleaning, we've put together a list of some of the biggest wastes of space you may be better off without. High on that list are the tools you may still have around but really shouldn't: the dangerous ones that should probably never have been made. Also up there are some that just do a shoddy job compared to a far better tool.

Here are 10 tools that you likely never use and can probably get rid of. For various reasons, they don't belong in anybody's garage, toolbox, or life in general.

In theory, a wrench that adjusts to whatever nut or bolt you run into sounds like a good idea. If it's your only tool, then you can make a case that it's better than nothing. When the correct size wrench for the nut or bolt you're looking to loosen or tighten is available, however, it is always the better choice.

Adjustable wrenches, frequently called Crescent wrenches due to their original and best-known manufacturer, are prone to a lot of problems. They're big and bulky compared to a normal wrench, and most have poor ergonomics. All too often adjusting these wrenches is difficult, slippery, and time-consuming. Their potential for slipping means they're even dangerous in situations like a tight spot when you're working on a car or under the sink.

The traditional thumb dial of the traditional adjustable wrench can get sticky and be harder to use, but attempts to improve upon it have proven to be even worse. The Craftsman Mach Adjustable Wrench aims to make adjustments faster and more secure but delivers even worse performance, prone to slipping and breaking even more than the traditional one.

An adjustable wrench might be useful in a glove box or a cyclist's backpack. However, a few good wrenches of the most common sizes are a far better solution even in these situations.

These sockets, which carry various brand names like Gator Grip and 1-Second Socket, were touted by a flurry of late-night TV commercials years ago, and can still be found at discount outlets and forgotten at the bottom of many toolboxes. They all work similarly: a series of spring-loaded pins fit around whatever fastener they're applied to, allowing you to tighten it with a socket wrench or power drill. Think of it like a pin art toy for driving fasteners.

While the ads made these look like they were here to simultaneously replace all the world's socket sets and pliers, the reality of these tools proves otherwise. The ads never showed that you had to apply constant pressure to ensure the spring didn't force the socket off of whatever you were driving with it. Additionally, the flimsy little pins and their respective spring mechanisms were frequently too weak to stand up to the lightest uses.

Like the aforementioned adjustable wrench, this tool tries to do everything and ends up doing nothing. It grips poorly in all but a few cases, and the fact that it requires constant pressure turns many a one-handed job into a two-handed one. Many people received these as stocking stuffers and thank-you gifts, but this tool is better off in the recycle bin than in your toolbox.

Though wooden handles are still found on a few premium tools — especially those for woodworking –many wood handles are a sign of something whose time has come and gone.

Wood has a lot going for it. It's aesthetically pleasing, and we tend to associate it with craftsmanship. In addition to looking and feeling nice in the hand, it's relatively cheap compared to other options.

That being said, there are many drawbacks to using wood as a handle for tools. It isn't very good at absorbing vibration from impact tools like hammers. This means the shock of repeated impact gets transferred directly to your hands and arms, which, over time, can lead to injuries.

On top of its shortcomings as a shock absorber, wood also isn't the greatest at maintaining a firm grip on the things it's attached to, whether the tool head or your hands. Wood-handled axe heads and sledgehammers can slip loose over time, leading to a very dangerous situation if that heavy piece of metal comes off while you're swinging it. Coupled with the fact that wood is an organic material, prone to breaking down over time in less-than-ideal settings like basements or sheds, it probably isn't the safest material for its purpose.

A carefully maintained wooden handle can be a good thing, but many older tools simply aren't. These tools are better off being replaced or perhaps hung on the wall as a decoration.

Bac when woodworking was dominated by hand tools like chisels and a wide variety of planes, the small block plane was a necessary part of a carpenter's tool kit. Nowadays, however, the ones you are likely to find just aren't up to much of any task, and there are better tools available for the job.

This isn't to say block planes are useless. A vintage block plane that's been meticulously maintained can be a very satisfying tool. Upmarket manufacturers still produce well-tuned examples of this hand tool. The accurate zip of a plane that leaves a glass-smooth surface, requiring little to no sanding, can be one of the best parts of woodworking.

Unfortunately, as tool manufacturing has progressed, many corners have been cut. You don't see a lot of block planes nowadays, with electric routers and sanders doing a lot of the work that the block plane used to do. The smaller block planes you encounter today are often lightweight plastic. These can be difficult to tune properly and produce far more stress than satisfaction.

The block plane has largely been superseded by more efficient power tools. Hand planes are still available, but they are usually pricey specialty items more geared toward nostalgia and aesthetics than they are to doing a job efficiently. The majority of smaller, cheaper planes have almost no use for the modern woodworker.

The automatic hammer rounds out this list of the most pointless tools. Nowadays, just about everyone recognizes the benefits of power tools. You probably don't have any use for a hand drill anymore, and various electric saws make a crosscut saw mostly outmoded. However, the hammer is one tool that is totally fine the way it is.

Hammers are heavy pieces of metal that we use to hit things. They commonly drive nails but can also shape metal, provide impact behind a chisel, or knock wedges in and out of place. To be clear, this is not a criticism of electric or pneumatic nailers, or of heavy jackhammers that make quick work out of demolition that was once altogether back-breaking. These tools have a practical purpose, but the automatic hammer does not.

The automatic hammer aspires to create a need where one just doesn't exist. It's a single-use tool that, held over a fastener, pounds it into a wall. To state what should be blindingly obvious, all this does is complicate the simplest of tasks. If you can hold up a power tool to a place where you'd like to put a nail, you can almost certainly hit it with a hammer.

Nailers and nail guns are one thing, but the automatic hammer is a pure gimmick. A hammer must be a heavy, flat piece of metal used to hit a nail; no electricity is needed.