How to Use Your Tools!

hey it's jeff from home renovation here and today i got a video for you that's going to probably be one of your favorites ever we're going to be talking about how to use a tape measure how to measure properly right and then how to cut not just on this saw but i'm going to basically take a bunch of different little miniature tool videos stick them all together give you a crash course on how to use all the power tools so today it's how to measure and cut power tool edition let's get into this so before we get into how to use a tape measure i'm just going to let you know we're going to be covering the chop saw that we're going to be covering the skill saw or the circular saw as a lot of people call it we're also using my fine multi tool we'll walk through all of that as well let's see the jigsaw that kind of covers all the bases for the major power tools and once you've got all that information you'll be more comfortable using them and using them safe and getting a really good professional job so first of all let's deal with the tape measure controversy every time i do a video and i'm measuring something and people are always putting in the comments oh you should be using metric why do you use imperial i thought you're canadian don't you use metric no we don't for the most part we're still on imperial measurement system simply because we have so much trade back and forth the united states with our materials it doesn't make sense to be labeling everything twice so i actually grew up using this system i love it and in case you have the opinion that it is more more how should we call this in case you're of the opinion that the metric tape has got a better ability to measure because it's really small numbers i'm going to break this down to one inch is 25 millimeters this tape measure breaks it down into 1 32nd of an inch that information there's more information on this imperial tape there is on your metric tape so the truth of the matter is end of debate the imperial system gives you more information on your tape measure than the metric system once you learn how to use it you're going to learn how to love it because when i'm measuring things right i'm dealing with fractions fractions are important if you can't do fractions in math you got no business being using power tools in the first place because carpentry involves fractions so here's how we're going to work the fractions and then i'll show you on the tape what is what we have one inch line okay and on the tape there's going to be a half inch line and it's a little bit shorter and then there's going to be the quarter lines which are a little shorter again and then there's the eighth we're shorter again and then there's the 16th okay boom boom so that's how we're reading this from here to here is half an inch from here to here is quarter of an inch all right we're gonna write that in okay this is one 2 3 8 4 5 6 7 8. do you understand how that's working it's not that tricky is it so once you learn how to do this doing math is simple because whenever you're doing math and fractions a lot of cases are math we're just working well what's half of that because that's really the math we're looking for so that's one unit it's a whole number half of it you just put a 2 underneath that's half you want to know what half of that is you just double the bottom number so half of a half inch is a quarter inch and half of that is an eight inch and half of that this is 16 and half of that is a 32nd which is the smallest unit of measurement on the tape that's all you really need to know and you can measure like a pro so now whenever you're measuring if you know how to understand what the numbers are you know how to adjust your math so if you want to measure something say well what's what's the middle of the section because a lot of times you'll measure something you'll need to mark the center line so as long as you can divide your fraction just by getting the bottom number whatever it is on the tape double it that's the center line okay and you'll be able to find the center so that you can put a laser level on things hang cabinets and install fixtures and you'll have no trouble at all okay now one more trick when you're dealing with measuring tapes the end of it here this moves okay just just a little bit it moves the thickness of the metal and the reason is this when you're measuring from outside something you want to have the measurement of the outside diameter of the material not the metal to measure okay if you're measuring interior or something the end pushes in so you get the actual measurement of the interior that's all there is to it it's not that difficult now one more trick for you just so you know i see this a lot you can take your tape measure and you can stick it on the ground and you can kind of get up here like this well how am i going to get that actual measurement right that's tricky and maybe maybe maybe now one of the benefits of this tape measure is actually has my metric on the bottom side here okay so it's imperial on the top but it's metric on the bottom it's 40 centimeters okay but the best way to do this is simply measure from the point down to where your eyes are and get that to stop moving okay make a nice line there okay so you make your line and then you put it like a v on it and that v points to that's the spot okay and you just put the number and then you measure from the bottom and you add them together i know it's math scary eh 16 and a half so 60 and a half and this makes 92 and a half and the reason you want to do this because whenever you're measuring something you want to be measuring in front of your eyeballs you don't want to be looking up because distance can really mess things up tapes are are designed to be curled for a reason okay so that they have really ex big stand out they call it so when you're shopping for your tools you know what you're looking for this one i think it has like a ten foot standout yeah that's 10 feet and that's when it broke the idea here is you can be working alone