- How do you find studs in the wall?
So you're gonna hang kitchen cabinets.
You're gonna hang shelves,
you're gonna hang something on a wall
and you need to desperately know where those studs are.
Maybe you're hanging a TV, as well.
So that's the tough part.
That frustrates so many people and I can tell you,
over the years I've played
with many different alleged stud finders
and all they do is find nothing for me.
So, today we're gonna show you three,
three proven methods that we use every day
to find studs when we need to find them.
Now let me just point out a few things to you,
because you know how like when you play bingo
you get a free spot?
Well this is your free spot, here.
Whenever you have an electrical outlet,
this is typically 90% of the time
when you have an electrical outlet there's gonna be stud
right next to it,
because the outlet box that's behind here,
is usually knocked into a stud that's right here
or a stud that's right here.
We don't know where it is right now,
but at least it kind of narrows it down a bit
so we know where to check, okay?
So I'm gonna review here with you
three different tools that I use.
So this is one of the tools that I've been using
for the last few years.
This here's about $40,
and I like these better than most of the other stud finders
because you just put it on the wall like this,
(thunk)
you push the button,
and when you get in front of a stud you'll see
usually three or four LEDs light up.
See, like that.
And as you move across it stays in position
and you just take your pencil and you mark,
so that's how you know where you have a stud.
That's about as quick as you could possibly get
a method for finding a stud.
Normally there's a stud way in the corner.
For some reason on this particular wall,
they put the stud right here, right?
And you can sort of prove the theory here
of how it works when you can see
a stud's exposed right there.
If I just push the button right in front of it
you can see how it lights up here.
So that's what we do is we can just go across the wall.
We start here,
there's a stud here, we know there's a stud here,
and we know we're gonna find a stud over here.
So within about a matter of a minute
you can do the entire wall.
Let me show you what we do once we find a stud.
All right, so what I do,
once I have my stud and I've marked where I think
is either side of it here,
that's how you know, somewhere along there.
But the problem is, is sometimes if you have wood studs,
or even with metal studs,
they may not be going straight up the wall inside the wall.
That's the problem most people have.
How many times have you put a screw that you thought
was right in the middle of the stud,
and you find out you missed the stud.
That's bad, especially if you're doing cabinets.
(crash)
This is another one that I use, too.
This other tool here.
This is called the Magic Stud Finder here.
And I don't know if you've ever seen any of these before,
but these are really cool.
It uses these little magnets,
with targets on them, see.
And what you do is you stick these magnets,
and these are very powerful on here.
See, while other people are busy wasting their lives
looking for the stud,
I'm looking for the screws that are in the stud
that they used to put the drywall into the stud with.
So you put this on the wall,
and you kind of move it around.
Ope, there it is.
So that one's stuck on the head of a screw.
And I'm gonna move this around
and that found another screw there.
And so now,
what I do is I mark where the screw heads were.
Do it like that with a dot and an X,
so I know where it is.
Now I'm going to find a third stud,
uh screw hole, right there.
So right here,
I have already identified a direct line for three
of the screw heads.
So, presumably when the drywall installers
originally put these walls up,
they can see the studs when they're putting the drywall up,
so they know that they're gonna hit the stud,
99 9.9% of the time
hit the stud.
So now that I have my three dots,
I'm going to draw a vertical line,
and that's how I know that if I put a screw anywhere
down that line,
I'm guaranteed to hit a stud.
All right, so let's do a sanity check here.
Gonna run my stud finder underneath it,
and sure enough you can see my dot is right
in the middle of it,
so I'm guaranteed that right there
I'm in the middle of the stud.
Let's do this one up here, too,
so you can see right there I'm guaranteed that I'm
right in the middle of the stud as well.
And likewise up top,
I'm gonna scan right by it,
and you can see that I'm right directly in line
with a stud.
Okay, so when we're putting up cabinets,
we usually spend a few minutes first going down the line
and I just put tape where each of my studs are.
Right in the middle like that.
That way I know exactly where the studs are.
Okay?
Well here you can already see it.
