An English Lesson About Tools And The Verbs that Go With Them 🧰🔨🔧 (Lesson Only)

Well, hello and welcome to

this English lesson about tools.

Tools are the things that we use as human

beings to make things or to fix things.

Tools are just really, really handy.

I hope you have some small tools at home.

Hopefully you at least have a screwdriver and a wrench

and a hammer so that when something is broken or

when you need to put something together, you have the

tools that you need to do that.

In this lesson, I will talk about the names of

all the tools, the vocabulary that you need to know.

But I'm also going to talk about what

verbs you use with each of these tools.

You know, when you use a screwdriver, you

use it to tighten or loosen a screw.

And so it's important not just to know the name of

the tool, but also the actions that go with the tool.

So welcome to this English lesson about tools

and the verbs that go with them.

Toolbox.

I thought I would start with this one.

A toolbox is a great thing to have.

You can use it to store your tools.

You can use it to keep your tools in the same place.

I actually have multiple toolboxes.

I don't use them very well, though.

Often when I use my tools, I forget to put them

in the toolbox or put them back in the toolbox.

But a toolbox is a very handy thing to have.

It's very useful.

You can even lock some of them.

Anyways, I was saying I have multiples.

I have one toolbox for my

screwdrivers, another toolbox for wrenches.

But as I said, I'm not that good

at keeping my tools in the toolboxes.

They're usually kind of left in the

places where I most recently worked.

But you would use a toolbox to keep

your tools or to store your tools. Tools. A hammer.

So I thought I'd start with

one of the most obvious tools.

A hammer is used to hammer things.

So the noun and the verb are the same.

Or to hit things or to pound things.

So if I have a nail, I can

hammer the nail into a piece of wood.

I can hit the nail into the piece

of wood, or I can pound the nail.

When you use pound it, kind of.

You saw my arm go further.

It's like you're really hitting the nail.

But a hammer is a tool, and it actually has two ends.

This type of hammer.

The one end is used to hit a nail.

The other end is used to pry a

nail out after you put it in.

Probably one of the most common tools.

I hope all of you have a hammer somewhere.

There's also something called a sledgehammer.

Let me say that again.

A sledgehammer.

Sledgehammer.

It's used to smash or pound things.

You wouldn't use a sledgehammer to put in nails.

It's just too big.

A sledgehammer is very, very heavy.

And a sledgehammer is used.

For instance, you could pound a post into the ground.

Notice I'm using two hands.

Now, if I'm using a smaller hammer or a

bigger sledgehammer, I'm definitely going to use two hands.

You can use it to smash things.

Let's say there's a wall in your

house and you don't want it anymore.

You could use a sledgehammer to smash that wall.

You could use it to get rid of that wall.

I actually have this.

I just got this yesterday.

This is a type of hammer,

but it's called a rubber mallet.

I need this to kind of help put the pavers in place.

The patio stones that I'm putting down.

So that is a mallet.

Kind of another word for a type of hammer.

Jackhammer.

So I've run a jackhammer before.

A jackhammer is basically a mechanical hammer.

It has an airline, if that's the type you're using.

And it goes like, hopefully that's

not too loud for you.

A jackhammer is used to demolish or to break things.

You would never build something with a jackhammer.

You use a jackhammer.

Let's say you had a sidewalk

and it was tilted and cracked.

You might use a jackhammer to break the sidewalk or

to demolish the sidewalk so that you can remove it.

But a jackhammer is definitely in English, we

would say, not for the faint of heart.

It's very loud and it's very hard to control.

I've used small jackhammers and

large jackhammers in my life. A saw.

So a saw can use.

Can be used to saw something.

You can saw a board in half, or

you can cut a board in half.

A saw is, of course, something.

It's a piece of metal with all little jagged teeth.

And it goes when you cut.

So you can see this gentleman here.

He is deciding to saw this board in

half or to cut this board in half.

Obviously, he needs it a certain length.

So he's decided to cut the board in half.

Then, of course, most of us just use a power saw.

We sometimes call this a circular saw.

And you use this to saw or to cut or to rip.

So let me give you the difference between cut and rip.

If I have a board and I go like this, that's to cut.

But if I go this way along the

long side of the board, that's to rip.

You don't often rip a board with a handsaw.

It takes a very long time.

But mostly we would just use the verb to cut.

Hey, Bob, can you cut me a piece

of wooden that is 130 cm long?

Could you please cut me a piece

of wood that is 3ft long?