and reach out and set the metal edge on something and then measure across puts the tension on it you're good to go so that's one of the gifts and i think i've talked about this before but tape measures usually always have a measurement on them and it's this measurement so you can actually measure like this read the number at the tape and then add the dimension from the tape itself if it's three inch tape and your measurement is 59 and an eighth no problem 62 and a half is your measurement piece of kick now that we know how to use the tape measure properly and we've settled the debate that imperial system is the best system ever we can move along and we'll talk about how to use all these tools as you can see there's just nothing right about the way that saw set up so i'm going to go over this real quickly and show you how to set up your saw first disconnect the power all right this is not a tool you want to fuss around with if you like to keep your limbs okay first thing we do is we set up the back loosen that put it to zero make sure you grab your square pull your blade protector out of the way set it on your table slide it up to the blade now because just to give you an idea of the variety what can happen here okay when your square is making perfect contact with your blade then you're square brand new saw should be able to set to zero and solve that problem now turn the back so that it doesn't come loose accidentally you chop 20 30 40 times it can come loose and start getting all kinds of weird numbers secondly pop up the lock almost every one of these chop saws has a lever okay and it has predetermined notches in the table all right so if you're sliding it along it'll lock you lift the lever it goes to the next predetermined lock position and these exist because a lot of these cuts are very very very common like for instance 45 degrees that's a basic miter half of 90 is 45 and so you cut two sides at 45 degrees end up with a 90 corner if you have a round corner and you're making two cuts you won't go into 22 and a half a lot of the times we'll use like 30s twos 31s 40s it all depends right but here's the deal you just lock it in position most of your cuts are going to be on the zero or on the 45 you don't have to lock it down when you when you're doing that but if you've pulled out a measuring tool and you need to go to three degrees for instance there's an arrow here and it'll lock you into three degrees and you can actually remove this screw and set this to make it perfect you can get a protractor out here and check your angle and then once you've got it where you want it you lock it in place because it doesn't have a notch to sit in and that's how you can set your angle perfect for what you're doing now we're just going to go to zero so now i'm square to the the back so now i'm cutting on a perfect square perfect angle i'm square from going up that's great next thing you want to check is if you were to loosen it off to cut 45 and the table automatically sits there my guards making contact right now so there's a screw bag here and you can slide this over and have that set up so you're nothing impeding or cutting okay loving it now we're good to go last thing you need to know is when you're cutting on your saw keep your hands away from the blade don't do what i do and go like this sometimes that's actually quite dangerous now if you have a saw like this where it has a full card okay you can actually come in contact with the blade some saws out there especially older ones they used to have a guard on each side and the blade would lift up the garbage lift past the blade sorry so working with the kid one day and he was like going he couldn't tell if the saw was on so he went like this to check push the guard took a big chunk right out of his finger and then as he's just stared at it he fainted i had to catch his arm as he was laying down on the concrete and uh he got up in a few minutes he was fine but just a nick but the point is yeah they're sharp and they're dangerous so pay attention use your safety huh pay attention all right now when you're going to cut you want to have your material pressed down press to the back you want it firmly in place the blade is going to cut towards the back of the machine so if you want to do something stupid and you're out here going freehand it'll twist and catch and throw it against your body hold it down hold it in place set this get the safety trigger always make sure the blade is fully engaged before you make contact with your material and of course that's after you plug it [Laughter] in another tip get a cord that has a little light on it so you know if you got power that'll save your bag all right here we go fully engaged now next tip if you can't cut thin little slivers okay it means your blade's done take it off get rid of it safety it means you have a sharp blade ask any chef in the kitchen they'll tell you all right so when your knife gets dull that's when you cut yourself if you're working with dull tools that's when accents happen use sharp tools you're fine now let's have a look at this because we've got the safety guard that we can move out of the way and you can go like this and you can hold it and you can have larger stock and you can line up and measure just be really cautious of the fact that as soon as you pull that trigger all right you've got 80 well sorry in this case 60 teeth doing three or four rotations in a half a second all right carbide tip they'll do a lot of damage now that's about all you need to know for how to cut on one of these machines they're not that tricky okay you can have the same thing on the back it's called the compound miter because you can adjust this angle and the backwards angle there's other videos on the internet to teach you how to use this really complex situation but for my money i like things simple and boring so i don't do a whole lot of complexity if you're getting one of these consider getting a a stand that goes with it okay now here i am being quite offensive i'm using a dewalt saw on a milwaukee