Six Charity Shop Buys I'd Take Over Any Posh New Tool

Charity shops are strange places to buy tools. The stock is random, the prices are guesswork, and half the electricals have been sitting in a window since before you were born. But if you make things at home rather than in a workshop with a proper budget, they're one of the best sources of useful kit going.

Here are six things I've picked up over the years. None of them cost more than twelve pounds. Most of them are still in use. A couple of them have changed how I work more than any full-price purchase I've made.

1. The 1970s sewing machine — £12

Found in a British Heart Foundation shop, in a heavy plastic case, with a foot pedal that smelled faintly of hot dust. It does one thing beautifully and three things badly, which is the correct ratio for a sewing machine.

This replaced a hand-held mini sewing machine I'd bought new and hated within a fortnight. The old Singer goes through webbing, canvas, and light leather without complaint. It's got a metal body, which means it doesn't creep across the table when you push fabric through it — a thing every cheap modern machine does and no cheap modern machine admits to.

The catch is that it only does straight stitch and zigzag, so anything clever is out. I've never once needed anything clever.

2. The wooden folding rule — £2

A two-metre wooden folding rule, brass joint, someone's initials burned into the side. I bought it because it was two pounds and because it's a nice object, and then discovered I reach for it constantly.

A tape measure flops. It bends, it curls back on itself, and if you're measuring the internal depth of something you end up doing a small comedy routine with your thumb. A folding rule stands up on its own. It fits into a corner and tells you the truth. I use it maybe five times more often than the tape that cost me fifteen pounds.

It's also, and I say this as someone who owns a lot of unnecessary things, the single most satisfying object on my bench to unfold.

3. The darkroom developing trays — £3 for three

Someone had clearly cleared out an old darkroom. Three shallow plastic trays, roughly A4, deep red, slightly scratched.

These are now my glue and resin trays. Anything messy happens inside them. Small parts get laid out in them while the paint dries. Resin drips land in them instead of on the worktop, which means I no longer have to explain anything to anyone.

You can buy purpose-made silicone mats and catch trays for considerably more money. They're nice. They're also not better at catching drips than a tray that was designed to hold liquid and has been doing it since the days of film.

The stubborn stain in one corner is part of the appeal, if I'm honest.

4. The hairdryer with the diffuser — £4

Yes, a hairdryer. It came with a diffuser attachment that I assumed I'd throw away, and which turned out to be the useful bit.

It's my heat source for shrinking heat-shrink tubing, softening hot glue, speeding up paint between coats and loosening stubborn lids. It's quieter and far less aggressive than a proper heat gun, which is exactly what you want for small work where a heat gun would scorch whatever's underneath.

It replaced a heat gun I never actually bought, which remains my favourite kind of purchase.

One sensible caveat: anything electrical from a charity shop deserves a look over before it goes near a socket. Check the flex for nicks, don't run it unattended, and if the plug looks like it was wired by a contestant on a timed challenge, get it checked. I've been lucky. Don't rely on luck.

5. The hard-shell suitcase — £5

The sort of small, rigid, slightly scuffed suitcase that used to go in an aeroplane overhead bin. Probably from the 1980s. Brown.

It's now my portable kit. Foam cut with a bread knife, a couple of dividers made from mount board, and it holds a drill, a set of bits, a multi-tool, a small box of screws and a folding rule. It closes, it has a handle, and it looks like the sort of thing a person carrying tools should be carrying.

A purpose-made tool case of comparable quality would run past forty pounds. This one has already been dropped down a flight of stairs by someone else, so the first scratch is taken care of.

That's the real advantage of second-hand: you don't spend the first six months flinching every time you put it down.

6. The wooden plate rack — £3

A plain slatted plate rack, the kind that used to live above a sink. It holds freshly painted parts, drying jigs, wet sanding sponges and anything else that needs air on more than one side.

Before this I was balancing things on the edges of boxes and using the top of the boiler cupboard, which is fine until something falls. The plate rack holds six or seven things at once, stacked vertically, with airflow all round, for three pounds.

It's a better drying rack than any drying rack I've owned, and it was never intended to be one.

Why the cheap imperfect stuff wins

There's a pattern across all six. Every one of them is slightly wrong for the job it was designed for and exactly right for the job I gave it. The sewing machine is too basic. The rule is too short. The trays are the wrong colour. None of that matters, because what I needed wasn't a better tool, it was permission to start.

New gear carries a kind of pressure. You buy the good scissors and then you don't want to cut anything difficult with them. A scratched tray and a suitcase with a dent in it don't have that problem. They invite use.

The other thing is that charity shops let you try a category of tool for three quid before you commit. I've discovered whole hobbies that way and cheerfully abandoned them, which is far cheaper than finding out the hard way through a proper purchase.

So: go in with no list, a tenner, and low expectations. Check the electricals. Buy the ugly one. The bench will tell you soon enough whether you got it right.