It's EASY to Find Studs WITHOUT A STUD FINDER!!!!!

hello and welcome to Vancouver carpenter today I'm going to teach you guys how to find a stud in a wall without a stud finder so I've spent the majority of my career without using a stud finder because either a I can't find it or B I don't have charged batteries so I have a lot of methods just based on my general construction knowledge that help me find the stud really easily so there's a handful of things you might want to have on hand to make this job easier so roll the tape for marking the wall if you don't want to mark your wall with a pencil I like to use a nail to find the studs so a very small nail this is inch and a half I don't know the gauge but it leaves a very small hole in the wall I've got a little bit of caulking for repairing the hole in the wall I've got my son's hammer so I've got this teeny little hammer but any hammer will do a tape measure and a pencil okay first let's go to that primeval method that you've seen every contractor do and wondered why the heck they're doing that the old thump on the wall so I'm gonna tell you how that works because before I knew about how to find it by thumping on the wall I always assumed that what people were doing was listening for the change in the sound and I could never hear a change in the sound so you're actually not listening what you're doing is feeling so there's a big difference when you're pounding on this wall there is a bit of a change in a sound but more so what you're gonna notice is so studs are spaced usually 16 inches apart so that's roughly this far and so for about 16 inches you can feel it's hollow behind it and then as you're pounding on it it'll actually get quite hard feeling enough that if you're hitting really hard it actually kind of hurts your fist but anyways let's find one here so that's empty that's clearly one right here so I'm gonna put a little piece of tape on the wall right here better get to tape ready so you can find it this time that's it right there so there's no furniture covering this so I'm not going to poke a hole in the wall to try and find it right here but what I'm going to do is measure from the inside corner of the wall and check down by the baseboard and I'm going to show you guys a little trick and this will work especially if you have white baseboards so first let's measure from the corner so it is 46 and 3/4 roughly so let's remember that 46 and 3/4 okay so roll out your tape measure and make sure you're not on the baseboard or it's gonna be further out this way but roll out your tape measure and let's very quickly mark 46 and 3/4 with a very tiny line let's hope I got it now studs can vary like this from top to bottom but this is a pretty good way to check so I'm doing it right in the corner right where okay so I'm off a bit so but I can feel that I was just to the left a tiny bit that's it for sure because it's stopped and so the other thing I know now is that the edge of it is somewhere in here so if you're not afraid to make another hole what you can do is you can go even a bit further this way so that went right in so now I know that my stud is actually right in here and so that this is probably the center right there so now I can check again and I know actually it wasn't 46 and 3/4 it was 47 and a half but it was pretty close and this is a pretty good way to do it and not leave much damage then when you're done you can put a little bit of caulking on each one of these and I love these squeeze tubes just for little stuff just keep them around and so those are now pretty indiscriminate someone would have to get on their hands and knees to find that and if you do this behind furniture even better so that's one method for finding it and part of the reason I like to use a nail is because nails are less likely to puncture something if it goes in so if you use a screw like like a regular screw there's a good chance that that can thread itself into a pipe or a wire or if you also use like a regular drill bit on a drill there's a good chance that that can also drill right into a pipe or a wire and this if God forbid there's actually a piper a wire that close to the drywall this is going to more likely push it to one side or the other or you'll feel a bit of resistance so I find these safer and I'm speaking from experience I've put both drill bits and screws into pipes and it sucks okay let's get on to the next method of finding a stud and this is the one that I do most often so what I do is I look for the outlets so this one on this wall is simple it's really easy so as long as you know how a wall is built that it's made up of a bunch of framing members stood up on end then the next thing you need to know is that electrical boxes are all always mounted to a stud so the reason this one's so easy is because you've got one here and one here so guaranteed there's one running right down the center there so let's see actually if that's on the 16 inch layout with the hole we've already made yes it is so this is exactly 16 inches away from the hole I've already made so that's an easy one because it's on both sides but it's not always that easy to tell but let's really quickly check if I can find one up here because I have a mirror usually hanging here so I can afford to make a little hole right here so that is 31 and 1/2 to the center so 31 and 1/2 is right here and now measuring 16 inches away mmm right here 48 see if there's a stud there yeah one right there so it's just using simple math and construction knowledge you can find these really easily so let's check another wall where we don't have one on both sides of the step so here we have one that we don't know which side it's mounted to okay so I can do the pounding test they both feel kind of the same I suspect it's on this side but I could be wrong and I don't feel like making a hole in my wall to find out so here's another thing that I'm going to do I'm also gonna look for a screw pop so unless you've got a perfect wall that's just been done yesterday you can often find a screw pop in the walls that look like these [Music] now it's also possible that that screw pop is not a screw pot but just a blister so just a little bit of blistered drywall paper tape not paper tape but the actual paper of the surface of the drywall it can come loose and form a little blister so here's another little tip of how to find the studs magnets so you can take a magnet look for that screw pop and there you have it it's gonna stick right to it now that I know where this is and knowing that most walls are 16 inches what I'm going to do is I'm gonna measure which side is it on so I believe it is on this side like I guessed now up above here I have another mirror hanging most of the time so I can afford to check up here behind the mirror so I'm now gonna measure from this direction 93 inches so 90 inches from that wall right here let me a little mark right there yeah there we have it and if you want to make sure that you actually have the center of it again you can do that little test where you test about one inch on each side so nothing there an inch on this side so I'm still hitting something there and that's an inch over from my original mark so what that tells me is that my stud is actually more centered between my original mark and this nail so I can make a little line and I now know the center of my step now once you've found one of your studs what you can then do is you can lay your tape measure out along that line or you can hook it onto the nail you have in the wall and then you can mark 16 inches or 24 inches or some other random number that somebody chose now that's not foolproof you're not gonna find every single stud in a row if they're layout is off or it changes somewhere down the wall but generally it's a very effective method for finding studs I use it all the time and I haven't had a functioning stud finder in a long time because I am one so very quickly let's bring up lath and plaster because that is a little bit different because what lath and plaster is is it's going to be 16 inch studs usually and then you're gonna have strips of wood quarter inch thick strips of wood running all the way across the wall so if you're just using the nail sometimes it's gonna feel like there's resistance but when you're banging on the nail and it's not close to the stud it's going to sort of bounce in and bounce back out a little bit but it will actually go through eventually so if you have laughs and plaster walls you might actually want to use a drill and a screw and you're gonna get the same thing so when it's just the lath and plaster it's gonna go in very easily and not have much resistance if you've hit a stud you're gonna feel the torque on the drill start to bog down it's gonna have more resistance and you'll know you're in a stud but with lath and plaster walls I wouldn't recommend banging on the wall because you could loosen the back of the plaster thereby weakening it and even pounding the nail in overtime can do that so when I do this on lath and plaster it's usually if I'm going to be sheetrocking over top of the plaster this same method will also work for finding steel studs too it's just still a solid thing in behind the drywall so to go over that one more time look for outlets look for screw pops learn how the wall feels different when you're pounding on it and I'm sure you'll be able to find those studs it's pretty simple so thanks for watching Vancouver carpenter if you're having a hard time finding those studs I hope this helps anyways thanks for watching guys hope your projects going well until the next video

Channel: Vancouver Carpenter

Views: 806,436

Rating: 4.7766256 out of 5

Keywords: stud, finder, find, studs, how to find studs, wood, 2x4, wall, ceiling, hang, picture, carpentry, basic, simple, easy, drywall, repair, fill, fix, hole, patch, DIY, gyproc, sheetrock, plaster, paint, painting, trim

Id: Os4t038dWp4

Length: 11min 7sec (667 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 10 2019