No single answer to "what tools should we buy"
I'm an office administrator for a 130-person company, and somewhere along the way "managing supplies" quietly turned into "managing facilities and maintenance purchasing" — roughly $70K a year spread across a dozen vendors. So when a manager walks over and asks me to "just order some tools," it's my problem now.
Here's what I've learned after a few years of this: there's no single right answer. It depends entirely on how often the tool gets used and who's holding it. A full door lock installation kit is money well spent for a team that installs or rekeys locks constantly. It's overkill for an office that touches a lock once every three years.
So instead of a shopping list, I sort every request into three buckets. Find yours.
- Scenario A — a one-off job that probably never repeats.
- Scenario B — recurring work someone does again and again.
- Scenario C — you're equipping a person or a team, not just finishing a task.
The advice barely transfers between them, so it's worth figuring out which one you're in before you spend anything.
Scenario A: the one-off job
Example: our second location wanted a keyed lock on the stockroom door. Nobody on staff had installed a deadbolt before. One-time job, low stakes, mildly terrifying for the person assigned to it.
In this scenario, buy the kit — not loose parts.
We picked up an IRWIN door lock installation kit. It includes the hole saws and a guide that keeps the bore aligned, so nobody has to guess at hole size or eyeball the backset. I'm not a carpenter, and neither was the person installing it, so the guide was the entire point.
What most people don't realize is that kit pricing is usually built around the cutting tools, not the template. The jig often costs close to nothing to include. The real value isn't the parts — it's not ruining a door because you drilled the bore 3/16" too high. That's the whole calculation for Scenario A: compare the kit price to the cost of a single mistake.
One thing I'd avoid here is chasing the absolute cheapest option. I tried that years ago on a different job — a budget bracket set that sheared on the second use (ugh). The replacement cost more than the decent version would have. False economy.
Scenario B: recurring work
This is where the math flips. If someone cuts holes or drives fasteners every week, cheap consumables stop being a bargain and start being a running cost.
Two examples.
Hole saws. We burned through about a dozen cheap ones before finally ordering an IRWIN hole saw kit — multiple sizes plus the arbor, in one case. It costs more up front, sure. But nobody hunts for the right size anymore, and the teeth hold up longer than the disposable ones did. I'm not 100% sure on the exact payback, but it was probably well inside a year. Simple.
The PZ1 screwdriver. This one still bugs me. For two years we had a recurring "mystery": screws on certain cabinet hinges kept stripping. We blamed the screws. Turns out they weren't Phillips at all — they were Pozidriv, and we'd been forcing a Phillips driver into them the whole time. A PZ1 screwdriver solved a "product quality problem" that was really a tool problem.
It's tempting to think "a screwdriver is a screwdriver." It isn't. Pozidriv and Phillips are different standards, and the wrong driver chews up the head along with everything else.
If the work repeats, the question stops being "which is cheapest" and becomes "which one stops this from being a problem twice a year." Usually that's the correct-size, decent-quality version.
Scenario C: equipping a person or a team
Different beast. You're not solving one task — you're setting someone up to handle a range of them, ideally without you getting pulled in every week.
First, organization
Loose tools get lost. We learned that one the hard way (a drill bit went out with the packaging, and I'm still annoyed about it). What fixed it was moving to interlocking storage — the Makpac system, for instance, like the P-83842 interlocking tool box. It stacks and clips to the rest of the set, so the kit stays together.
Now the honest part: Makpac is made by Makita, not by IRWIN. IRWIN covers hand tools and accessories; the storage systems mostly come from the power tool side of the industry. If your team is already standardized on one battery platform, buy storage from that same family. Mixing brands across a stacking system is where things quietly get annoying.
And then the cordless hammer drill question
Somebody always asks where can I buy a cordless hammer drill, and I end up explaining the same thing: that's not an IRWIN category. IRWIN does the hand tools, bits, clamps, and accessories. Cordless hammer drills are a power tool — the Milwaukee / DeWalt / Makita / Bosch side of the aisle.
Which is fine, by the way. I'm not a tool engineer, so I can't speak to motor specs or torque curves. What I can tell you from a purchasing seat is this: buy the drill body from whoever already makes your other batteries. Let the battery platform drive the decision, not the tool. It's the same logic as standardizing your storage.
(A small caution on spec sheets: FTC guidance requires advertising claims to be truthful and substantiated, but "up to 2x longer" is technically true and practically useless. Read the numbers, not the stickers.)
Which scenario are you actually in?
Three questions, in order:
- Will you ever do this job again? If no → Scenario A. Buy the kit once and move on.
- Does someone do this work regularly? If yes → Scenario B. Buy for reliability, not price.
- Are you setting up a person or a team? If yes → Scenario C. Think in systems, and be honest about which product categories you actually need.
One last honest note: I'm not a tradesperson, so take anything technical here as coming from the office, not the job site. What I know is how these purchases go wrong — mainly because I've made a lot of those mistakes myself. When in doubt, buy the kit for the job in front of you. You can always add the next thing later.
