11 Milwaukee Home Improvement Products You Didn't Realize Existed

Nov 01, 2024

The Milwaukee Pipeline is an exciting event for homeowners and professional contractors alike. No matter what kinds of projects you engage in on a regular basis, new tools often make the task easier and far more enjoyable. Those who routinely find themselves working on tasks to improve the layout, visual elements, or functionality of their home are often well aware of the DIY-friendly options within the Milwaukee catalog. Milwaukee makes some of the best impact drivers on the market, and it carries a wide spectrum of other tools and accessory products that make home improvement a cinch.

But with such a wide ranging catalog of goods on offer, it's likely you won't be familiar with everything Milwaukee offers. Whether it's a power tool, a hand tool, or an accessory item that makes working with your existing toolbox easier, there's plenty to consider when rounding out your own kit.

These are some of the most impressive home improvement products made by Milwaukee that many DIYers simply don't know about. With the sheer volume of products on the market, it's natural that many will fall under the radar. Fortunately, you're here now and ready to discover your newest favorite piece of gear!

The M18 Cut Out Tool is a great place to start. Part of the M18 range, it pairs with any 18V battery in the Milwaukee system that you might already have in your toolbox. It's an impactful power tool that can make a big difference in a variety of home improvement projects right out of the box. Plenty of DIYers think that cutting tools are all "cut" from roughly the same cloth. There's the circular saw, slicing through material in a straight line (and descended in a sense from larger stationary saws like the miter and table saw that each perform similar functions). Then there's the jigsaw and other reciprocating blade options that approach cutting in a different manner, but still get the same basic job done.

Milwaukee's Cut Out Tool features a rotating blade that extends out of the tool body like a drill bit. The tool's four-pole motor produces speeds reaching up to 28,000 rpm for precision slicing through drywall and other similar materials. The tool's layout provides a jigsaw-like cutting action, but it places the blade at the head of the equipment rather than extending down horizontally. This allows users to retain a superb grip on the cutting tool throughout use. Weighing just 1.8 pounds, it's a breeze to cut through plasterboard and won't weigh you down.

Everyone's heard of a shop vac. Powerful vacuum tools are a mainstay in any DIY home improvement project. You simply can't call a job done unless you've cleaned up the mess, whether it results from a project outside or right in the middle of the living room. Unlike a traditional shop vac, the Milwaukee M18 Fuel 3-in-1 Backpack Vacuum is easy to maneuver around tight corners and won't get bogged down with hoses and cords dragging behind you as you clean up your workspace.

Worn as a backpack, the vacuum's collection tank sits strapped to the user, and everything you need to suction up whatever debris might have been created through your improvement project lies right at your fingertips. The backpack vacuum comes with a HEPA filter, as well as a telescoping extension wand and a flexible, 6-inch hose. It provides a floor tool and crevice tool for reaching around any part of the workspace you might have to tackle when applying the finishing touches to a job. The vac delivers up to 25 minutes of high velocity suction power and does so at three times quieter volumes than a typical jobsite vacuum system.

The Hole Hawg is a tool delivered by Milwaukee first in the 1970s. The first versions of the device didn't particularly resemble the common vision for what a drill is and does. Yet, the Hole Hawg was immensely powerful and churned through drilling work with an intense ferocity that virtually made other drills obsolete. The modern version looks quite a bit more refined, yet doesn't lose any of the beastly potency. Milwaukee's M18 Fuel Hole Hawg right angle drill with Quik-Lok Chuck carries on the legacy of its predecessors, but does so in a way that looks and feels a little more at home in a DIYer's toolbox.

Milwaukee touts its modern, cordless Hole Hawg as the lightest in its class, weighing about seven pounds. When using a 6.0 high output M18 battery, the Hole Hawg is capable of drilling as many as 220 ⅞-inch holes. The right angle drill comes in two different chuck variants, but a home improvement DIYer will almost certainly prefer the Quik-Lok chuck over a keyed option. Changing out bits is fast and doesn't require another accessory to be kept on hand to make adjustments or swaps.

