Toolbox: Tools of the Decade

They say change comes slowly in the building trades. But consider recent changes in building tools. Ten years ago power miter saws and pneumatic nailers were relatively new to the trade, the Speed Square was only just beginning to gain widespread acceptance, and cordless tools were nothing more than consumer novelties. In this column I’ll take a quick retrospective look at some of the tools that have proven indispensable to the trade in the last decade. Speed Square Takes Over Charleton Swanson first manufactured the Speed Square in the late 1920s. Word spread slowly, but today almost every contractor has at least one, if not a dozen, and most are familiar with its companion, the Little Blue Book, which is still one