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Powermatic and Titebond. So our first "buy this, not that" video had such a great response, people requested that we cover this on a couple different other topics. So that's what we're gonna do today. This is "buy this not that measuring and marking" edition. Now, as always these are just my opinions and sometimes I exaggerate a little bit to sort of support a point. So you'll have to forgive me for that. But if you disagree or maybe you think you have a better choice, go ahead and use the comments and let me know about it. First up is the classic tape measure. Now, I've got a bunch of these long tape measures in the shop but they're really unnecessary. Maybe for house stuff I might want a long tape measure, but in the shop I really don't measure anything that is longer than eight feet in length most of the time. So having a 25, even a 30-foot tape measure is kind of a waste. And I've even got a 16 here that I almost never use. So what I recommend instead is you get some of these little cuties, Check these out. These little six ft tape measures are fantastic. They're incredibly cheap, which means you could buy a bunch of them because you and I both know we're gonna lose them. And you can even put a magnet on the back. If you want to put some epoxy in a little rare earth magnet there, you could pop it on tools all around the shop. And then if you lose one, you don't have to get that upset about it because they're pretty darn cheap. These are six footers, but you can also get them in 12 ft I think any more than that, then you're just in the territory of stuff you don't really need in the woodshop. Instead of super premium tri squares, take a look at machinists squares. You can often get a three or four piece set for 25 or $30 on Amazon. They tend to be more durable because they're all steel and they also, oddly enough are a little bit more accurate. So look at the numbers for accuracy and I think you'll be surprised. Now you might be wondering "Marc, why do you have these squares then, if you think those are better?" Well, I actually think these are more fun to work with. I like a very nicely made tool. So I do spend the money on premium products like this, but if you're just starting out, you don't need to do that, you could save the money and get a lot more for your money with something like machinist squares. Now, initially this might seem like a false equivalency, but stick with me on it. When you first start woodworking, you might think you need to get a ruler and rulers can be helpful, especially for drawing and things like that, but not all rulers are created equal. And if you look at most of them, they usually have about an eighth of an inch or a quarter inch. That kinda is burned on the very end. So if you're trying to take a measurement of the work piece and you want to go right up on the end which is something that we need to do right on the edge. It's very difficult to do. You have to kind of offset it a little bit to make sure you get an accurate number. You also have no repeatability with something like a ruler. So instead of a traditional ruler what I recommend you get is an adjustable square. Now an adjustable square has a ruler built in and that's kind of the best part about it. You can pull this out and now we have a fantastic ruler where the measurements go right out to the edge. You don't have to worry about that at all. And it's completely adjustable. So if I want to set it at one inch and mark multiple parts with that same measurement I could just market and go each one of them is perfectly accurate. And of course I have the whole range of measurements across the entire ruler. So yeah it's gonna be more money certainly. But adjustable square is going to give you much more bang for the buck when it comes to drawing angles, you can buy some pre made things that will actually have the exact angle that you need but they typically are not adjustable. So something like a speed square, not the greatest example, but that's about all that. I have. You got that locked in 45 degrees Speed squares do a whole lot more, especially in the world of construction and home building. But in the fine woodworking shop, generally speaking, you don't have a whole lot of use for this. My recommendation when you need angles instead is to go with a bevel gauge and a protractor, you can get pretty much any angle you need off of this. You can adjust it as much as you need to and you can lock it in place for repeatability. This is definitely going to be far more versatile than anything that has a fixed angle. Now this one is going to be incredibly obvious to a lot of you, but if you're new to the craft, you may go to the home store and see these funny looking pencils and think that you need one. Well in the construction industry, these make a lot of sense. The reason or flat is because a lot of times in construction you might be standing or sitting in a place that's not ideal and you may put your pencil down and watch it roll away from you. So they're flat, which means they don't go anywhere. They're always there when you need them and you can very easily sharpen these with a box cutter or pocket knife, right? So these are great in construction but in woodworking, fine woodworking, these tend to be a little too bulky. The pencil lead makes a really fat line. I mean that could be advantageous if you're marking up rough lumber and you can make really wide lines to again, super handy and construction but not necessarily for furniture. I recommend mechanical pencils. Half millimeter is the ideal and you can get them in different sizes if you want to, but you get a nice fine line with a half millimeter and really it's the consistency. It's a nice fine line that's consistent every single time. And if you have one of these fancy little squares, typically they are sized to work with half millimeter leads, and this way you can make repeated lines very conveniently with devices like this. Mechanical pencils all day long. One of the handiest tools for joinery is a good sharp knife, but not all knives are created equal. So I highly recommend you go for a single bevel knife. Let me show you what that means. A lot of marking knives like these two will have bevels on both faces. So this one's a little more obvious because it's got a larger bevel but both faces have this angle on there and that can actually lead to some inaccuracies when marking lines. So let's take a look at what I think you should use and that's something like this. This is a single bevel. Now, of course you have this kind of diamond shape here. But what I'm talking about is you'll have one side that's completely flat and we lap this on a sharpening stone, like any other cutting tool and then the other side has these nice bevels that allows you to get right up to a ruler or whatever you're marking your line from. Let me show you an example. When I set my square to a certain measurement and I want to mark along the line here, I'm gonna put the flat up against my ruler and strike my line and that's going to give me a line that tells me this side is the keeper side in this side is the waste. So that's why I have the bevel facing in that direction. Not only does it give me a nice reference surface up against my square, but it also puts the material that I'm going to kind of be compressing as I make that cut into the waste of the cut, let's just say, this is like a tenon and I want to keep this portion. So as I cut across, you can see this shape, we're kind of veering out this way, but we're still nice and tight up against that line. That really matters. Now, what happens if we use a double bevel to do this when you have a double bevel up against something like a ruler. You often wind up pushing the actual cutting point a little bit further away from that ruler. So here is obviously very exaggerated, but I'm basically going to be cutting in this way because there's a bevel on both sides. The compression happens on both sides. So the accuracy that I want where my keeper piece is over here and the waste is over there. I may wind up getting a weird result here because I'm actually pushing myself away and let's say I plan to use this little notch for something like hand sawing later, I'm gonna put my saw down into that notch and look how far away I am from my actual cut line. My goal is right here when I saw blade is gonna fall right into that notch. If we look on the other version, I can go right up against the line, right where it matters. And anything over here with compressed fibers, is in the waste. Marking gauges or cutting gauges are really handy things that have in the shop for laying out joinery, but they are not all created equal. Now, these are just two of the many formats you'll see out there, but it's a good representation. This one is one of my favorites. It's actually got a nice blade inside there which has a bevel and a flat, so it's very easy to sharpen and it cuts nice and clean right across the grain like that, that's beautiful. This is a wheel gauge. So it's kind of a similar concept, but instead of a actual little blade there, it's a circular blade and that just kind of rolls right along the edge works in the same fashion, but it severs the fibers nice and clean. Where I think people go wrong is when they wind up getting one that has a very sharp point on it. Now, a sharp point is fine in general. I mean you can kind of get a similar result, but as soon as you start pushing hard where as soon as this starts to go a little bit dull, you wind up getting a lot more tear out and just an uglier scribe. So not ideal. So if you have to pick one, I would definitely say go with a wheel style or one that has a nice flat blade in it. So that's going to do it for us today. Thank you for watching everyone. If you're new to the channel, welcome and hopefully you enjoy what you've seen here. And ultimately I'm just trying to save you guys a few bucks and maybe push you in the right direction to get the things you need and to avoid the things you don't. All right. Thanks for watching. Take care.