Not every project involves drilling holes, fastening structural components, or cutting lumber. Plenty of homeowners want to see positive change made around the yard, too. This is where some of Milwaukee's finest offerings come into their own. The M18 Fuel Brush Cutter from Milwaukee is a wonderfully efficient piece of gear, exceptional when tackling overgrown landscaping issues.

The brush cutter looks a lot like a standard weed eater, but features a harness that fits over both shoulders to help take the weight of the tool (and is particularly useful when clearing large swaths of landscape). It features both a string trimmer head and a brush cutter blade for jobs of any size and chopping needs that run the gamut. For people coming back home after time away on vacation, or new buyers who've moved into a property that's sat idle for a while, a more potent lawn care tool is almost certainly going to be necessary. The brush cutter features two speeds and an rpm figure that reaches up to 6,200 for high intensity cutting, even through thick brush.

A table saw is one of the most productive tools in any home improver's arsenal. The flat cutting deck and immobilized saw blade create the perfect approach to cutting lengthy, straight pieces to support the construction of just about anything you might be working on at home (I've used my own table saw for everything from cutting down sheets of plywood for rough attic flooring to precision angled slices taken off the very edge of trim work). But setting up a table saw for optimal use — and most importantly, safe operation — isn't always easy. Table saws can move around a lot when sliding workpieces through their maw, creating a seriously precarious situation in the most extreme instances.

Milwaukee's Folding Table Saw Stand helps fix that issue. It's a 15-pound, all steel stand that's durable and heavy enough to hold your table saw still throughout its operation. The stand features a quick latching system to secure the table saw with speed and ease. Once you finish making your cuts, it's simple to just fold up the stand and store it away against a wall in your garage or shed.

The need to engage in plumbing solutions around the house often comes with a bit of hesitation. Whether it's the unfamiliarity with general plumbing concepts or the very real (in some cases) threat of spewing untold gallons of water out across the floor of your home if something goes wrong, plumbing is often a home improvement project of last resort. However, plenty of homeowners are finding that this realm of maintenance and repair isn't actually as scary as they once thought. With a few key concepts, and a tool or two that's purpose built for the job, getting plumbing right isn't difficult, and it can save you a heap of cash, too.

Milwaukee's M18 Short Throw Press Tool Kit with PEX Crimp Jaws is one of those tools. Pressing PEX pipe (or other pipe options) at key joint areas is a crucial part of any plumbing job. The crimp jaws close down with a 40% faster press time than competitive options, and the M18 tool cycles through an automated spring loaded closure to ensure a full press with each activation. The tool can be used one handed, and is small enough to fit into tight gaps, as well, making for a full-service plumbing tool for all manner of repair works in your home improvement schedule.

Returning to the garden, homeowners will often find themselves doing battle with a consistently growing forest of bush, trees, and more around their yard. Especially in warmer parts of the country, the need to weed the yard or cut back hedges almost never stops. More importantly, the typical tools featured in pruning and trimming tasks are often awkward, bulky, heavy, or hand-powered and slow. Lengthy pruning shears or hedge trimmers make the task cumbersome and imprecise.

Milwaukee's M12 Fuel Hatchet 6-Inch Pruning Saw Kit reimagines this task. The tool is part of the brand's M12 lineup, meaning it's a scaled down option that uses smaller parts and a lighter 12V battery, instead of the full sized 18V option that typically features in power tools. This makes it easy to maneuver, and the tool itself functions like a miniaturized chainsaw. It weighs less than 5 pounds and can cut through 3 inches of hardwood, giving landscape-minded home improvers the ability to shear through bushes with ease or tackle tree branches when necessary, all with the same, easily maneuverable power tool.

A hammer's just a hammer, you might say, but striking implements come in abundant variety. From pin hammers that deliver precision striking capabilities to heavy sledges that can demolish even the most stubborn building materials, they serve many purposes. There's even competing, optimal use cases for the two most common consumer options, framing hammers and claw hammers.

