[Marc] If you've ever worked with a dark species
of wood, you know that sometimes
you just can't see the line.
[Clark Griswold] Can't see the line, can you Russ?
[Russ Griswold] Nope.
I've tried a bunch
of different options out there.
There is thicker lines, thinner lines,
different colours, there's white charcoal,
there's so many different things
and I won't say I've tried them all
but I definitely have tried quite a few.
So that's what we're going to look at
today. I'm not necessarily going to tell you
exactly what you need to use
because it depends on maybe personal preference,
your vision, how thick you want
that line to be. Are you rough marking?
Are you doing joinery? But I want to
show you all these different options
because they all have benefits,
pros and cons. Alright, so first up I
have the classic piece of chalk.
Now of course chalk is very brittle.
It breaks fairly easily but it sure does
make a pretty obvious line.
So we use chalk once in a while
for rough marking lumber for breaking parts down
works pretty well for that.
But you're not gonna get any fine detail
with something like a piece of chalk.
This is something that was fairly new to
me. It's a red mark marker in white.
It's kind of interesting because it's basically just
like a white sharpie and you can see
you get a nice it's a fairly fat
line but it's a nice consistent line though.
I don't know how practical it is for
marking lumber with some sort of a marker,
right? The lumber just absorbs all the juice
and it's gonna dry out pretty quickly.
Now here's another pencil that's going to give
you kind of some cool options.
This is Pica's Big Dry it's called
and there are different colors
that you can use for the lead,
but particularly the white is kind of handy
because you can go in one direction
and get a finer line.
You can actually even sharpen this up so
it's a blade point really,
or you can go this way
and get a wider line.
This is also a pretty good option for
marking up lumber. Next up we have two
very similar looking pencils. These are both made
by General, this is a charcoal pencil.
The charcoal is kind of nice,
it writes really well, it feels good on
the surface, but I find
that the tip is a little bit more
fragile. Here's another one. This is a,
it's meant to be on all different types
of surfaces, but it draws more like a
crayon. It feels like a waxier material
here. And I do find
that the point is a little bit more
durable and you can kind of see
that right here. Well, they both broke in
the past. I have...great jobs Spags!
I've done that in the past
and the this one has held up a
little bit better than the charcoal but obviously
as you can see sometimes it just ain't
gonna matter. But I will say
that the charcoal is a little bit brighter
and whatever this is made from is a
little bit dimmer. So next up I have
this refillable Statler mechanical pencil.
This is actually, this is one
that I had a mechanical drawing class in
high school. They have different color material here
and I want to say the word lead
you guys know what I mean,
It's not made out of lead,
but whatever it's made out of,
this is sort of a baby blue
that shows up fairly well.
Of course you're gonna want to sharpen this
to a point. These are a little bit dull,
but you can get a pretty fine line
and then I have two other colors with
orangey red and then a darker blue,
but in this case I think the light
blue is the one that's the most visible.
Next up, this is an interesting one,
this is kind of like a gel pen,
they make a few different brands,
this is Art and Fly
and you can see it actually makes a
nice crisp line. Now the thing is ink
pens and gel pens are notorious for drying
up and kind of doing weird things on
the surface. So there's times like this came
out really good, but there are times where
I'll draw, it just kind of skips a
little portion while this looks really good,
it's nice and crisp, it's a fine line.
I do find that it is a little
problematic over time as it starts to age
a little bit, you just don't get as
good consistent of a line.
Next up we get into more mechanical pencil
style and for me the ultimate is half
millimeter lead. Well it's really hard to find
white in half millimeters. So on this side
I've actually got white 0.7 millimeter lead
and that actually produces a decent line.
It's easy to read. It's nice
and consistent, which is why I like mechanical
pencils in the first place,
not too bad, maybe a little bit thick,
but it's still okay now pencil has a
red color that they do have in half
millimeter and as you'll see it can be
a little bit fragile so it's going to
break, depending on the grain of the wood,
it's a little bit more visible than a
regular pencil but I don't know
that that's not a great line.
It might depend on what light you view
it in, but this is probably something I'm
not going to use very often.
And then finally over here we have our
standard pencil line, I have half millimeter
and 0.7 and what's interesting about pencil lines,
standard pencil is that it kind of depends
on the angle you view it.
If you get the light to reflect just
right man, you can see it perfectly but
if you go in the wrong spot you
can't see anything and this is the whole
reason we're doing this in the first place
is because this is not ideal for most
of us. Now summing this up for you
is a little bit tricky.
Like I said before, it depends on your
personal preferences and what you're trying to accomplish.
But I can tell you what I use
and maybe that will help you out.
So when we do rough marking on lumber,
we're marking our parts out,
We're doing rough milling. I typically will use
the general pencils because their standard size
and I can use my electric sharpener to
sharpen them or this little Pica.
Well it's big actually this Pica pencil thingamajig,
those are great for the rough marks in
rough lumber. If I'm trying to be a
little bit more detailed. The truth is I
actually still go to my standard pencils
because I have good lighting in the shop
and I can kind of angle things
and see that pretty well
and if I can't see it,
I know if I just kind of move
a little bit, it'll start to sort of
fluoresce, I'll get that reflection in my eye
and I can see it.
The other thing is the way
that I do my woodworking a lot of
times. I'm sneaking up on measurements.
I'm not so dependent on
that line being absolutely perfect.
So my method of woodworking means I don't
have to necessarily have a perfect nailed shot
every single time I worked my way to
the perfect dimension. If I really did want
to see it a little bit better
and hey, you know, your eyes aren't going
to stay great forever. I've got a light
prescription now, but I can still see pretty
well. But if I started to get a
little bit more of a failed vision,
I probably would go for this 0.7 white
lead. It's very consistent. Doesn't break
that often and you can see it much
better than a standard lead pencil or mechanical
pencil. So as you can see,
there's a lot of options here
and I think this is just a sampling.
So what I want from you guys is
to let me know what things you rely
on to make marks on dark wood.
I would love to know there's,
there's probably things I've never seen before
and I wasn't able to find in my
research. So let me know what you find
down in the comments. Right.
Thanks for watching everybody. We'll see you next time.
[Mechanical Pencil Clicking]