hey adam savage here in my cave with a tool tip
that i can't believe i haven't showed you before i think i've talked about it
on some of my builds but i haven't done an
official let's get into this tool tip about what i'm about to show you um i am
a machine operator i can use my mill and my lathe here in
the shop to produce parts like this trigger here now this is a
part that i machine it's some machining in here there's some
sanding there's some post processing but uh this is and this is a chunk of brass
so in doing these operations i rely on a bunch of different tools for
measuring and marking but marking holds a special
place within the practice of machining
if you want to cut this trigger out of let's say
this chunk of aluminum let's say just for the sake of the argument for this
tool tip let's say i wanted to cut a trigger of
this shape out of this piece of aluminum you can see that the piece of aluminum
itself is big enough to accommodate it but what do i do do i grab a
do i grab egg where is it wait a second ah there it is do i grab one of my
pika markers and sit there and trace it like this
no do you know why well because it's just not accurate enough
i mean i can get i mean i can cut to this line sure i can cut
close to that line and i can keep measuring but when i
am shaping stuff that has mission critical dimensions
even a thin sharpie doesn't even come close enough uh plus
when things get heated sharpie tends to fade away
under heat so that doesn't work um no today's tool tip is all about
a thing that is one of my favorite things since i learned about it
it's called marking fluid uh and this is basically
uh it's called this is made by daikum they are the
primary manufacturer right i don't there must be others but i don't know
their names layout fluid is effectively a transparent
blue lacquer that you that dries quickly and you coat metal parts with it and
then you scribe into those metal parts using a scribe like this one this one is
made by staret we will include links to both of these
uh in the comments below um and
we'll talk about the scribe in a minute but first the marking fluid and let me
get a close-up here so you can see what's
going on you start with your piece of metal and you would clean it
just to make sure that it is free of marks and oil and dust and stuff like
that there we go then you take your marking
fluid and they make a spray marking fluid but i
prefer the stuff that comes in the bottle here it's got its own
integral brush and you just paint the marking fluid on
your work and you can see it creates a really nice
even blue field ah look at that
a uh
quick hit from a blow dryer
sets it nice and bright
and then
so now you can see that my surface is coated really
evenly and really thinly and what the marking fluid allows me to do is it
allows me to make marks that that pierce the marking fluid
but not the metal so i make little marks and i can use those
marks to machine to and to give myself reference points
but when i clean off the marking fluid uh i don't end up with
scribe marks in the metal itself so let me show you kind of how marks
might get made
here we go put down a straight edge make a mark
put down another straight edge
oh bumped my thumb so you can see now i've gone a little
bit deep on on a couple of these uh but
yeah you see how much more precise that is than something like
yeah see that that's not a line i can cut to
that is a line i can cut to um acetone washes this right off so does
paint thinner
um now the scribe let's talk about the scribe there are
lots of different kinds of scribes while like this is often sold as a scribe
uh for seven or eight bucks uh these are fine
i don't think these are as sharp as they could be
um i have a really old one that i bought at a uh
at a flea market years ago this one's been hand sharpened and i have
resharpened it myself many times this is a steroid
this is a steroid scribe and it actually has
the ability to replace the scribe tip that's a really nice
feature i really dig that feature and more than
that i really like the way this feels this it's a it's a really
good feeling scribe why is the way the scribe
feels really important
look if you're just starting out and you have the most common
question everyone who's starting out in making things has which is
what should i spend my money on what are the most important tools for me to get
and the answer is always it depends on all sorts of factors
in general when you're starting out you don't have a lot of money and you have a
lot of time so materials are the expensive part of
the equation and your time is the inexpensive part that's great because
you're going to use a lot of that time to make a lot of mistakes
and get some experience later on as you start to get better you will
notice that some of the tools you've been relying on
can't perform to the level that you need them to
now you have a bigger consciousness about them and now it's time to invest
in the better versions of those tools now you can't go buy the best version of
every tool i mean i know there are some people that can but
pretty much that's that's impossible you just you'd never stop spending money
so what do you spend your money on well spend your money on tools that are going
to serve you for a lifetime and you know while this well starrett
makes these for i think as little as 17 bucks in as much
as 50 or 60 depending on the make and the model of their scribe and like i
said we'll include some links in the comments
below the fact is that starrett makes lifetime
equipment they are one of those manufacturers like
brown and sharp and made a toyota when you buy one of their things you expect
to use it for decades and when you're buying a
tool that can last that long to me it's not too like look this scribe
maybe seven or eight bucks and you could do 98
of what you can do with this with it but this isn't a lifetime tool it doesn't
feel like it there's an aspect to it that's just a little too late a little
too a little too cheap but this this is an
investment in your future uh i'm not saying you
need to go spend 60 bucks but i'm saying spend 21 bucks on a scribe even though
that might seem like a lot when you're using it it's going to feel
great and it's going to give you a better
tactile attachment to your tools so it's kind of a way of sort of peeking
above the clouds all of my entry-level starett pieces
like uh my tap wrench we did a video about that
tap wrench a few weeks ago uh and some of my uh some of my squares
and things like that they all just feel so good because this
is a company devoted like i said to making lifetime tools so
um get yourself some marking fluid use it to do some precise marking up
of your work oh oh oh i almost forgot this one like super
important thing so you don't just make layout lines in
order to give yourself a cut point if you're machining to
you know if you're machining to hide high precision uh these marks
are still just guides but they're really important
guides so if i chucked just this raw piece of aluminum and i knew i wanted to
take off like let's say exactly three quarters of
an inch off the top i can make a mark
that's roughly three quarters of an inch and get close to that
but if i use my marking fluid and i precisely measure
where is my calipers
if i take my calipers set them to exactly three quarters of an inch
and i use them to scribe myself that three quarters of an inch line here
we go
there's the line then oh oh also and if you're taking material away you
want to actually you want to actually make marks that
make it clear what you are
removing see that that tells me i removed that
part but not that part i know that seems like how would you not
know the fact is for any like weirdly
sophisticated part of with multiple angles and multiple mountings in order
to machine it all you can easily lose track of where you
are and layout lines and hash marks letting you know what
you're removing and what you're not and marks that tell you when you're
close to the measurement you want to be at
these become super vital the number of times i have messed up a
part because i thought it was simple and didn't require layout
i now do layout for everything i chuck into the mill unless it is a single cut
yeah it's that it's it's that game changing so
uh daikon makes a spray marking fluid they make it in
red and they make it in blue um
i have found over the years that i prefer
the marking abilities of the actual fluid not the spray so
while i have it um this is my preferred method so
get the self get thyself some blue marking fluid
and describe and start the holy laying out
of things thank you guys for joining me for this tool tip
i will see you next time