Milwaukee's Lineman Hammer 4-in-1 isn't your typical masher. The head weighs 2 pounds, making it somewhat hefty, but that weight introduces plenty of additional functionality. The tool features both smooth and milled striking faces, giving you options when hammering in fasteners depending on the surface characteristics of the workpiece and other material demands. The hammer also offers a staple puller and J-hook remover, packing in some of the qualities typically reserved for claw hammers and their ilk but not featured in two-headed pounders. The use of a fiberglass handle virtually eliminates future replacement needs and offers great vibrational dampening, too.

There's always a need to reach into tight spaces or access something just a bit farther away. Drilling holes can sometimes even require multiple passes to line up perfectly with one another. For instance, you might be running wiring or plumbing connections through your unfinished basement to make it indeed "finished." Punching holes in your studs allows you to send cable or other essentials through the wall's recess, and a lengthy drill bit can help you hit more than one stud at a time. Milwaukee offers both Black Oxide Aircraft-Length drill bits (ranging from ⅛-inch to ½-inch diameters) and an even longer Bellhanger bit (in ¼-inch and ⅜-inch diameters). The aircraft bits extend to 12 inches from tip to tail, and the brand's bellhanger bits double that, measuring a full 24 inches from bit tip to the far end connection.

A 24-inch length isn't likely to factor into home improvement plans all that often, but a more routine extended reach on your drill bit is certainly a welcome enhancement for all manner of odd jobs. The aircraft length bits feature a 135-degree split point to help prevent the bit from walking as you start a cut — something that's perhaps particularly troublesome with the extra length. A black oxide coating rounds out these bits to prevent rust and corrosion.

Just about any home improvement project is likely to demand the use of drilling and fastening tools. Unless you're just working on a bit of gardening or painting, drills and impact drivers are top of the list among tools that home improvers will be reaching for. But this can mean switching back and forth between two different tools — or purchasing a second implement — to get the job done right. Perhaps even more pressing, sometimes the workpiece you're manipulating demands immense fastening power, and the hammer action in your driver isn't suited to the task. Sometimes your drivers dimensions will mean you can't reach into the recess you need to access.

Socket wrenches are already must have tools for home mechanics, and the torque power found in these tools combined with the ability to place the ratcheting effect at a right angle might be the perfect solution to these situations. The only hurdle to overcome is the connection difference between socket wrenches and drills. Milwaukee makes an accessory for that. The Shockwave ½-inch Square to ¼-inch Hex Adapter allows you to transform an impact socket wrench into a driver. It's a heat treated adapter made from alloy steel to provide solid durability. Improving versatile functionality is a great way to make more projects doable, and this tool accessory certainly offers that.

Whether its masonry on external walls or slab concrete foundation work, if you're going to be working with harder materials, an SDS drill is a must. Regular drills and even combi drills with solid hammer action simply don't offer enough strength to consistently power through masonry. The SDS drill was built to handle these jobs, and it's a core part of a home improver's arsenal in many parts of the world and across much of the United States, too.

But not all big drills are created equal. In fact, many were designed with incredible weight and power mated together, intentionally. It's not uncommon to see an SDS drill totally shred a home improver's shoulder muscles through even just an hour or two of work (mine weighs about 16 pounds, for reference).

The Milwaukee M12 Fuel ⅝-inch SDS Plus Rotary Hammer Kit offers a truly spectacular alternative. The tool weighs 3.7 pounds assembled, making it more in line with a standard drill, but it doesn't lose any of the essential power that will see it chop down a brick wall or sink a hole through concrete to fit an anchor for whatever you're building. It's the perfect pairing of both worlds, giving users 89 lb-ft of impact energy, 4,400 bpm and 1,200 rpm, and rapid drilling speeds while saving their arms from the inevitably intense workout that using an SDS drill once brought to the fore.