I've got 8 tools under $20 in this box, And they're all tools that you told me I needed to buy in the comments of my last video I'm going to check them out
and see if they're actually worth it. In the last video,
I highlighted one of my favorites, which was the Pica Dry
mechanical pencil. But we did get a comment
from Scott Simpey. He said another awesome mechanical pencil
is the Pentel GraphGear 1000. So let's check it out. First off, this thing looks awesome. As an engineer and a nerd,
I absolutely love the look of this. It's got the knurling on it,
the little cutouts. Nice little clip here on the top. And the finish looks amazing. This guy comes in at $10
and there's a couple of cool features that I really like about it. But at first I was kind of
laughing at this. On the package they say "safety" because you never
can be too safe when you're writing with a mechanical pencil. So I thought I would just click
the end in the lead would come out. But no, actually when you click the back, the little tip and the metal shaft
that holds the lead comes out. And so it's not just sticking out
and, you know, it could stab into your side
or if you drop it, it could bend. Ahhh! Oh that hurts! And then once it's out, then
you can click through and extend the lead and then to retract it. That's actually what the little clip is
for on the back. Now, with this having a .5 millimeter
lead, the line is going to be a lot thinner than the other ones. So there's a little comparison of what that thickness
looks like on a piece of wood. So the Pica is pretty thin, but after I wrote the name of it, you can see that second
line is quite a bit larger. The .7mm is a nice size,
but that .5mm is just a little bit smaller. So if you're going for really fine delicate work, that point
five millimeter is great. I'm definitely
gonna add this one to the arsenal because you can never have
too many pencils. And I really like doing this. Now. The next one is a new item
and is extremely useful. But I was actually a little bit confused
when I read the comments. Sambas13, says Stud Buddy. You know, I was kind of like
a little flattered. Been trying to wor... nah, I'm just...
I've not been working out at all. You know, where the weight room is?
...I'll check it out. Sorry. Ah, Stud Buddy is actually a name brand
for a stud finder. It says this is the world's
simplest stud finder. El detector de postes más
efectivo del mundo. There you go. So this has rare earth
magnets inside it and it helps you find studs. Now, I have always just used an actual
rare earth magnet, and I will put a little piece of blue tape on the back
so it doesn't mark up the wall. So very similar to this little guy.
So let's see how this compares. So if I'm mounting cabinets in the shop or even inside, I will just get my rare
earth magnet and run it across the wall until it hits a screw or a nail. And then I know that that's the stud. Sometimes I've noticed
that the screws don't go into the studs and they just missed. So you might want to confirm
that on a second spot, too. So let's see how the stud buddy compares. There it goes right there. Boom. So it basically does the same exact thing. And I don't know, I guess it's not working totally because
it's not picking up this stud here. Other than that, it seems to work well. It's got two little magnets inside there. So I do like this. And for ten bucks,
I think it's a decent tool. But if you've already got a big rare earth
magnet, I probably wouldn't upgrade and get this. So the first one that you said I got wrong
was the utility knife, and I shared my Stanley retractable knife here with the snap blades
that I've had for many years now. And I really love it.
But you guys said, Brad, you're wrong. But you guys said "Brad, you're wrong!" Now, cj5mrt said,
"if you like the snap blade knife, then check out the ones by Olfa." There were over a dozen comments about
the Olfa, and so I got one. And here it is. First of all, I like the size of it. It's a little bit smaller
than the one that I have here. And it's got a nice little grippy grip
on the side and this little wheel. So I checked it out and there's a few things I like about it
and a few things I don't. The main thing that I like about it
is that sound of the wheel. Yeah, that's nice. This one is the L2 that has this little locking wheel feature, and I think
that's what a lot of people like . Move it out, lock it in place,
and then that thing is not going anywhere. Now, that's versus the one that I have
that has this kind of push to open plate. And there's people that say
that sometimes that comes back. Now, frankly, that has
never happened to me. I've never had an issue
with this retracting. You mean shrinkage? Yes! But, I got to be honest, I don't
know what all the hubbub was about. I like the tool. It is very well-made, obviously, here,
but I don't like the fact that you have to turn this knob so much to get it to move
and turn it so much to lock it down. And as I was trying to change the blades,
that's really kind of a pain in the butt. You have to completely unwind
this little guy here all the way out, take off this little itty
bitty pressure dealy that actually gives it the nice click ,
which I 1000% will lose at some point. And then it kind of just flops around
here, and now you can change the blade. Now that is compared to the Stanley Knife,
which to change it, all you do is put your thumb on the back
and then you can take the whole thing out extremely quickly
and it comes with four blades. And so that is a great value because
the Olfa only comes with one blade. I will agree that the Olfa is very
well made and you know, you could use the tip for a screwdriver,
but honestly, I will never do that. And so I'm sticking with my Stanley
because it is just way easier and faster to use and lock down
and to change the blades when I need to. So this one, not for me. Now, these next two are both under
ten bucks and they are drink related. So last time I talked about these senor
tongue depressors that I used, which everybody told me
I should just get popsicle sticks instead. And these are great, but they are a bit
big and the box is pretty large as well. But you know, you can depress
senior's tongues if you need to. They're nice and sterile. And we got a comment from Odd
One Out who said Coffee Stirrers are highly useful.
