Why COAST Belongs in Every Plumber's Tool Bag

The Part Works has spent decades doing for plumbing and facility pros what COAST has spent a century doing for the tools themselves: cutting out the wasted step, the wrong part, the tool that doesn't hold up. That's why we now stock COAST’s line of headlamps, flashlights, and multi-tools. When you need a light that won't quit mid-job, we’ve got it on our shelf.

Building Tools to Solve Problems Since 1919

COAST didn't start as a lighting company dreaming up gadgets in a lab. It started in 1919, when Henry Brands set out to solve one very specific, very real problem. Gutting salmon was slow and awkward work, so he built a fillet knife with a scoop built right into the blade. No extra step, no extra tool, just a job made easier by better design. That's the whole COAST playbook in one tool: watch someone struggle with a real task, then engineer the struggle away. Four generations later, the Brands family still runs the company, and that same philosophy still drives everything they make.

From Fillet Knives to Hands-Free Lighting

• A century after that first knife, the same problem-solving shows up in the tools plumbers and maintenance techs reach for every day. Headlamps with Slide Focus and Glide Focus let you shift from a tight inspection beam to a wide flood without fumbling with switches. Voice control technology  gives you real hands-free lighting for when both hands are buried in a wall cavity or wrapped around a pipe. Zithion-X rechargeable batteries are built for people who can't afford a dead flashlight halfway through a job.

None of this is innovation for its own sake. It's the innovative mindset that built a scoop into a fillet knife: find the moment where the work is harder than it needs to be and fix it.

Why It Matters for This Job

Three things about COAST map directly to what plumbing and maintenance pros already care about.

Durability under bad conditions, not perfect ones. Crawlspaces, flooded basements, dark utility rooms - this is where the work actually happens, and it's where COAST tests its gear, alongside the people who use it.

A lifetime warranty backed by a real support team. Tradespeople remember which tools let them down, and which brands stand behind their products. Every COAST item carries a lifetime warranty, backed by a support team based in Portland, Oregon; not a call center script.

Independently verified performance. COAST is UL certified and a founding member of PLATO, the group that helps set ANSI standards for portable lighting. For anyone who's bought a cheap flashlight with inflated lumen claims, COAST's approach of publishing true, verified lumen output makes a real difference—not a marketing line.

COAST has spent over 100 years building tools for people who show up and do the work, whether that's gutting fish in 1919 or troubleshooting a leak under a sink today. The technology has changed. The reason it exists hasn't. When the job gets hard, the right tool should make it easier, safer, and faster. That's still the whole idea.

Call us, stop by, or ask your rep about COAST next time you're placing an order. We'll help you find the right one for the conditions you actually work in.