stand and it works just fine it was on sale what do you want i'm cheap and uh there we go all right there's your basics how to use a great big saw like this again i can't stress the biggest mistake that everybody makes with a saw is this they go okay they're slamming the blade into the material before it's engaged fully what happens is these little pieces of carbide tip that are on here they're added to the saw it's two different materials and if you don't treat it with enough respect they'll chip off okay that's why you need to wear safety glasses if you're going to use this tool because the tips can break off now that's enough for the lesson today let's move on to the next tool we're going to talk about is and the skill saw now the reason i call it a skill saw is because i'm old and skill actually came out with the first major circular saws and they kind of had the market corner for a while until everybody else started making tools as well let's just go through this because it's a little dirty but it's got a lot of information on here all right so i've got a measuring plate up here i'm just going to show you something there's a zero written on here right you see that and there's a line and that line also has a zero on it and it has this notch out here so what happens is i'll just make a line on my wood here real quick okay there's a square line because i'm using a square when you're measuring and cutting you should have a square i know it's a triangle but it keeps things square okay so here's the goal when you're working with this tool your goal is to line up the black line or the zero line and if you want you can take your marker draw that line on your saw if you're new it'll help a lot and you want to line that up right there that line gets lined up on what you're cutting so when you cut okay you are guaranteed to keep that in line and your blade will actually make the contact in the right spot so i'm going to show you okay here we go again fully engage the blade and make sure everything is set to square [Music] and you push straight through and you'll always get a square cut even freehand now the secret here is when you're cutting you want to keep this table part here parallel with the edge of the wood you don't want to be cutting like this because then you'll you'll line up you'll you'll get that black mark let's get the marker out again because my son nate does this all the time and it drives me crazy okay he'll draw a line freehand he'll come over here he'll get the blade marked up right on this right spot and then he's not paying attention to the top so he starts like this [Music] now he's off his mark so he'll go like this and you'll start twisting the saw and i'm like dude you're killing my blade you can smell it in the room just with a little bit of a twist because now the blade is being forced to bend it overheats when the saws overheat again the carbide tips pop off okay so can't emphasize this enough if you need to when you're cutting you can always use a table like this you set the black line of the saw where that black line is okay and then you take the square it has a bit of an overhang and you slide it over to the saw you can see that these two plates are going to run against each other all right all i got to do now is set the depth of the blade so that this passes ours up here we go so now i'm going to be square against the square and online perfect every time all right now what you need to know about this tool is really simple what we got here is we got the battery out on the back is just a release and that's for the plate from the tool okay and that sets that sets the depth of the blade i'll show you this way get rid of the guard okay that's a lot of blade right you can set it to zero just a hair you can score something you can use it like this and kerf would so then you can bend the wood right but the the goal here is always set it to the depth that you're cutting and if you're on an uneven surface set it just a little bit deeper and then lock it in place and here's why if you're cutting plywood okay and you're going through the right amount of material okay only this part of the metal is heating up and rubbing through the plywood all right now this blade has got these relief cuts in it to let the heat dissipate if you go all the way deep like that all of that material of that blade is rubbing through the wood and it heats up incredibly fast a hot blade will warp no matter what kind of science they put on that blade so make it a habit that you're always making adjustments based on the thickness of your material and then lock it in place okay now next tip we can use if you've ever seen me do a shed imagine that i have a shed video put the link in the video description i built the shed basically with one of these what do we use max a level a square yeah like basically all we ever used there's measurements here you see this so this is a like a measuring table for you one to five inches and it has the half and the quarters and the eighths as well so there's one inch right there's two inch three inch now here's the best part okay so now i'm going to show you how to make your recircular saw or your skill saw perform a lot like a table saw it really becomes a portable table saw there's no difference between this table and blade and a table saw except the size and the fact that this is so much more flexible let's say you're in a situation hey the subfloor is too long i need an inch cut off well you got a choice you can go and find a four foot straight edge right and then pull out a pencil and draw a huge line or you can just use this here put one inch on the edge of your material okay come up here pull the guard put your finger right here on the plate i can be there all day long there's no danger there's no risk of injury so don't be crying in the comments section we're showing big boy techniques here now put that mark on your edge [Music] done not wasting any time you don't have to go downstairs set up the table saw find another extension cord pull out the square it can