- Welcome back Freedom Protectors. Aye, today we have an awesome,
awesome, awesome video if I don't say so myself,
I mean I'll let you judge at the end with the like
buttons and the comments but, you know look, the
tagline of the channel is learn, innovate, share, okay? And while I hope you're always
learning from the videos that I'm putting out to you, the reality is the second two components are just as important and
they're consistently on my mind, and that is can we innovate
on these techniques and can we reshare that back to you? So, while we have that first
channel video out there which has some great techniques, especially for the beginner, the reality is that
we're always innovating and having to reshare
and update these videos and so look, it is my opinion that what keeps most companies down is that they never innovate, that they find one way to do things and that's the only way they ever do them and then, you know, someone
comes along and (snaps) comes out with a better way because they've never
increased their own ability to do something better. And when it comes to
the channel, you know, channel is still one of the
things in the polymer 80 that, you know, really
gets new users especially and you know, even some of
the old schoolers, you know, it just kicks their butt and
I'm gonna show you today, I mean, how to bang this out in minutes, just minutes with 1st time quality. So we gotta turn that
light back on, right? With just 1st time quality
and it's super simple, using just some hand tools. I'm gonna show you how to cut away a big portion of it really quick, using some tools that
we've used plenty of times in all of our videos, but the truth here is that it's been a journey
for me as well, okay? I, again, challenge
myself every single time I create a new polymer 80 to do a different technique
than I did the time before and so I'm gonna show
you some of that journey, some of the tools that I have used, some of the tools that
I've actually had to make in order to bang out the channel because I think it's
important when you look and you see that it might
spark some ideas in yourself that you can bring to the
community and then we can, you know, share it with them as well. But, as far as this channel, I'm gonna show you a couple
minutes (snaps) bang, 1st time quality, you ready to go pro? Let's go baby. (intro music) Here we go my friends,
the channel, the sequel, so just a quick recap from
the original channel video, when it comes to doing this channel, you want to remove material, okay? You don't wanna use sanding discs and go down and melt material down, okay? Although, I did show you on my last video that if you're going to use sanding discs, which discs you should be using, you should be using
the fine, extended ones that fit in there with the pin and I'll actually show
you that a little later in the video, okay? But realistically, what
we wanna do is cut away as much of that channel as possible, and as we know, I break the channel down into kind of sections, okay? The first section is the walls, right? I have a wall on the left, and I have a wall on the right, okay? So I call these the wall and
the wall comes all the way down to where our arch, our
half-moon there begins, okay? So, this wall and this wall. And what I'm gonna show you is how to cut those walls
real easy, real quick. And then we have kind of the U that we need to take care of, okay? But the truth of the matter is, is that using this method, you're in and out, five
cuts, quick, quick, quick, bang, bang, bang, and you've got 90% of this
channel removed, okay? So, I'm actually not gonna waste any time, we're gonna jump right into it, because I do wanna show you
some tools as well, okay? So, I'm just gonna get some
fret cutters here, right? We know this, we love these fret cutters, we love this tool, it doesn't matter if you have this expensive ones or you even use the cheaper ones that we have in the shop, okay? But, the fret cutter obviously,
straight, flat across, that we use for our tabs, I mean you know, I've had some people kind of hit me up and be like oh I do the tabs this way, I do the tabs that way, listen my friend, this is the easiest way to do the tab. But, let's try to innovate. So I'm always open to new
suggestions on that, okay? But, you can take either one and what you're gonna do is you're gonna take your fret cutter and you're gonna come in
right up against that wall with the fret cutter, cause
the fret cutter does what? Cuts nice and flush and flat, right? So let's see, let's see
if we can get it right up against the wall and once
you get up against the wall, you're just gonna sniparoo. Now, what the smaller fret cutter, these are the medium duty, you can see I can't
really get in there deep into that channel, okay? So, it's good don't get me wrong, but I'm gonna use the bigger ones because I wanna get just a little deeper cause after that we're
gonna go in with these and we're gonna cut down, okay? So you can actually
use either fret cutter, just the bigger ones get us a
little deeper down the walls, see how I can come right
down that wall with these, like pretty far, right? I'm like 85% of the way down
that wall right now, okay? So all you do is take your fret cutter, you're gonna go ahead and
