The Mishnah continues with a different type of scale: not the scale used for weighing precious items such as gold and fine purple wool, but the cord of a shopkeeper's scale. Shopkeepers generally deal in foodstuffs, weighing out flour, sugar and the like - items that are not as costly as gold and purple wool and do not require exacting, precise measurement. For that reason they allow themselves a longer cord, with which they hold the scale so that it will not fall to the ground.
The same applies to the cord of a householder's scale, used by the members of the household at home: they want to know the general weight of something, but they have no need of an exact and precise measure, and therefore here too a longer cord is permitted. Its measure there is a tefach: up to a tefach from the point where the cord is attached to the scale is considered a connection, and beyond a tefach it is not considered a connection.
The continuation of the measures of handles listed in the Mishnah:
"Yad hakardom milfanav tefach" - the part of the axe handle that lies between the place where the hand grips it and the metal blade itself. Its measure is a tefach: up to a tefach from the hand toward the axe is considered a connection, and beyond that it is not considered a connection.
"Shiyurei yad haPargal" - the pargal is a compass. This does not mean a compass used to determine which direction to face in prayer, which way is east and which is west, north or south, but rather the instrument used for drawing a circle - the compass familiar from basic geometry studies, which some also use for more advanced and sophisticated purposes. It appears that this compass, used for drawing circles in the time of the Mishnah, had a handle that was held while its lower part was rotated to form the circle. Its measure is a tefach: up to a tefach from the point where the handle joins the legs of the compass that draw the circle is considered a handle and a connection to the compass, and beyond a tefach it is not.
Yad hamakevet - a small tool used for hewing and engraving stone. It too had a metal part, the blade that actually cuts the stone, and a wooden handle. The handle is considered connected to the metal part up to a measure of a tefach, and beyond a tefach it is not considered part of the makevet. Therefore, if the makevet is tamei, the portion that extends beyond a tefach from the makevet itself, from the blade itself, is not tamei.
With this we have completed Mishnah 5.