5 Deck Building Hacks || Dr Decks

[Music] hey guys dr. Dex here today I want to talk to you about five deck hacks five things that I do to make things quicker easier or more accurate so if you get something out of this video I appreciate it if you'd click that subscribe button and hit the bell icon if you want to be notified every time there's a bee running around my head also if you want to be notified every time we're putting out fresh content and if you'd like to learn how to bend deck boards don't forget to go visit dr. decks masterclass okay so a lot of this video has to do with some preliminary parts of when you start building a deck a lot of these tricks or tips that I have are about squaring things up keeping things level how do you do that what's the fastest way to do it my first one is old-school a lot of you have heard of it it's called a three four five and what it does it's it allows you to take two measurements and then figure out a square point between those two measurements alright so here's how it works so you've got your we're just gonna use a piece of plywood as our sample okay cuz we already know it's squares so it's just gonna prove my point so if you take a measurement at 3 feet from the corner of a house let's say mark it at 3 feet and then you take another measurement from the same corner and you go 4 feet from there between those two measurements that distance should equal 5 feet let's see if it works okay here's my 3-foot measurement I'm gonna put my tape measure right on 3 feet I'm gonna pull it over to my 4 foot point right here and if I'm if I'm laid out perfectly that will give me 5 feet in between those two points that is a square that is 90 degrees square okay so that's one way that we do quick checks so you can multiply that and make a bigger square if you want so instead of a 3 4 5 you could do a 6 8 10 or even a 9 12 15 if you're trying to square up a large area and you just want to know that you're close or if you're being on point all right so another way we do that is we have these large fold-out squares like here's a Sanders speed square right but another way we do that is we can take a fold out square pull it out and it locks and it basically does the same thing it will give you a reference of squareness so if I pull this square right up against the side of this plywood and I pull it to the edge its square if I have a straight piece of 20 foot lumber I can put this up against my foundation on my house put this out here run my straight board right next to it square it up I can check it with the 3 4 5 or a 6 8 10 and I'm gonna have a square point off the foundation of the house so I know where my beams can go I know where my footings need to go it's all about layout okay so this is a shortcut I use this layout score all the time as a matter of fact I use it so much I actually have two of them which I sometimes use both at the same time this one is made by Stanley this one is made by a company called a square I don't even know if this one's made anymore this one it does come loose a little bit right here sometimes if you're not careful cuz it's spring-loaded you can see right there I just did it so you got to make sure that that money stays locked in just like that because there's a spring on the back and that spring gets knocked it cannot square not a square but it does exactly the same thing as this square you hold it up against a straight edge and it's nice and square it's right in square except it's a different configuration the Stanley Square is like an equal distance from here to here to here this one's similar to a three four five technique but it's in a shorter distance the cool thing about these is that they fold up and they don't take up a lot of storage in your space another cool tool that I have in my arsenal is a stabile ax angle finder this is number two on my list this a really cool tool I found this at a trade show I think it was a jlc live and what's cool about this tool is regardless of whatever angle you need to find it's a digital protractor so it tells you what you need to know what angle you're at wherever it is and if you need the half point of that you hit this button right here and it'll tell you the exact half point of whatever that angle is which comes in handy when you're doing miters so you can use this on a on a layout let's just say you have some funky angle here's 40 degrees right here another cool thing you can lock this thing in place and not lose your angle and then there it is so but if I didn't know what my angle was I could always come back and say okay I need I need to know what this angle is right here that's drawn up I can just put this on here lay it down I'm at 40 degrees it says forty point one but now let's go over to the staircase I'm going to show you what I really like to use this for when I'm framing stairs and I'm running trim like the side trim on the staircase and it comes up and it meets a point somewhere up here or something's vertical or level and I need to know what angle is my staircase at that's what I like to use this for so what I'll do put the protractor on the leading edge of the stairs and then I'll run this stabile a level does there's a there's a spirit bubble right here and once that's level then I'll know that I'm at thirty nine point eight degrees from here to here so that helps me figure out what the angle is up there that I need to cut my trim board at so that is a really handy tool and that's why I bought this was mostly just for figuring out staircases so that's my number two deck hack that I really like to use to speed things up when I'm trying to figure out angles on staircases alright the third hack I have for you is about string we all use it there's a couple different ways to tie string but I'm just going to a real quick way that