I don't drink coffee. All we drink around here is Mountain Dew. But I did bite the bullet and I picked up a pack of 500
coffee stirrers and this was $9. And they are real birch wood. And these guys are definitely much
smaller and easier to get into little tight spaces
than these large guys. Now, the other cool thing is, is actually, I believe they
got these from Lowe's. So you have that variety as well. Yeah, you guys are right. These are great. I think they might even be better
than the tongue depressors, but you can't use them on seniors. Now, if you have a tool that's under $20
that you think I should check out leave a comment down below and also go
check out the comments and leave a thumbs up to those ones that you want to see me
bring in for future episodes. Keeping with the drink theme,
Joanna Martin said straws are great for getting glue out of tight spaces, and
that one got a lot of thumbs up as well. So I went out and
got a big pack on straws. Now this is a pack of 500 and these
come in all kinds of different colors. I've got red, you can do orange,
or blue, or other colors and they are six bucks for 500 online. You can probably get them even cheaper
than that at the dollar store. But I've actually never used these
to get glue out of a tight spot and I've seen it done.
So let's try it out. All right. I got a couple boards here, and this could be a drawer or frame
or anything else. We're just going
to put some wood glue right on here, not get too crazy, but enough
that we'll get some squeeze out. We're just going to have a
just your basic butt joint. Now we got some real glue to squeeze out. I'm just going to cut this thing right
in half on an angle, kind of help it,
you know, JibbyJabby in there. So here we go. See how this works.
All right. We can just get that. All right. And just clean a little bit up. And now it worked exceedingly well. I am going to give this
two thumbs up for sure. A straws are going to be
living in the shop now because I typically do that with the back
end of a glue spreader and it typically gets everywhere,
but this just goes right into the straw and it kind of captures
all the glue there for you. So that is perfect. Absolutely. Get you some straws. This next one is a measuring
and marking tool. And one of my favorite measuring and
marking tools is my combination square. I use this thing for a lot of different
purposes and uses on projects. This was actually my grandfather's,
so it has a special place in my heart. So I love using that too
and seeing the patina on it. But we had some comments and Bill
Ellis said, "Hey Brad, my favorite tool you didn't mention is the Kreg Multi Mark"
and it got a lot of upvotes on that too. So this guy comes in at $14
and it's going to do a lot of things that the combination square does,
and it's a very basic design. It's got a plastic body
and then a ruler on the back that you can put in different positions and lock it in
with this little knurled knob. So the body is six inches
and it also does have metric looks like six inches is around
15.2347 centimeters. So this is the first position
where the ruler just slides up and down with the body. So this would be great for marking screw layout if you want to have a line
three quarters of an inch all the way across your board,
this would be a great way also for setting up
the height of your table, saw or depth. This would be another great use for that, and that's probably how I'd use this
the most because when I'm trying to do it with the combination square,
it is kind of unwieldy. And if you're trying
to put it on a small piece, it likes to tip
because of all the extra weight. So I do like that
this is small and compact. Then to change it to the next position,
you can just undo the knob and then rotate the ruler around and put this at 90 degrees to the body. Then you can lock that down and use that to mark your layout lines
on your board at 90 degrees. And before I locked it down,
I did notice a little bit of jiggle jiggle in here and you really only want
that if you're making internet memes. My money don't jiggle, jiggle it. So the ruler is slightly smaller
than the opening, but I went ahead and registered it down
against the bottom of the opening, locked it down
and I checked it with a square that is much, much more than $20
and it's actually dead on 90 degrees. So just make sure you're registering it against the body
and not just locking it down. And it might be up a little bit in the last position that this will go
into is a 45 degree angle. So there is a little slot
up in the body that you can go right across at a 45 degree angle. And you can obviously just use this
to mark 45 degree angles on your pieces of wood
if you're cutting miters or picture frames or anything else like that. So, Bill, I do think this is a pretty cool, inexpensive marking tool
and I really like the form factor of it and the fact that you can do all the 45s
and things and be in the small package. It's pretty cool. All right. So I've got a little bonus
for you guys now because I don't just have eight
tools under $20. We actually have ten. So this next one here is from Woodcraft,
who is the sponsor of today's video. And this is a silicone glue tray.
