5 Foldable Milwaukee Finds That Can Fit Into Your Pocket Or Backpack Easily

Your collection of Milwaukee tools should contain a wide range of equipment. Obviously, you should have your basic hand tools, like hammers and screwdrivers, and even if you do very little handy work, having a few choice power tools, such as a drill/driver, is crucial for home improvement tasks. For some people, portability is very important for the tools they use. They could be working all over their home or outside and want to carry their arsenal of tools in their pockets or a simple backpack, since lugging around a bunch of bulky tools can be quite tiresome.

Luckily, Milwaukee Tool, a beloved brand amongst tool enthusiasts, has some solutions to this portability issue. Of course, something like a screwdriver is inherently portable, but other tools seem tough to carry around. Milwaukee offers a variety of foldable tools that collapse bulkier equipment into something much easier to handle, or make compact tools even more compact by folding them.

Here, we are going to look at five foldable tools from Milwaukee. These will cover a good range of what the company has to offer, from small handheld tools to invaluable accessories you might not initially think you need when assembling a tool collection. All five would either fit perfectly inside your pants pocket or — for the slightly larger options — in a backpack along with many other tools.

One of the more underrated aspects of handy work is light. Without enough light to see, you risk completely ruining whatever you're working on. When you're working in bright sunlight, that's no issue. However, if you're working in a dark area or in a hard-to-reach space with little light, you need extra light, and some jobs require two hands, meaning you can't hold a flashlight. That's where having a portable floodlight on hand can be a big help, and Milwaukee has just the tool.

The Milwaukee M18 Rover Compact Folding Flood Light is just under four inches long and a tad over 3.5 inches wide. It comes with a light that offers variable brightness from 85 to 1,000 lumens, depending on how much light you need. At the highest brightness, Milwaukee states that the XC5.0 battery life is 12 hours, while at the lowest brightness you can get 110 hours. This light can be folded and twisted into just about any position you could need. It operates on Milwaukee's M18 battery system, so if you already have an arsenal of Milwaukee M18 tools in your garage, you don't need to buy an additional power source. If that's not enough, the floodlight also has USB-A and USB-C ports for charging small devices.

This Milwaukee floodlight retails for $99. That price doesn't include an M18 battery. If you were to get the aforementioned Milwaukee M18 XC5.0 battery, that'd be an additional $99, but considering you can use that across many different tools, it's not an exclusive expense for the floodlight.

There are certain tools that a lot of people would be surprised you can easily fit inside a backpack. One of those is most certainly a saw. Not only does a long blade plus a handle seem like it wouldn't fit in a bag, but you also have to contend with an exposed blade that could tear the fabric of your bag from the inside. Well, Milwaukee has a particular saw that aims to solve both of these issues. That would be the Milwaukee 10-inch Folding Pruning Saw.

Despite the tool's name, the full length of this saw is actually 21 inches from the tip of the curved blade to the base of the handle. Fully extended, this certainly can't fit in a backpack, but the 10-inch blade can collapse into the 12.72-inch handle, as if it were a sheath. The tool is made of high-carbon steel and weighs less than three-quarters of a pound, so you will hardly feel it when carrying it in your backpack. You can also get a pretty solid cut capacity of up to six inches with it.

This pruning saw is currently the only foldable model Milwaukee sells, but that's going to change soon, as the company has announced a 7-inch foldable pruning saw is on the way. The shorter model will feature a straight blade rather than a curved one. The upcoming 10-inch fixed blade model also features a straight blade, so this curved blade is fairly unique. There's no price information on the 7-inch foldable one, but the 10-inch Milwaukee pruning saw retails for a perfectly reasonable $34.98.

While the first two tools on this list would easily fit in your backpack, the next one is a tool for your pocket. Or, to be more specific, pockets, as this is technically two tools. Milwaukee offers a pair of folding hex key sets to give you the widest range of options for screwing and unscrewing bolts with a hexagonal top. These hex keys are some of the most useful tools to have in your toolbox, as you'll find use for them in so many different areas, from putting together IKEA furniture to attaching a mount to your television. While it would be great if all of these bolts were the same size, that's not the case, which is why Milwaukee packages these two key sets together.

The key distinction between them is that one hex set uses metric measurements, and the other uses SAE measurements. In total, there are 17 keys. Nine of them are SAE measurements, with the remaining eight for metric bolts. Milwaukee clearly labels each key set to distinguish them. The SAE has a red label across the side, and the metric has a black one. Each key can rotate up to 270 degrees, meaning you should be able to get the best leverage no matter what screw you're working on.

For the two Milwaukee folding hex key sets, you'll spend $31.97. This is definitely the best deal. Purchasing them separately would cost $17.97 each, so you'd save about $4. Always good to take the deal on something that could be pretty essential for your toolbox.

Milwaukee offers a variety of foldable knives, from hawkbill folding knives to folding jab saws. Out of all the models the company produces, though, the one you should probably get to fit in your pocket is the Milwaukee Fastback Compact Folding Utility Knife. Milwaukee is one of the very best companies for utility knives, and this multipurpose tool is useful for many different jobs that require cutting. Whether you're cutting through drywall or carpet, this blade is strong enough to handle the work. You could even use it as a box cutter when you need to.

At just over four inches when folded, the utility knife fits perfectly in your pocket. Making the experience even better is the inclusion of a wire belt clip on the side, so you can keep it at the ready at the top of your pocket without having to fish through a loose pouch to grab it. If that isn't enough, there's a hole at the base of the knife for attaching a lanyard. The knife's blade is also removable, making replacing it all the easier.

While you may think having one of these knives is enough, it's always a good idea to have one stashed in a few different places, just so one's always on hand. Luckily, Milwaukee sells the Fastback Compact Folding Utility Knife in a three-pack for $27.97. You can buy one for $9.97 if you want, but like the hex key sets, you save some money getting more than one.

Few things are more important in handy work than measuring. If your measurements aren't precise, you run the risk of creating something that doesn't have the structural integrity that it requires or accidentally encountering something dangerous when you shouldn't have. While tape measures or digital measurements can be good for a lot of things, a solid rule is perfect for many situations, and with the Milwaukee Composite Folding Rule, you get one that you can easily put away in a backpack.

When fully extended, this rule is 78 inches long and measures to the nearest one-sixteenth inch. Unfortunately, there's no metric measurement on the rule, but it does have other features. For instance, the rule features lockable joints that let you create perfect 0-degree, 90-degree, and 180-degree angles, and along the side, it has markers for other angle measurements as well. In a way, you have a ruler and a protractor all in one. Plus, it's both scratch- and water-resistant, so its use is quite flexible.

For those looking for something a bit more advanced, Milwaukee also offers an engineering version of this folding rule. Along with the traditional Imperial measurements, you get decimal feet across the rule. The two rules are the same length, so it's just a matter of choosing which measurement system you need. Somewhat surprisingly, the more specialized engineer's rule, which goes for $19.08, costs ever so slightly less than the traditional one, which sells for $20.52. Either way, the Milwaukee Composite Folding Rule is the least expensive tool on this list, but it could be one of the more important ones.