I found that it works really well Ike's got the wrong size bit but I just happen to have a cortex bit I need a t20 not a t25 so now we're back in business you can just leave that in there cow so let's just say you're you're trying to choose a straight line are you kidding me this thing just died what are the odds what are the odds I get one screw in I don't believe it must be Monday alright so I've got my drill so let's just say you just have two points you want to run your string there's a ton of string tricks on on YouTube those guys with of a million views here's idea the whole ideas about how to tie the knot right how to tie the knot on the string and keep it tight and make it quick to get released alright so what you do is you you loop around your finger about four or five times you hook it around you the other point that you're trying to straight you string line two and then you pull like this and then pull it back and it keeps it tight it keeps tension on the string okay this works better when you have a lot of longer distance because there's a little more slack in the string so you can actually get some really good tension on it and then when you're done instead of tonguing or not that you're trying to pick out all you got to do is pull on it that comes right off not a bad trick huh I've talked with quite a few guys in my industry that use this trick it's really not that hard but you're gonna remember to pull on the opposing string you can kind of hear it tighten up and you just got to pull back again on it I just wrap it around once or twice like that now snug so that string will stay snug and tight for you for as long as you need it to and then when you're done you just unwind it pull back on it it comes right off all right so one hack I use a lot this is number four it's on my phone it's actually a construction calculator so I'm gonna bring you over here I'm gonna show you what I use it for and how and I paid $25 for this app and I think it's worth every penny and the one thing I use it for more than anything else is to figure out when I'm laying out my framing my choice because I don't lay out sixteen sixteen sixteen twelve I lay out everything at 13 and five eight thirteen whatever it whatever it takes everything for me I lay out perfect so every choice has the same layout for the whole deck all right so this program is called CM pro calc construction Master Pro this has a lot of features and functions that I don't use but the one thing I do use let's just say we're doing 14 and 3/8 inch 14 inch and 3/8 spacing on Center and I want to add 14 inch and three-eighths to it that's 28 and 3/4 and then if I need to add it again I just hit equals and it adds another 14 and 3/8 and so on and so forth until I get to my final destination let's say we're dope building a 12-foot deck and you just made it 143 and 3/4 you cut it real tight so you can also subtract 14 inches and 3/8 is 128 so you can go backwards same concept take you back to 14 and 3/8 that's mostly what I use this construction calculator for it has so many more features than that but basically it was worth the 25 bucks just so I can do monster run when I'm doing monster layout it's over 20 30 feet and I want to lay out all my Joy's perfectly you can go back on my Instagram feed and see it see how from a drone shot and see how equal everything is and that's my number for construction hack for you all right so my fifth and final hack for you it's a very simple one as well but it's just all about finding quick angles you have a square you have a pivot point on your square this is called the pivot right here the pivot point even says it right here pivot there's many different brands of squares they all should have it this one has it as well right here pivot that's your pivot point okay so you take your pivot point and let's just say you know what you need a 35 degree angle you go from your pivot point there's degrees C deg right here that stands for degrees all along this square if I need a 35 degree angle I go from my pivot point and you gotta have this this has to be a straight edge this is very helpful if it is you go to 35 on here there's your mark whoops that's 35 degrees so if y'all want to double check that I just go to my pivot point and I put it up right onto this pencil line I go down here and it says 35 you can do up to an 89 degree angle if you need to all the way to 1 I've had a lot of carpenters that I've worked with in the past that didn't know how to find a simple angle on a speed square it's not hard it's just knowing how to do that so basically you could say you could throw me out any Calvin get me number 21 and 60 37 ok so I go here's 35 I got to go 2 clicks past that 36 37 there's my 37 degree angle it's that simple and that's a quick hack that's something that you need to know this square will as well has a bubble vial in it so you can use this to figure out your staircase angles if you have a pitch going like this and you find level on the bubble then you can read it 38 degrees if you look through from the pivot point down to the degree 38 so that's how you do that really cool really quick really easy to learn all right guys that's all I got for you today but I hope you enjoyed the 5 jetpack if you did please click that subscribe button don't forget to hit the bell icon if you want to be notified every time we put out fresh content and don't forget to go check out dr. decks masterclass learn how to bend deck boards like me all right have a great day [Music]

Channel: drdecks

Views: 125,331

Keywords: Dr decks, drdecks, deck building, custom decks, pacific northwest, carpentry, decks, deck, deck board bending, lists, 5 things, deck hacks, hack, life hacks

Id: ypmgjjDeEPE

Length: 13min 53sec (833 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 21 2020