This thing is five bucks. I use these all the time.
You can get these from Woodcraft. They are a woodworking supply store that has everything
you could possibly need for woodworking, whether it's the tools, the materials
or even the hardware and finishes. The thing I love about these is
you can just put your glue right in here. You can use it all you want, and then once
it's dry, you can just peel it right off because it's silicone
and it doesn't stick. And to go along with that. I picked up these silicone glue spreaders,
which are also under $5. The glue spreaders are great for getting
an even layer across the entire edge versus just having a bead down the middle. So I went over to my local woodcraft
here in Nashville to pick these up, but they do have stores in over
70 cities across the US. Now, if you're not lucky enough to have one near you,
they do have woodcraft.com. They do have a lot of things you can grab
for under $20 and even more over $20, including a new Saw Stop or
maybe something from the Festool lineup. So go check them out. And a big thank you to Woodcraft
for sponsoring today's video. This tool is the cheapest one on the list
and also possibly the most weird. jaypeay1941 said "I bought a simple tire
tread depth gauge a few years ago and I can use it to measure depths
when I'm drilling." So I picked up some tire depth gauges. It was two of them for four bucks. So by far the cheapest item
that we have here, and it kind of spirals around all the way from 32/32nds,
which would be an inch down to 0. And it just kind of goes up and down. It is super simple, and it is made
for checking your tire treads. But I am not so sure
about how accurate this is because it is wrapped in a sticker
that has the 32nds of an inch on it. So I drilled a few holes in this block
just so we could test these out versus each other to see
if they actually say the same thing. And then versus an actual set of calipers,
because I kind of doubt that this is going to be anywhere
close to accurate. All right. Let's check this, this guy. That one says 17/32nds. And this guy. These are actually
very close to each other. So let's see what the caliper say. This is actually 33/64, if you're checking. So it's in the ballpark,
I can tell you I'm surprised. I thought this would be
completely inaccurate and not repeatable,
but these were almost exactly the same. And if you just wanted to quickly
get a measurement and have it be within a 32nd, throw it in
the hole, take your measurement. Sure, why not? I mean, I don't think I'll
ever use it, but I think it's an option. We'll give it a thumbs up. I like it. But you know what I also like? Our new Maker Mountain T-shirts. Check them out: FixThisBuildThat.com All right, this last one, I cheated just a little bit,
but I'm going to blame it on inflation. This one actually had
the most upvotes of any comment, and it was Geoffrey Ward said "I would add 1-2-3 blocks to the list, super useful,
and you could pick them up for about $20." Well, by the time that I actually
bought them, they were $21. So these are 1-2-3 blocks, they are sold in a pair. So I guess technically
they're $10.50 each. So I guess that still works. They get their names from the sizing,
so they are one inches thick, two inches wide and three inches long. So that makes them great
for setting up machines because you could quickly get a reference
on any of those measurements. Also, you can use them in combination
to get up to six inches or anything in between one and six inches
with the combo of the two. Now it does have some threaded holes
in it as well that can be used to attach it down to a surface
or to each other for fixturing or setting it up for a stop block
or things like that. So honestly, I don't really use one inch,
two inch or three inches a lot. I tell you what would be nice,
though, is a 3/4", 1 1/2" and 2 1/2" block because,
you know, those are nominal lumber measurements... and whatever
that is in metric. I think that would actually
be more helpful than a one, two, three. But what I do like about them
is that they are nice and hefty. I love the weight. You know, I can do that
finger flick. No, I can't do that. But what I can do
is put them on a machine for setup, especially like a bandsaw
or a jointer for the fence. Have it there, checked for square
and it's just nice and thick. It's a thick boy, we call this the
thick boy set up block. He thicc, boy! So yeah,
I'm going to say 1-2-3 blocks we'll give that 1...2... ...3 thumbs up. Drop a comment down below
if you've got some other good tool ideas for me and give a thumbs up
to those ones that you like. And if you wanna see
some of the other tool lists I've got a playlist
queued up for you right there. A big thank you to those folks
that are joining the FTBT Builders Club. Until next time guys
get out there and build something awesome.