By the way, those aren't the same.

130 cm isn't 3ft.

But yes, definitely a power saw or

circular saw is used to cut things.

A hacksaw.

So we use this to saw and to cut as well.

But usually we use a hacksaw to

cut pipe or maybe to cut metal.

You wouldn't use this to cut wooden.

The teeth are very, very tiny on a hacksaw.

The only time I use a hacksaw is to cut pipe.

So if you have a long pipe, I would

use a hacksaw to cut the pipe in half.

And of course, you can saw the pipe in half as well.

And then a chainsaw.

So a chainsaw, you, there's a, like,

you pull it to start it.

It's like you use a chainsaw to chop down or

to cut down trees or simply to cut things.

You don't usually use it to cut wood

or lumber that, you know, you don't have

a piece of lumber and use a chainsaw.

You use it usually outside and you use it either to chop

down a tree, to cut down a tree or to cut logs.

You don't use it for regular wooden notice, even though

it's not an axe, we still say to chop down.

I'm going to use the chainsaw to chop down a tree.

And then when the tree starts to fall, you're

supposed to yell timber as the tree is falling

down to warn people that the tree is falling.

So we talked about this in the

lesson about measurements a few weeks ago.

This is either called a tape

measure or a measuring tape.

Both names are equally used.

And you use it to measure things.

So if I needed a piece of

wood, I actually did this yesterday.

Jen needed a piece of wood to attach to our

market canopy and it needed to be about 8ft long.

And so I used a tape measure

to measure a piece of wood.

I used a measuring tape to measure a

piece of wood and then I cut it.

So it was exactly the right length.

A planer, I don't ever use one of these.

This is used to plane or to smooth wood.

So if you have a piece of

wood and it's not perfectly smooth.

You would use a planer to remove

a really small slice of wood.

So if there was a piece of wood like

this, you would use a planer to remove the

pieces that were a little bit too tall.

You would use it to plane the wood or

to smooth the wood and then a screwdriver.

This is probably next to the hammer.

Hammer and screwdriver are probably

the two most common tools.

This is used to tighten a screw or to

loosen a screw or simply to turn a screw.

By the way, in English we

say righty tighty, lefty loosey.

So it's a little thing you can remember.

So you know which way to

turn a screwdriver or a wrench.

So righty tighty means if you turn it

to the right, the screw will get tighter.

If you turn it to the left, it will get looser.

So you use a screwdriver to

tighten, to loosen or to turn.

You could even say you use it to put in screws.

You could use the verb to put in.

I'm going to use the screwdriver to put in some screws.

That would be very common as well.

But yes, I'm sure you have multiple screwdrivers.

They have different tips.

In my part of the world, we

call this type of screwdriver a Phillips.

We have Phillips and Flathead and Robertson.

Those are the three most common kind.

I think the Robert Robertson

screwdriver is very common. In Canada.

It's the square tip, but

yes, screwdriver and then wrench.

A wrench is similar in the sense that you

use it to tighten and loosen things, but you

use it to tighten and loosen bolts and nuts.

So you have a bolt and then you put a

nut on the end and you turn the nut.

And you can use a wrench to tighten that nut, or

you can use it to loosen that nut as well.

So you put one wrench on the bolt head,

put the other wrench on the nut, and you

turn it until it's super, super tight.

My friend gave me a set of

wrenches for my birthday this year. Very nice.

I was very happy with that gift.

Very cool pipe wrench.

So this is a wrench that's adjustable.

You can spin part of it to open and close

it, and you can use it to tighten pipes.

When you put one pipe into a fitting,

you'll use a pipe wrench to tighten that.

So you use this once again

to tighten or to loosen something.

And in this case, a pipe wrench

is used to tighten and loosen pipes.

And I did forget to mention there

is something called an adjustable wrench.

I don't have a picture of that.

That's a handy wrench to have as well, because

you can, you can open and close it.

So it's the right size.

But a pipe wrench is used

to tighten and to loosen pipes.

A crowbar.

So I think this has a lot of different names.

I call it a crowbar.

It's also called a pry bar.

It is used to pry things.

If you had two pieces of wood that were

nailed together and you wanted to get them apart,

you would try to put the end of the

pry bar between them, and then you would pry.

That's the English verb we use.

You would move the bar and pop open

or separate those two pieces of wood.

A very handy tool to have.

Generally when it has the curved end.

I call it a crowbar.