line it up on either side of the wall, there's a little
lip in the wall, right? Kinda keeps, almost like
it acts as a guide for you. Put the fret cutter in,
right up against the wall, so just like that I'm
flush against the wall, I'm flat on the frame,
here I'm flat on the frame and I'm on the wall and
the front and the back. Just like that, okay? So once you're there, oops mine slipped off a little bit cause I'm trying to record and show you this at the same time. Once I'm here, I verify I'm
on the wall, left and right, I am, sniparoo. Bang, you see how easy that was? So simple, right Freedom Protector? Then, just let go. And now I've got the cut
coming right down the wall. I'm gonna flip it around and
I'm gonna do the other side, I take the fret cutter, come
straight up against that wall, just like that, I'm flat on the frame, I'm good in the front,
I'm good in the back and very simple my
friends, sniparoo, okay? Now, I've made my cut on the left, I mean look how great that cut is straight down the wall, right? So now, I'm gonna go ahead and
I'm gonna get this tool here, which is an angle cutter, I'm gonna just come right
into what I cut with it, just like that, to the end of the wall, bang, see this, okay? Now look, this tool here is like an Amazon, cheapy, Chinese tool, so if you can find another one I just haven't been able to find one, please let me know so that we
can share it with other users because they're very inexpensive and they are from Amazon and they are only a couple of dollars, but I have found that I can get through maybe two or three polymer
80s at the most with this and then I have to sharpen them and it's becoming a pain in the neck and now it's becoming dull, okay? But you just put it down, let's see if we can get a close-up here. All the way down the channel,
to the top of the wall, to where the wall ends I'm
sorry, right there, okay? And then just cut. Just like that, okay? Give it a little wiggle cause
they're dull, all right, but you can see man, look at that guys, I got that wall cut out
right now, all right? Then I'm gonna get the fret cutter again. Now, you may have seen, you know, we've had this kind of technique
for a while like this v-cut where people come in and do a
v-cut but it only takes out, you know, kind of like you
know, a little triangle area. Well here, we're gonna
do an x-cut, all right? So what I'm gonna do is I'm
gonna put the fret cutter so that I can cut from this top corner to the bottom of the cut
where this wall ends, okay? So I'm gonna come from here to here, then I'm gonna flip it around and I'm gonna do the
other side, here to here, so we're making an X
from the top of our wall where we cut to the bottom
of our wall, all right? So I'm gonna go ahead and
take the fret cutter here, see if we can do it this way. I'm gonna come in, I'm
gonna put the fret cutter on the bottom right there and to the top. Now I wanna be super careful here that I don't hit the actual raised polymer in the channel that acts as a guide, okay? So I'm here and here, I'm
just gonna hold it in place so I can bring it up and show you, okay? So I'm in the bottom of
that cut of that wall and I'm coming all the way
up from my first part of my X to the top that I cut, all right? And they're very simple, just a little squeeze
(fret cutter cutting) and I'm through. Did you hear it? Okay, so now this is what I got so far. I got one cut here, one cut here, and one cut coming this way, okay? Now we're gonna do this side, we're gonna start at this
side on the top here, all the way to the bottom of this wall, that's gonna make that X form, okay? So I'm gonna come here,
line this up, nice, nice, the fret cutters at the
bottom, just like that and at the top, good I'm just gonna verify on the other side that I'm not too low, okay good, and then sniparoo, bang. Now look, this is what we
got there, Freedom Protector. Look how great that is, right? Look at that. Now, let me get this light over here, now what we're gonna do is
remove some of that material cause it's already cut,
it's just ready to come out. So I'm just gonna get the pliers here and I'm gonna come in
to where we cut, okay? So this wall is all set, I'm just gonna wiggle,
wiggle, wiggle it out, boom we don't need that
channel piece, right? The other side, same thing. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle out, boom. Look how much of that
channel we just took out, five cuts, one, two, three, four, right? We use this one, I call five, all right so bang, bang, bang, done. I mean that simple, we took
out all of that material and our walls are nice and straight. Now we just have this little
piece to take out, okay? This little middle piece here that's coming into our channel, put this stuff aside,
save it as a souvenir. Now, couple of things,
I used to use this tool and you've probably seen me
do it with the live build, okay this is like an angled chisel, wood carving chisel, okay? But I love this one cause it comes down, it dips and then goes straight, right? So it allows me to kind of get in there and chisel my way through. And if you've missed
some of my live builds, you have to really make sure that you have notifications turned on wherever you're watching me, so YouTube it's the
little bell icon, okay? Facebook will obviously