In here you can see,
if you want to come and take a close look
right over here,
see how these screws are sticking up here out of,
this is where the screws were used to put the drywall in.
You can see how they seem to get it right smack dab
in the middle just about every time.
So there's proof for you there,
if you can find the center heads of these screws,
you're gonna be pretty good solid in the middle of a stud.
Okay so the problem with the other tools,
you know people don't want to spend money on it,
but if you want the stuff that really works
you gotta spend the bucks.
So this precision one that I showed you here,
this one here I paid about $41 for it.
The Magic Stud Finder's about $20.
And then we also bought this one here.
I got this one off my Amazon Prime.
This was about 60 bucks right here, the Walabot.
And what this one does is,
this is the newest technology.
This hooks up to your phone,
and I'll show you in a second,
but basically you'll scan it around the wall
and it shows you the image.
Almost like an x-ray.
So here's what comes in the box.
This is the actual scanner part here
and this sticks to the back of your phone.
And then it comes with a couple USB cables.
One is for type C and the other one's the regular type.
Now mine,
my phone here is the Samsung Galaxy S-8,
and that takes the bigger, slightly bigger type,
type C connector here, which is right there.
You can see it there.
So we're gonna hook that up to it right now.
So I've got my Walabot here connected up to my phone,
and we're just gonna put it up to the wall here.
We know that there's a stud somewhere in this area here
so let's see if it'll find anything.
So I'm gonna do a calibration first.
So it can do it's calibration against this wall.
So I hit the calibrate button
and it's gonna tell me to start.
And it just wants me to sweep around a little bit.
So it can take some readings and see what it finds.
And I've already told it it's on a drywall.
So now it's done with its calibration.
So now you're in real-time mode.
So here, see how it's just spotted this cable right here.
So if we want to come in close and take a look
at the screen here,
see as I move it, it kind of moves it around, too.
So that's real-time mode.
It's almost like getting an x-ray.
So if I follow the wire,
let's say hey I want to know where this wire goes.
It's gonna end up right here at this metal stud.
See that, that's the metal stud right there.
And so,
it disappears because it's strapped to the inside
of that stud now.
So that's pretty much how this works.
This is pretty good, too,
because then I can just mark the middle of the screen,
that's the middle of my stud right there.
So this is another way of finding it,
plus it gives you a glimpse as to what's going on
behind the wall, too.
Like if you have a cable that you don't know,
what's it doing?
Where's it going?
This is another way to do it.
People aren't always willing to spend 60 bucks on this,
but I spend the bucks on all the tools
and make sure I have everything working.
So I'm gonna give you links down below
in the description here,
the written description,
and you can click on them.
Now I just wanted to give you a little disclosure.
They're my Amazon.com affiliate link,
so if you click on them and buy something
we get a little bit of a commission for it.
So that's help us to continue to bring you free videos
all the time and hopefully you'll use it.
Even if you plan on buying something else,
you can still click on any of our Amazon links below
down in the description,
and we would get a little percentage of that, too.
Took quite a bit of time,
so this will be very convenient for them
and you can see you won't need any clearance
when you open up the door
because you can just walk right in,
'cause you'll have a 12-inch deep shelf
that just goes right there.
So here's what it's gonna look like when you
look into the closet here.
Then it's important to find all of your studs,
so I use these little magnetic guys here.
I'll show you how it works,
this is actually kind of cool.
You put 'em in here,
and you just run it up the wall like this,
and when it finds a nail,
(pop)
it just sort of pops right out
and it sticks to the wall there.
A little target guide.
So then I just find two or three points
and I run my tape up the wall.
Wherever you see these strips of tape,
that's where your studs are.
It can't get any easier than this, folks.
I don't waste time with stud finders.
A lot of times they don't work right.
What these guys find is they find the screw.
Forget about looking for the stud,
I look for the screw.
Once I find a bunch of screws in a line,
I know where my stud is
and I know,
you're assuming they hit the center of the stud
because they had the drywall,
the studs were open at one time
when they were hanging the drywall,
so they know where to put the screws.
So this is, to me, over the years proven to be
the most reliable method for marking your studs.