If it's just a bar like the one I showed

you in my picture, that's leaning against the wall.

Can we get back to that real fasten?

Let's see how fast.

So you see that red handled

thing leaning against the wall?

That's a pry bar, or what I would call a pry bar. Whoa.

Went too far.

Bolt cutters.

So you were asking about tools

that teachers and farmers use.

So at school we have a set of bolt cutters

in case a student forgets the combination to their lock.

Or if someone puts a the wrong lock on a locker,

we use a bolt cutter to cut the lock off.

But generally a bolt cutter is used to cut.

Actually, you can cut wire, like metal

wire or bolts or locks with it.

And we just simply use.

To cut, you might say to snip.

You might use the bolt cutters to snip some

wire, but definitely a handy tool to have.

When you squeeze the end of the bolt cutter, it

puts enormous pressure on where the end is closing.

Like when you squeeze the one end because

of all the little lever mechanisms, it really

cuts through a lot of stuff.

Yes, a clamp.

A clamp is used to clamp things or to hold things.

So if you like making things out of

wood and you need to glue them together.

So you put glue like you put glue on and

then you put the two pieces of wood together.

You then need to clamp them.

As the glue dries, you put on

a clamp to hold the wood together.

Or you can say you clamp the wood together.

So very handy tool to have.

You can see that you can spin

the end and it closes and opens.

Or you could say it tightens and loosens as well.

A utility knife.

So a utility knife is interesting.

Generally it has a retractable blade.

So if you look at this utility knife, there's

a little thing on top you can slide, and

then the blade will go in and out.

This is for safety.

You use a utility knife to cut

things, to carve things, to scrape things.

There are a lot of uses for a utility knife.

Um, and then usually inside there's extra blades.

So if you open it up, there's a little

storage compartment where you can have extra blades.

But a utility knife is super handy.

You can use it to cut rope.

You can use it to, um, cut

little zip ties off of things.

You can use it for many, many things.

And usually it has a retractable blade for safety.

So when you're done using it, you can put the blade

of back inside and then no one will injure themselves.

Safety glasses, hearing protection, work gloves these are

all things that we wear to protect ourselves.

So when you are doing any kind of work you

want to protect your eyes, you will wear goggles.

Safety goggles or safety glasses.

In fact, on this screen, on the

white background, those are safety goggles.

And on the blue background, I

would call these safety glasses.

These are things we wear to protect our eyes.

When you're cutting or grinding or snipping, things

can fly at your face and you don't

want something to go in your eye.

So you wear safety glasses to protect your eyes.

Similarly, when you are working with different kinds of tools,

power tools in particular, it can be very loud and

you will wear some kind of hearing protection.

Don't have mine here.

I wear the little tiny ones that you can put in

your ear, but you can also wear these large ones.

You wear these to protect your hearing.

So you wear these to protect

your eyes and your eyesight.

You wear these to protect your, not

really your ears, but your hearing.

You use those to protect your hearing because sometimes when

you're cutting a piece of wood with a power saw,

it's so loud it can damage or hurt your ears.

And then work gloves.

I always wear work gloves when I was younger, I

didn't, but it's very common if you see me working

on something to see me wearing safety glasses.

Sometimes I'm just wearing my reading glasses as safety glasses

because it's hard for me to see close up.

I'm usually wearing some kind of hearing protection if

it's loud and then gloves because the last thing

I want to have happen is I don't want

to hurt my hands while I'm working on something.

I do not enjoy that so you need to protect yourself.

I also wear knee pads right now when I'm laying pavers,

but I don't have a picture of those, a square.

So a square is used to square things up.

What I mean by this is if you have a piece

of wood and another piece of wood where they come together,

you want this to be a 90 degree angle sometimes.

And in order to do that,

you use what's called a square.

So you put a square in the corner, and then,

you know, it's a perfect 90 degree angle, and then

you can nail it or screw it together.

We also use a square to mark a

piece of wood before we cut it.

So if I have a piece of wood, I can lay

the square across and then draw a line so that I

can make sure I'm creating a 90 degree cut.

So I should have added that.

You can use a square to square up two pieces

of wood or to mark a piece of wood with

a pencil so you know where to cut it.

Pliers, very handy.

This set of pliers is

actually called needle nose pliers.

You use these to squeeze, to twist,

to tighten, to loosen, to cut.

Pliers are very, very handy.

I love a good pair of pliers.

You can use a pair of pliers like this

to squeeze something together so the ends come.

