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.