send you a notification. But this tool works great
cause I can go in there and I can take that out. However, I've shown that one before. But now, I've been kind
of making a new tool. So again, this is part
of that same Husky set and I've made a new like little nipper to come in here like so and cut a lot more of that
piece out that's left, okay? And now I make this tool and again, I'm gonna show you tools again. It doesn't come this size, they all pretty much come this size like this is a standard
small nipper, okay? And what I did was I just grinded it down so it's a lot thinner and fits into that
channel beautifully, okay? So I'm gonna use this tool now, we've got pretty much
the entire top going, I'm gonna use this one and I'm
gonna come in just like so, just like that, and (nipper snipping) snip it right out. Did you hear it? Bang. What channel, my friends? What channel were you talking about? There's no channel there,
it's all right here now, okay? See how simple this was? Just a few minutes, we
got all the way down. So now all we have left to is
some 1st time quality work, just to clean up that little piece, I'm gonna show you that in a minute, I wanna put this stuff aside and I'm just gonna show
you some tools like I said, some evolution and then
at the end I'll just clean that right up for you like we always do at our channel, okay? All right so now let's
talk about some tools and some methods that I
have used along the way. So, let's start with the chisel, right? So you can get a chisel
and a rod at Home Depot and make it yourself, you
can bend it to form to fit within that channel just like that, okay? With this though if
you're gonna use a chisel, you still want to clear
as much of that top out of the way as possible, and again this just took
us 90 seconds to do, okay? So you cut away as much as
possible and then just use the chisel on this last
little piece here, okay? And when you use the chisel,
you come in on an angle, right? So don't come in dead-on at first, try to come in on an angle
like this to make your cut, to make your outline, then
turn it to the other side, make the outline on the other side and then you can go straight on, okay? Now the same is true if you're gonna use a
wood carving kit, right? So wood carving kits are fantastic, we use them in stippling as well. But, they'll come with like straights, they come with a couple of
different size half-moons, you know, this is a straight so you can come straight
in like this with it, you know, from this side and if you're gonna use a bent portion, come in with the bent one like that. And again, start on either side first to make your outline
like so, make an outline, make an outline, then
go dead-on, all right? Because this channel as we talked about in the original channel video, starts thin and then it
flares out on the bottom and if you try with any
type of carving tool or chisel tool to just
do it all in one shot, forget it, you're gonna
be there forever, okay? And I actually did that one time and I actually have a video
of that somewhere out there, but it's a pain in the neck, okay? So anyway, carving tools are fantastic. 9/32 wrench, pretty much
everybody has one of these in their toolbox, okay? Just a simple 9/32 and what
I've done here in the past is grind down the teeth and used this as kind of
a punch to get through. I've had moderate success with that only because I have to
keep the channel intact in order to really use it as a punch, in other words it's really
hard to use it like this okay, and once I grind it down and so you're fighting a
lot of that thickness, okay? So let's talk though about
making those little nippers, so here they are right here. So with these little nippers, again the standard size
looks like this, okay? So you can see that I
have trimmed this one down so that it fits into our
channel like that, okay? Where this one, this is standard size, will not fit in there
without clipping the sides of your walls which is no good, okay? So what we need to do is we just need to grind that down a little bit. Now how I do that is, this
carving tool is perfect so I'll just use this as a guide. I just put this over the
tool and I mark either side and then that's what I grind off, okay? So that's exactly what we're gonna do. So I kinda got my little outline here, and now we're just gonna trim this down so we have a nice custom channel tool. Take our Dremel and our
shaft with our stone, so I'm gonna use an orange stone, you can use a green stone, you could use a pink stone, whatever comes with your kit
will work just fine, okay? And then we're gonna turn this Dremel on and we're gonna be good to go. Make sure you have your
handy, dandy safety glasses on for this because shards of metal are gonna go everywhere, guaranteed. I'm gonna crank the Dremel up to 30. (Dremel whirring) All right, safety glasses
are on, make sure, now take your tool and you're gonna follow
right up into your line. Just like this. Nice and easy. You're doing one side first, then I'll get to the other side. (audio speeds up) All right, I think we're good. Give it another little test, make sure that you have full
clearance right through, just like this, I'm good to go man. All right, beautiful, right? Beautiful. So now we have our own custom