You can squeeze something together.

You can twist something with them.

You can, if you have two wires, you

can put the pliers on and then you

can twist the wires, you can tighten something.

You can loosen.

And then there's actually a tiny little.

This pair of pliers has a little cutting area

right at the base of most pairs of pliers.

You can cut string or wire pliers very, very handy.

And similar to scissors, it's pliers.

We always use the plural.

So you, you can have a pair

of scissors, a pair of pliers, etc.

Etcetera, and a pair of pruners.

By the way, we use pruners to prune, to snip,

and to cut, and we use these for plants.

Jen uses pruners to cut flowers.

I use pruners to prune my trees.

You can use pruners to snip weeds off in the

garden, although you should pull them out by the roots.

But pruners look similar to pliers, but

they are made of, like, it's sharp.

The edge of a pruner is very sharp.

It's made to cut things, to

snip things, to prune things. Very handy.

Be careful when you use pruners.

Wear gloves, ratchet.

So ratchets are cool.

This ratchet has a socket on the end.

You would put the socket onto a nut and then a

ratchet is neat because when you turn one way it goes,

and when you turn the other way, it tightens.

I'm not making a very good ratchet sound.

And then you can flip a little

switch and then it goes the opposite.

Which way was I going before?

I can't remember.

But now it will loosen.

So it has a mechanism inside that allows it to

turn one way and then not the other way.

Hopefully that made some sense.

It is used in the same situation as a

wrench, but sometimes it's just handier to use a

ratchet to tighten or to loosen bolts and nuts.

So again, you put a socket on the

end, you find the right size socket.

Maybe you need a twelve millimeter socket.

You put it on the end of the ratchet,

use it to tighten and to loosen bolts.

And then a chisel.

A chisel is used for many things.

You can use it to chisel, to carve, to chip.

So for instance, if you had a block of wood

and you wanted to make turn it into an owl,

you could use a chisel with a hammer or just

by hand to kind of carve that wood.

If you had a piece of stone, you could

chip pieces of the stone off with a hammer

and chisel to make it a different shape.

So you can use the verb to chisel, to

carve, to chip whenever you are using a chisel. An axe.

An axe is used to chop, to chop down, to cut.

It's a very difficult tool to use.

Like a chainsaw is easier to use than an axe.

Sorry.

An axe is easy to learn to

use, but it's very physically demanding.

Like you need a lot of muscles to use an axe.

But you can use an axe to chop down a tree.

You can use an axe to cut up some

logs, whatever you need to do a level.

When you build things, you want them to be square.

So you use a square to make 90 degrees,

but you also want them to be level.

What we mean by level is if you hang

a picture on the wall and it might be

a little crooked, you could use a level.

It has a little bubble inside of air in liquid.

And as you move the picture with the level

on top, eventually the bubble will move between two

lines and then, you know, it's perfectly level.

So again, I'm trying to use my hands here.

Crooked, crooked and right in the middle level.

And you would use a tool like

this to make sure things are level.

It's called a level.

You use it to level things.

Drill. Cordless drill.

And you use it to drill or to make a hole.

I picked a really bad picture, though, because this

guy's actually using the drill to put screws in.

He's not drilling a hole.

But hey, if you watch Jen's video that's coming out this

Sunday, I do drill some holes in that, but you would

just call it a drill or a cordless drill.

So you have drills that plug into the

wall, but you have drills with batteries.

So drill is the general term.

And then cordless drill would be

a drill that has a battery.

Use it to drill.

Use it to make a hole. Obviously.

You can also use it to put

in screws if you need to jigsaw.

So a slightly different kind of saw.

The blade goes up and down really fast.

In fact, it's similar in a way to like, it's

similar to a hacksaw in that sense, although you can

use it to cut wood if you need to.

But a jigsaw is a very cool tool

because as you cut, you can turn.

When you use a circular saw or a

power saw, you have to cut straight.

But with a jigsaw, you can kind of like

follow a curved line if you need to.

A sander, we like things to be smooth

when we build them out of wood.

And sometimes even when it's made out of metal,

a sander has sandpaper on it that's really like

rough paper with actually has sand glued to it.

And it moves really fast.

So a sander would be like.

So it's moving really, really fast

in one direction or many directions.

And then it basically removes a tiny layer from the

wood or metal to make it very, very smooth.

And you use it to sand or too smooth.

A ladder is used to climb.

So if you need to get up somewhere,

you would use a ladder to climb.

