Funny Name ...
Good Tools

About Me

Hyperkitten Tool Company was founded in 2010 with the goal of providing good, usable hand tools to people who use them. Since then I have shipped tens of thousands of tools to every state in the US and dozens of other countries. I scour local auctions, estate sales, tool meets, and elsewhere, looking for tools. My specialty is woodworking tools, though I also sell machinist's, blacksmith's, and other tools and shop accessories. I thoroughly inspect all of the tools I sell to ensure they are usable. When necessary I restore, repair, or replace broken parts. All of the tools I sell are guaranteed unconditionally.

My love of hand tools and woodworking began back in 1999. My wife and I had just bought a small townhouse condominium and we had a need for some basic furniture. Lacking a shop in which to use power tools, I was forced to learn to use hand tools. I quickly descended down the slippery slope of antique tools, helped along the way by the burgeoning community of woodworkers on the Internet including the wonderful folks of the OldTools email list. I setup a workbench in our living room and starting making basic furniture, along the way learning how to choose and use hand tools. Living in New England, I was lucky enough to have access to a number of sources for antique tools. I began buying and selling tools, restoring them when necessary, as a hobby in order to buy more tools for my shop. I shared some of my projects and interesting tool finds on my personal website, Hyperkitten.com.

Fast forward to 2010.. My wife and I had moved out of the city to Oxford, CT, a small town in central Connecticut, and started a family. I now had a small garage workshop and continued to make furniture and other projects. That year the economy collapsed and I no longer had a reliable full time job. I began to sell more tools in order to make ends meet. In November of 2010 I had an amazing stroke of luck- my website was recommenced by Christopher Schwarz's blog on the Popular Woodworking website. The next year my website was mentioned in Schwarz's book The Anarchist's Tool Chest. The response was amazing. I was inundated with orders. I went from shipping dozens of orders per month to hundreds. The timing couldn't have been more fortuitous- in 2010 we welcomed our second child and in 2012 our third. During those precarious economic years the tool business kept our family afloat financially I'm forever in debt to Christopher for trusting me enough to recommend me to his readers.

As I write this in the year 2020, the tool business is still going strong. The market for usable hand tools is stronger than ever. More and more young people are becoming interested in making things and learning to use hand tools. The antique tool market, which was once dominated by collectors, is now primarily driven by users. While I'm thankfully employed full time now, I continue to source and sell hand tools in my spare time and love every minute of it.