channel cutter right here man. Just like that, pow, pow, pow, right into that channel, okay? And that's how you do it. All right, I'm gonna clean
this disgusting shit up cause you know I got OCD
and I can't deal with that and then we're gonna get ready to just 1st time quality that channel, all right brothers and sisters. All right, now let's get
down to 1st time quality, we just got this little, little bit, this little 10% left
that we need to bang out and, you know, smooth out, make it a perfect 1st
time quality channel. Okay what I'm gonna do first, just in case you have missed and watching this video first and you missed the original channel video, couple quick things okay? Number one, this is an essential tool, I mean it's not even a discussion okay, this flex shaft fits
perfectly down in here and keeps us nice and
safe on the wall, okay? Don't wanna use a Dremel
one, you wanna use this one, it's 20 bucks, it is perfect for this job to keep us 1st time quality. What we need to do here
is kinda smooth this down. Now, I am going to use
a routing bit in here to get rid of a lot of this last 10%, in addition to that I'm gonna
use our diamond bits, right? So we talked about our diamond bits a lot in that original video, I'm gonna use some of the ball bits here. I'm also gonna be using our fine polishers that we talked about, right? Our green polishers that give us that 1st time quality
look right at the end. In addition, oh and
here's the routing bits, all of these little bits
and little tool kits will be in the description for you so you don't need to worry about that. Talk about this as well, everything wants to be wet when we're doing this portion, okay? So I'm just gonna drop these bits, they're just different sizes
that I pulled from the kit, let them soak up while we go
ahead and we bang this out. So, this is gonna sit nice and flush, I have two different size routing bits that I'm gonna use here, okay? We're gonna start with the smaller one, the spearhead one first. Now the reason we do that is because we're still
a little high, right? We're still up, I'm just
gonna put it here like this and I'm gonna let the routing
bit do its piece, okay? We never wanna be on an
angle here in any direction when we're trying to take away material. Now I'm also gonna say
this before I go there, I'm not gonna fight ya on
the sanding stuff, okay? I know some of you are just so attached to sanding bits, okay? If you're gonna sand,
you really need to use the extended fine grit sanders, okay? These aren't Dremel brand, these are the brand
that I have in the shop, they're all different sizes, okay? And they go all the way up to 600 grits, they're extended in length and they help you get really
deep into that channel, so you can see if we
put it here like this, then I can just lay this
flat down and I'm in, okay? So, if you're gonna use a sanding bit, you wanna use these with this, okay? I'm not gonna do that, like I said, I'm gonna use routing bits, okay? Once I get the routing down
and I'm pretty flush here, then what I'm gonna do
is just clean up anything with those diamond bits and then move to my green polishers for
some finish work, okay? So, before I do that though,
one last thing, almost forgot, regardless of how you take
care of this last 10%, okay, even if you use sanding bits or you choose to go with the routing bit and actually you can even
use the diamond bits here if you wanna take that out, if you're really nervous about
using a routing bit in here, I understand, especially for a new person, then you can use the diamond bits, it's just gonna take you a little longer but you're gonna get
the same result, okay? What you wanna do is
take your 18 chisel here out of your X-ACTO kit you know, we've been talking
about this really since the beginning of the channel, okay? These different X-ACTO knives, but I'm gonna take an 18 and what I'm gonna do is
start to chisel my way down a little bit and make some relief cuts. Now the reason I'm doing this and again, doesn't matter the method I'm gonna use, is I want it to chip away, so rather than take it all in one piece, what I'm doing is making
relief cuts straight down and then I'm gonna go on an angle, so whatever my bit is will chip
that piece away, all right? And then we'll wanna push things down into the channel, all right? So I just take this 18
chisel knife here, right? Cut it up, does it just like
butter, it's really good. If you can see like here
on this wall right here, I miscut that bottom wall, no problem, I just take my chisel,
come right down, see that? Made it nice and flush in there now. And then take that right out. No problems whatsoever, okay? So you know, be good here, make
a lot of little relief cuts, it's gonna make your job that much easier. Just like this, okay? There's that piece, chisel
takes it right out, okay? You know what, that just
reminded me of something, you know how we cut all that channel away? Some of you get in a position
where you misdrill holes and need to J-B Weld,
you wanna save this stuff and you wanna save your
tabs that you cut off because if you need to J-B Weld, it comes out so much better
if you take little grindings of this and mix it with the J-B Weld whenever you do it, okay? So that's just a maybe