To climb up or to get up somewhere.

Those would be all the words you could use.

You can see this person, they leaned a

ladder against the front of their house.

Now they can climb the ladder to maybe paint

or clean something or whatever they need to do.

And then we have a stepladder.

So this ladder is one piece.

You need to lean it, trying

to pretend that's the house.

You need to lean it against the house.

A step ladder you can set up,

and then you can climb one side.

So a step ladder is handy because you do not

need to lean to the stepladder against a wall.

You can just simply set up the ladder and

then climb the stepladder by the way, we would

just call this a ladder as well.

Like if someone said to you,

hey, can you grab that ladder?

They don't always say stepladder

unless there's two ladders.

Then you would want to specify which ladder.

The stepladder, please.

A vice.

So a vice is a device.

A vice is a device that's used

to hold or to squeeze things.

So when you have a vise, you can

turn the end and then it comes together.

And so you could put a piece of wood in

and then tighten it to hold that piece of wood.

And then you could drill something.

You could drill the wood or cut the

wood or pound things into the wood.

You could do many, many different things.

But a vice is used to hold or squeeze things.

I do have a vice in my machine shed.

It's very handy.

A vice is a very handy tool to have.

Sorry, I have a fly here.

An anvil.

So an anvil is something, it's just a big,

heavy piece of hard metal that you can use.

When, like, if you have a hammer and you want

to flatten something, you would lay it on the anvil,

and then you would hit it repeatedly with the hammer.

Maybe you want to bend something.

You might put it on the anvil and then slowly

hit it as you turn it to bend it.

So an anvil, it doesn't actually do anything,

but it's a surface that you use to

shape or flatten or curve or bend something.

I also have an anvil.

It's the anvil my dad bought many, many years ago. It's.

It's huge.

It's very cool.

I'll make a video at some point showing you

my machine shed, and you will see the anvil.

A wheelbarrow.

A wheelbarrow is used to wheel things around.

If I fill my wheelbarrow with stone, I

could say to my son, hey, can you

wheel that behind the barn and dump it?

Oh, you also dump a wheelbarrow so

you can wheel and then dump.

Hopefully you're understanding my actions there.

So a wheelbarrow is a little cart with one wheel

on the front and two handles on the back.

And then a place to put stuff.

And you can use it to wheel

things to different places on your property.

You can use it to carry things.

Let's say you had a lot of

branches that fell off a tree.

You could chop up the branches with your chainsaw and put

them in your wheelbarrow, and then you could wheel them to

a different place, and then you could dump them.

A paintbrush and a paint roller.

You use a paintbrush to paint or to brush.

You use a paint roller to paint or to roll.

So if you don't like the color of the walls in

your house, you can use a paintbrush to paint the walls.

You can use the paintbrush to brush on some paint.

Maybe I should add the word on to that verb.

Or you might use a paint roller.

A paint roller is just really wide and it turns.

So you can put more paint on

than you can with a paintbrush.

We usually paint the corners and

around the doors with a paintbrush.

And then we usually roll paint on the

rest of the room with a paint roller.

It's just faster that way.

A shovel. So a shovel.

There are many different types of shovel. Shovels.

You use a shovel to shovel, to dig.

So the difference being, if I have a pile of

stone, I can shovel the stone into the wheelbarrow, okay?

But if there, if I'm out in my yard,

I can dig a hole in the ground, okay,

so shovel means simply to move stuff.

Like you can shovel some stone from one

place to another, but when you dig, you're

actually making a hole in the ground.

That would be the difference between

to shovel and to dig.

To rake or a rake.

So this is a rake.

We would might, we might call this a garden rake.

By the way, this is a leaf rake or fan rake.

We would call this a garden rake or just a rake.

You use it to rake things.

Like when you pull a rake, it

kind of gathers whatever's on the surface.

You can also use it to level things out.

So in my job right now, I'm

using a rake to level out stone. Okay?

But you could rake stone, you could rake dirt, you can.

Whenever you need to just rake or gather

or level something, you can use a rake

and then a leaf rake or fan rake.

This is a special type of rake

used mostly for cleaning up leaves.

People often in this part of the world,

will rake their leaves in the fall.

When you have a rake like this, it's very light.

You could not use this for stone.

It's, it's plastic and it's not very strong.

But it is perfect for raking leaves.

If you need to rake leaves, that.

That is the kind of rake you would want.

A leaf rake or fan rake.