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"      Watch more of Barry&amp;#039;s new weekly video series, The Esquire Digital Man, at Crackle.com With one exception, my experience with power tools has been limited to the Magic Bullet blender I bought from that oddly convincing infomercial. (You should taste my smoothies.) After I whined to the grips (the manly men who build things on movie sets) about how much I wanted a chain saw, they bought me a Makita cordless drill. They knew if they got me a chain saw, at the very least I&amp;#039;d maim myself and they&amp;#039;d be out of a job. Still, I was thrilled. All I really wanted was to feel manly, and the Makita did the trick. At the moment, however, I&amp;#039;m far away from the grips, at my home in Telluride, Colorado. I have lots of safety gear, from an orange helmet with a protective mesh face mask and ear-cup thingies to tear-resistant chaps to the chain-mail gloves that Sweetie (the wife) made me order online. And I finally got myself a chain saw.  I loved the Stihl MS 211 C-BE ($300; stihlusa.com) with the Easy2Start system. The engine is environmentally friendly it puts out a third of the pollutants the previous model did and it&amp;#039;s lightweight. The starter string has to be yanked no faster or more forcefully than the tab you pull to open a FedEx envelope, and pretty quickly I had painlessly cut a dead tree blocking the path down to the stream. Looks like the grips will continue to work.   I also tested some less manly but still very useful tools like the Black &amp;amp;amp; Decker Bullseye Auto-Leveling Laser with Stud Sensor ($50; blackanddecker.com). My stud finder while growing up in Manhattan was hitting the wall with a hammer until it made a different sound, leaving dimples along the wall, forcing me to place the shelf at whatever height and angle the row of half moons were. The BullsEye slides smoothly along the wall and beeps when it finds a stud. (It&amp;#039;ll even warn you when there are electrical wires hidden behind the Sheetrock.) Hammer in the pin, hang the leveler on it, follow the red laser-generated lines emanating out on both sides, and your shelf will actually be parallel to the floor.   My favorite power drill/screwdriver was the 10.8-volt Makita DF330DW ($149; amazon.com), which runs on a superlight lithium-ion battery. It delivered all the power I needed to tighten the handrail at the start of my backyard luge run, plus it comes with a cool holster. It&amp;#039;s surprisingly light for its torque.  For even more manly power, you could get the 18-volt Milwaukee 2602-22CT ($259; milwaukeetool.com). Its half-inch chuck takes larger bits than the Makita, and it has a hammer function, which rapidly vibrates the drill bit forward and backward, helping it break through tough surfaces like masonry (something I&amp;#039;ll try right after I take up hang gliding). The battery alone makes you feel as if you could build a house.  The last tool I tested could save my marriage. The Stanley Intellimeasure Distance Estimator ($20; stanleytools.com) uses an infrared beam to measure distances up to 40 feet. Before the Stanley, I would either walk in a straight line, heel to toe, or have Sweetie hold the tape measure while I would pull out the tape, which I would, without fail, drop and launch toward her at supersonic speed. Now, though, she can do all the measuring just by pressing a button, while I have a martini and just offer advice. Barry Sonnenfeld is an Emmy-winning television director and the director of Get Shorty and Men in Black. Watch More of Barry on Video at Crackle.com "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/cars/a6373/chain-saw-review-video-1109/>