a neat little trick, someday maybe we can actually
do J-B Weld, all right? But I don't wanna condone
non 1st time quality, right? All right, I have the Dremel on 20 and again what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna keep this flat down like this, I'm gonna show you the technique. I'm gonna keep this flat
down, I'm gonna take this, it's gonna go right in the channel and I'm gonna put it flat, just like this and I'm gonna let that do that work. My pinky is gonna be on the
bottom of the rail system, just stabilizing, okay? And I'm just gonna come
back just like this, left and right a little
bit, no big deal here, I'm not going up, I'm not
lifting this on any angle, I'm gonna let the bit do its job and then we'll go to a deeper
bit to get that last 5% out. Good to go. All right, so like I said on 20. (Dremel whirring) Coming down. And I let the bit do the work. All right, I mean that's how fast it is. I mean, we're talking
seconds here, seconds. So get that aside, we are going to switch
to the other routing bit. (Dremel whirring) Down into the frame, let
it sit down and do its job. Bring it to the left and right. All right, so that's all. So now I just need to clean it up. No more channel my friends. All right, put that aside and over here we're gonna start using our diamond bits now here. Boom, boom, boom, bring
out my big one in here and now I just kinda wanna clean up some of these edges here, make
sure we're nice and rounded, there's a lot of little burring
that's occurring right now, okay, we wanna take all that out. So remember, water is our
friend from here on out. So I'm actually gonna take one of these, get some water into the frame here, water is our friend, okay? Staying on 20. (Dremel whirring) I'm just taking those little
lips off from the router. Pool in the edge. All right, the big one's done. All right, take our spray. All right. Now I wanna switch to
the smaller ball bit, which is this one. We'll clean up any fine
lines that we have. I'm gonna pull it down now to 15. (Dremel whirring) All right. (audio speeds up) All right. A little air. Channel is going. 100% going. So now we just need to
make it look pretty. And that's it. But it is going, I got no ridges left. Perfect, all right,
pretty time, pretty time. Come here, let's start with, let's see. Start with our big one here. It's nice and wet right now. Exactly what we want, put that on. This here and get some
water, put it in the channel, just smooth out those scuff marks, we're nice and smooth but we need to make it like glass. (Dremel whirring) All right. Come in and let it do
its job, look see, gone. Gone. Gone. Beautiful. That fast. All right, just like that. I'm just gonna step down, get
in our little corners there. And I mean that quick it
took that stuff out, right? I mean these things are
just amazing, amazing. Get rid of this, gonna go step
down to a smaller spearhead, just like we did in the
original channel video, this is just kind of a back and
forth right here at the end, anywhere you see any marks or any type of marks that are
caused by the Dremel spinning, that's exactly what
you wanna use these for to take it out and blend it back into the original polymer, okay? So little more water in here, right? So we're good, I just
got a little mark here, couple on this side that this
is gonna take care of for us. All right, Dremel back on. (Dremel whirring) That's it. That's it, get rid of some
of the little green residue that's there, just put some
water in there, wash it out, my friends like 1st time
quality is that fast guys. You know, it's just that fast. Any burring, just take
out, really cool, right? Look at that channel. Beautiful. 1st time quality channel. All right. Gorgeous, gorgeous. Have a little bit of burring
right along here you see, right here a little bit of burring so I'm just gonna take an
even smaller green polisher and I'm just gonna come and
touch those two areas up, but I mean this is what we do man. (Dremel whirring) Some more water on them. Like that, just touch up
my walls a little bit, make them nice, nice. Come around to the front here, just cleaning up any
burrs that I left over. I have to get in there
with a small, pointy, get that little burr. Water's your friend man,
especially with this plastic shit. All right. So like I said, sometimes you gotta go
back and forth, right? I got the burr on the wall
but I wasn't able to get the one right there so I
gotta go back to a spearhead, get in there and actually
I'm gonna even go to a tiny one for that. Let's see what we got here. Let's see if we got a
tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny one. There we go, right, like this will do it. Boom. Some water on it, it's
gonna come right off. (Dremel whirring) What burr? Look at that. 1st time quality my friends,
what it's all about. Beautiful, right? Just use this little one to
kinda go around, touch my edges. Gorgeous. Looks absolutely beautiful, okay? That's it my friends, I mean
this is what it's all about. 1st time quality. Five minutes, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, come back in with your green polishers and you have a 1st time
quality channel my friend, that's it for today
brothers, simplify do or die. (outro music)
