– How you doing? I'm Matt. And today I wanna show you five tools that'll make your
woodworking life much easier. I didn't even know I needed
these until I got them. Let me show you. If you're interested
in any of the products I talk about today, there'll be a link in the
description below to each one. (soft music) So these are the Kreg set up blocks.
These things are phenomenal. I didn't know how useful
the stuff like this would be in a woodworking shop, until
I got these a few weeks ago. They come in this pack
and they go from 1/8 inch, all the way to 1/2 inch. Now I got to give it to
Kreg customer service, because when I got my package, I actually had two 7/16th
inch bars in there, and did not have a half inch. I reached out to them, and they overnighted me the half inch bar. So that was really good customer service. What's extremely useful about this tool is they're multifunction. They have a depth gauge. You can check the depth
of your cut with that.
And then they have a fence gate. Let me show you how to use them. One of the main uses, and
one of the main reasons I bought these Kreg set up blocks was to set the depth of my router bits. Before I was trying to use
a tape measure to do it. And you know, if you're doing that, you just can't seem to get it accurate. You got to hold the tape measure, and you're trying to
fumble with this router to get everything up, moved up and down.
What I really like about
these, they'll sit right there. You can raise your router until you get to the depth you want, anywhere from one eighth inch, all the way to half inch
with these setup blocks. I've got it set at a half inch deep. So we've got a half inch,
and we can test that cut. And it is exactly one half inch. Another awesome use of these is they actually have a fence
gauge right there on the end. That's what that elongated piece is, that allows you to set your fence depth, whether that be on a
band saw, a table saw, or a router table. Now we'll be able to have
a half inch cut there. And that gives you a perfect
setup every single time, and you don't have to
rely on your fence gauge.
You can also set this to
set the depth of your cut on your table saw. Just like that, we'll
get a half inch cut here, and then you can set it to the half inch. So if you was making some type of a quarter, quarter, quarter drawer, or something like that, this would allow you to
sit up perfect half inch away from everything. So these are actually
made out of aluminum. They're machined, so they're extremely accurate. They're extremely durable. You can't bend them. I guess you could, if you really tried, but just normal everyday use,
you're not going to bend it. They're extremely accurate. They also have holes drilled in them, if you wanted to hang them
on the wall or something, I like to keep them in this
case that they come in, because everything stays
nice and organized.
So Mike Taylor from taytools.com
sent me this on a project we're collaborating on. This was in the box, and
I put it on the shelf. When I pulled it out
of the box, I was like, I don't even know what this is. It was a mystery to me. So I put it on the shelf, and I've looked at it, and looked at it. I never could figure it out. And I was embarrassed to ask. So I sent him a message that said, Hey man, what does this do? If you know what this is, pause the video right now, and comment below what it is, if you know. All right, now that you're back. It's genius.
Absolutely genius. It is a carpenter square fence. It goes on, it's got some brass screws that you just tightened
down with the flat head, just snug them up. As long as everything's touching, this thing is going to be
accurate, dead accurate. It's awesome. Let me show you how it works. Man, this thing is so fantastic. I didn't even know that I needed this, but now I know. You can just use that as an edge guide or a square guide for
your carpenter square.
It'll fit any carpenter
square that I know of. It's a perfect 90 and it it's just, carpenter squares should
come with one of these, they're so handy. I actually used it on a
mobile work bench build that I'm working on. It should be out this next week. Hold that in place, and use that as an edge
guy for your router. A circular saw, a jig saw, any reason you need an edge guide up to 24 inches on a carpenter square. It's so inexpensive, but so handy to have. I guarantee you, you will not be disappointed
if you got one of those. Basically you turn this
into a giant speed square, is what you'd done, (upbeat music) The number two tool on
your list that you need, that you didn't know you needed was these Woodpeckers' edge rule.
These are actually sent to
me as a gift by a viewer. Thank you very much. These are extremely useful tools. I use them all the time now. I did not even realize how
useful they were going to be when I got them, I keep the 36 inch one by the miter saw, because that's where I
would use it the most. But the smaller one, like this 12 inch, and then
there's a 24 and then a six, the 24 and the 36 are my most used. But I do like to have these smaller ones. I keep them in the drawer. These are at a 90 degree. One side is three, eight inch wide. One side is three quarters inch wide. And what that does is allows
you to hook it on to the corner or the age of a board.