take somebody who's helping you an hour to cut a piece of wood like that where you show them how to use the tool in the first place right okay now one other thing you want to know about this tool is how to change the blade why not usually they come with a wrench in the back of the handle okay again make sure the power's out and they usually have one of these little levers here function what that does is that creates a lock for the blade so it's not moving around you get underneath here and you just and you want to pinch this to here right don't go freehanding it because look what happens it releases you'll rub your knuckles up against all the carbon tips that's stupid set it up and then just pinch these two together releases that nut and you pull it out and this piece comes off and the blade pops out done okay and you just slide the next one in same way this only takes a few seconds now this is the machine thread it's all metal on metal it's really hard to cross thread but with all things go backwards until you feel it catch there it is come on [Laughter] just giving me a little bit of trouble here and then hilarious i wonder if one of my knuckleheads did this there we go ah yeah i think we got to leave that in max that not everything goes smooth you know like sometimes it's just really weird same thing the blade is still locked don't put a lot of tension on this okay now that i've got it snug watch the hands pinch now it's locked you're not gonna risk ripping your knuckles apart okay that's all you need to know the wrench just goes right in the back again boom ready to roll [Applause] now one more thing when you're using power tools that record this always have a battery on the charger yeah don't wait until you run out of power to go find one that's got power in it discipline first thing you do when you get to the job site is change the batteries from old ones for the new ones to get them powered up right when you're going home at night get the batteries on the charger yeah all right next tool let's have some more fun one of the most common things we do in construction is we build walls and then we cut out the door the base plate now this is going to be a closet system so i've got a double french door going in here so i'm actually cut out the plate now because it's no longer needed for that we use a sawzall and there's different variations there's two hands there's one hand there's quarter there's cordless i picked this one up it's a 20 volt brushless it's got a lot of power i'm kind of loving this tool to be honest with you it's becoming one of my favorite ones and if you're interested to get something like this you know you can always use our amazon link check out the video description and you can go to the dewalt store on amazon and buy your tools there a lot of cases you can buy them without batteries a la carte save a lot of money it's 99 duck 99 bucks if you buy without the batteries and you don't need a lot because these tools honestly if you have three batteries and you have one on the charger all the time you'll never use up the power faster than you can make it so all right now here we're going to just use the blade it goes cuts going in both directions okay because of that if you hold it out like this there's an incredible amount of vibration in the tool because every time it's going back and forth the tool is moving as well so you're fighting with it the whole time the plate here is actually designed to be pressed up against the material gets rid of the vibration there we go it's released just pop off the floor now the reason these tools are awesome is because you just noticed i can't always have it up against the edge of this the plate whenever it's possible like if you're cutting in the middle of a wall okay press the plate up against it all right do yourself a favor this is what makes you cut twice as fast so use it and remember if you're cutting a stud on a wall and you're not sure if it's structural if the blade gets stuck in the wood it means it's holding up your house stop what you're doing release release the the tool from the blade leave it there and call a structural engineer like it's really easy not too hot yet and you just pull it out okay i'm gonna put a blade in and it locks in place i have another reciprocator has multiple options um you can actually put the blade in sideways upside down okay really easy and and that's another feature as well if you want to get it but for me for just straight cutting i've got this crazy blade on here and i can go at it all day long i'm not even left-handed and that worked like a charm there's not a whole lot to this it has a lock like a safety catch on a gun all right don't ask me why it has it most tools you have don't have a lock but this one because it's so small you're just picking it up you can turn that on by accident so it's safe for that way you just oh geez whoops you know so you can use the lock if you have to especially if you're working with people who don't have their head screwed on straight you know what i mean safety first next tool you're going to want to learn how to use is a jigsaw all right what do you say it's a pretty straightforward tool i mean it has the safety on it so you don't have to be squeezing the trigger the whole time which is really handy we use them a lot for cutting out sinks and that sort of stuff laminate countertops so you can turn the tool on press the button and then you can just drive it using both hands so you can scribe whatever you're cutting there's a lot of different blades you can get you can get thin ones sharp ones plexiglas metal wood laminate countertops fine cutting i like the aggressive cutting myself from most cases and all you do is you set this plate on here and the reason mine's cutting tape last time i used this i was probably cover cutting through a laminate countertop and the older these things get the more likely they are they got a piece of metal nicked or something so i just cover it up with tape so i don't get scratches and stuff we'll just demonstrate this [Music] this is not exactly what we call fine carpentry but you can get more precise tools and you can add a few features on here you can adjust the speed that it runs at okay so that can give you a lot more control the other thing you can do is in this particular saw you can see the picture here i believe we'll go do a rotation motion all right and you can have the blade where it's usually cutting from the bottom up right see that that blade is designed only cut in one direction the reciprocator cuts in two when you're cutting like this and using pressure on the plate and you're you're you're cutting up the blade almost resets and then cuts up again does that make sense okay and that's really good if you have a really fine tooth blade and you're doing some more precise work you can slow the speed down have a lot more control and you can get exact detail without making a bunch of splintered wood like i did in my plywood i think this blade is also pretty old you can see how the marks on the side of the blade are going silver that's really where most of the cutting goes on and it's almost worn out so is this tool actually but i'm cheap and so since i don't have anybody in the corporate world like dewalt sponsoring this channel yet come on guys pick up the phone you know how hard it is to find a representative from dewalt nowadays you can't get to a trade show yeah anyway don't get me started i'm not buying new tools until these ones die yeah the new ones are better but i'm cheap i told you this before all right next now the best tool before we talk about the next tool which is the greatest tool one of the greatest inventions of all time because it cuts anything give this video a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet and ask your questions in the comments section i've got a lot of experience with a lot of different tools okay so if you want to know what brand is better or worse there's a lot of variation out there end of the day you get what you pay for right so if you want to save money and you're using a tool occasional that's okay don't be hard on yourself but if you're looking for a performance man there's a lot of multi-tools out there this is not a new invention it's just been newly adapted into the homeowner's repertoire okay this particular tool um well here let me just turn it on and i'll show you how it works you see that vibration looks like something you'd find in a dentist's office doesn't it the tooth is extremely really interesting it just vibrates back and forth it's kind of like a razor for your face guys but it's got no cover no guard no blade so it's it's a little dangerous the coolest thing about this tool is that the way you change the blade is you just unlock it and it lifts out okay this little pin just drops in most of them are universal so you can set it in any angle you want when you're getting ready to work you want to do something really funny on an angle like that you can just set your pin in place back to go good to go all right has variable speed on it as well so you can have more control um and just to demonstrate these are actually milwaukee blades they're actually quite expensive okay now in the world of youtube you can see and get information just about anywhere now one of the coolest videos i think i ever saw in my life was it was by leah it was uh see jane drill is the youtube channel if you haven't checked it out you should uh she's a journeyman carpenter and she's got a lot of really cool information in her channel so shout out for jane because this was the best she put this in a vice and she actually just took out a metal file and cut new teeth at least these are 20 of blade in a lot of cases right you don't mess around with that so that that tip was invaluable after i saw that i stopped shopping for new blades now i just sharpened them myself so cheers jane that was great now let's watch this cut [Music] now you get an idea you can cut squares in plywood or stock lumber or drywall and the dog hated it i think this one was uh it's three to four hundred bucks okay so um you can do just about everything without this tool right but there's nothing you can't do with this tool so you get to decide if you want to spend the money it is uh it's a save your baking kind of tool i mean you know i i'll pull this out once every two or three months and it's just like you know thank god i have this in the toolbox right anyway there we go guys uh remember when you're working with this kind of stuff when you're measuring and cutting uh measure once cut twice it's my motto okay really just take the time to measure give yourself the ability to cut it a second time it's always better to be a little long than a little short okay that is words you can live by do yourself a favor make sure you get yourself a little square okay do really good quality work you'll be proud of and if you want to know what i think the tools are that you need to own as a homeowner if you're going to be in the renovations you can check out the link over here and we did a little video talked about all the power tools we think you're going to need a lot of versatility in that video you won't even find this tool this is amazing but it's not the one that i think you need to have it's just a lot of fun to have all right until the next time guys keep your stick on the ice we'll see you then cheers

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 172,859

Rating: 4.9257612 out of 5

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, jeff thorman, homerenovisiondiy, power tools, how to, home improvement, circular saw, essential tools, diy renovation, home renovision tools, How to Measure and Cut the Right Way! (Power Tool Edition), tools, tool, angle grinder, dewalt, miter saw, how to measure and cut wood, how to measure and cut trim, how to measure and cut 45 degree angle, how to measure and cut drywall, diy, jigsaw, oscilating saw, reciprocator saw, sawzall, tape measure tricks

Id: zJEtdPvmoPc

Length: 32min 32sec (1952 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021