Picker-Uppers
Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 43
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Grip for removing fishhooks & small items
The Hookout is specifically designed to get hooks out of fish that have swallowed them, but I have found it’s excellent for getting a grip on anything in a tight space. My dad got mine for me in the early ’70s. It was part of my fishing tackle box and I used it many times to retrieve fishhooks. I don’t fish anymore, but use it all the time around the house.
I keep one in the kitchen drawer since it’s especially useful for retrieving items from the garbage disposal (bottle caps, sippy cup valves, etc.). It’s also great for automotive work — retrieving hardware that has fallen into a tight space or, god forbid, down the carburetor throat.
It’s perfect because it doesn’t require a lot of space to open up, unlike needle nose pliers. The maximum jaw opening is only about 3/8″, but the Hookout has a powerful grip. It’s useful anywhere you would need some very long skinny needle nose pliers. The jaws are hollow, though, so you’re much less likely to drop what you have just grabbed. It does not work like pliers. Instead, when you squeeze the handle, it pulls on a long rod inside the tool and that in turn pulls the little jaw closed. It’s spring-loaded, so it opens when you open your hand.
I have the zinc-plated version that’s about 9 ” long. It looks somewhat cheaply made, but I’ve tried to bend it by over-squeezing the handle and it won’t bend or distort. If I bought another one, I’d be tempted to pop for the more expensive stainless steel version — just because I have a weakness for things stainless — but the zinc-plated one has held up very well. I kept it clean and made sure it never saw salt water. After 30 years, it still looks almost new. — Jim Barbera
Very long nimble fingers
An incredibly handy $2 tool that seems utterly trivial until you have one, but finds its own uses once you do. It’s a snaky picker-upper, about two feet long, able to pick up things deep in pipes, behind furniture, in holes, cracks, and gaps. I use it all the time, mostly for rescues that simply couldn’t be achieved otherwise. Seems to last forever with occasional lubrication. — KK
Crafty stainless steel hook
I was introduced to spring hooks by a repair technician at work around 10 years ago. He was using the tool to get into tight spaces on check processing equipment and gave me one as he thought I’d find it handy around the house.
The tool is quite simple. It’s an eleven-inch stainless steel rod with a 90-degree hook at the end. I found it useful for any task in tight places requiring force to be exerted with precision. I used it for a few years before it died of natural causes and I then found a supplier and bought half a dozen; they were only a few dollars each at the time.
I spread the new supply around the house in the kitchen, office, as well as my workshop and I was surprised to find my wife using them more than I. She’s used them for sewing projects to thread elastic through a waistband, for craft projects to guide the placement of small parts, and for her own forays into light equipment repair.
I find this tool uniquely capable of getting into tight spaces where no other tool can go making it one of the most versatile tools I own. It is sold in various configurations by numerous suppliers, but the 11″ version I was given years ago has proven most useful. — Paul Steger
Lightweight, long reach
For the close-to-hand pruning, I have my trusty Felco. For branches further than I can reach with a lopper, I use a big, unwieldy pole pruner with a pull-rope to muscle the clipper. It’s overkill for smaller out of reach plants but for decades it was all I knew. Then I discovered the telescoping long arm pruner: easy to extend and collapse, lightweight, and it holds the clipping until you release the trigger, enabling efficient stashing of clippings in a lawn bag. This model, made in Japan, features two pistol grips for two-armed aiming, which most other telescoping pruners don’t have. And its telescoping capability unlocks quickly with a lever instead of having to tighten and untighten a collar. This is now one of my favorite tools on a daily basis, considering all the huffing and puffing I used to do to clear ivy or deadhead roses high up on the fence. —Howard Rheingold
Rolling picker upper
There are few chores I remember from my years growing up on my family’s Missouri farm more thankless, backbreaking, low paying and messier than picking up black walnuts. Our yards had numerous walnut trees, which every autumn produced as many walnuts as there were large whirring cicadas in their giant canopies. Picking them up, however, wasn’t just done for the pocket change my brother and I earned as much as it was necessary to get them off the ground and out of the lawnmower’s path. As walnuts lay in the grass their soft pulpy shells quickly turn mushy and black, oozing a dark staining juice that makes them unpleasant to handle.
Enter the most effective tool I’ve come across in a long time, the Nut Wizard. My brother discovered this tool on the Internet and brought one over to our farm during a recent family reunion, amazing everyone with its utility. So simple and elegant, the Nut Wizard is a wire basket reminiscent of an egg whisk, attached to rotating hubs on either end with a long wooden pole handle. You roll the wire basket around on the ground and walnuts or other similarly sized objects just pop right into it. When it’s full, you simply lower the wire basket onto a heavy wire spreader (included) that clips onto the top of any five-gallon bucket and, voila, the gathered contents are quickly dumped!
I was impressed that it succeeds in picking up walnuts that have embedded themselves deep in the grass, as well as those that have lost their outer soft shell. Gooey walnuts are picked right up, and sometimes if the outer shells are really rotten, the messy parts get left behind and the rotating basket picks up just the more woody inner shell. By far the most impressive feat of the Nut Wizard is how it can get kids arguing over who gets to push it around the yard.
This tool is available in three sizes, collectively capable of picking up a wide range of items: acorns, pecans, hickory nuts, chestnuts, marbles, apples, baseballs, tennis balls, golf balls. And there’s also now an even smaller version, the Ammo Wizard, that will pick up spent bullet casings. — James Leftwich
07/17/23