It doesn't matter if
you're using two-by-fours, or one-bys, or whatever, four quarter, eight
quarter, doesn't matter. It'll hook on to that. And it'll just sit there freehand. What makes these awesome
is, you can line this up. You can flush it up on one end like that. The measurements are laid out,
sloped toward your materials. If we're marking for five inches, we can just hold it right there.
And we got a good, accurate mark. We know we got it. The problem with using a tape measure for something like this is, we all know that they're curved. And sometimes it's just hard
to get an accurate mark, holding the tape measure. It's trying to reel up on you. It's just awkward sometimes. One of the other features I really like about these
is, they're exactly the same. So they're dead on every time. They're dead accurate. When you're using multiple
things to measure with, you're going to run into problems. I made a video on tape
measures a while back, but no two tape measures
seem to be the same. Just starting out here with these. You got the one inch mark is
off on all three of these.
And so if using three different
tape measures for a project, I'm going to get screwed pretty quick, when you start trying to square things up. Even at two feet, we can see how far off they are. It's a 16th off between those two. These are about a 32nd off. And these are two Komelon
tapes, and then a FastCap tape. So you can see pretty quick, you can get off when you're
trying to do precise work. And in woodworking, and when you're building
furniture and other items, you want to be accurate. That's going to matter
whether it's set square, whether it's set and flat on
the floor and not wobbling, you need accurate tools. Another great feature
about these edge rules is, because this is three eights
of an inch on this side, you can actually find center
of a three-quarter inch board really quickly. Trying to find center on a two-by-four, this is three-quarters inch wide.
So this is easy to do. You just hold it square on the board, mark up against that edge. You're gonna to flip it around. You're going to use that other
edge to do the same thing. We got center of that board every time. These are also made out of aluminum. So they're extremely strong. You don't have to worry
about messing them up. They also come with these stop blocks. The blocks are plastic. And I think for the money
that you're spending on these, these should be aluminum as well. They kind of cheaped out
on these stop blocks. I don't like that part, but the edge rule itself
is an excellent product. These are useful to have, so you can make repeated
measurements every time.
If you're only going to
pick up one of these, I recommend the 24 inch. That's the one I use the
most often in the shop. If you do get the 12 inch
and you wear an apron, a woodworking apron, this
thing will fit right in there, easy peasy, lemon, squeezy. Hey, click that subscribe button below, click the bell icon next to it, click all, so you get notified of
all of our new content that we've got coming. (upbeat music) This is called a dead man switch, or an electric foot switch.
The way it works is you plug
your tool into the foot switch, and then you plug your
foot switch into the wall. You just step on it. Your tool comes on because it gets power. It's just a disconnect switch that you actually just step on. This foot switch is mainly a convenience. Router tables, drill
presses, lathes, scroll saws, or even a band saw, if you've got a smaller, 110 volt bandsaw, it's just convenient. You walk up, you step on
the gas, you got power. I mean, that's just, basically all it is is convenience. Is it kind of a safety feature? It can be. If, so, I've got this drill press. If I had a bid in there
and I'm drilling something, I've got a hand on the crank here, I've got a handle on the work piece.
If something goes wrong at any point, if something gets hung or
whatever, and I'm I'm drilling, all I gotta do is just
take my foot off the gas, the power stops, and then I can deal with
whatever issue I've got. A lot of people have scroll saws. This is great for that
because you can do your work, take your foot off the
power and then reposition, do your work, things like that. 20 bucks or last for this convenience it's kind of a no-brainer. Number five on the list is probably one of my
favorite jigs or tools that I've gotten recently. And I bought this, actually, I bought it and then they
reimbursed me for the money to use on this channel. So full disclosure there. However I already bought it, so I was already committed.
I didn't know they were
going to refund the money. This thing is phenomenal. This is one of the, I
say phenomenal a lot. This thing is really a genius design. It's so easy to use. This is a Dowelmax. This is how you do Dow joinery right. So I actually bought this at one time, a dowel kit jig. It's plastic, it's cheap. It's extremely hard to use. Nothing lines up right for me. I never had any luck with it. This thing, dead accurate,
every single time, no issues. You can use three, eight inch dowels. You can also use quarter inch dowels if you buy the quarter inch set up. Dowelmax actually has a
ton of instructional videos on how to use this. They also compare this
to the Festool Domino. This is extremely much less
expensive than a Domino.
And it's more strong than a Domino joint, according to their research. Let me show you how to use it. It's so simple. So you can join any number
of thicknesses of material. Of course, if you get much smaller than three three-quarters
of an inch thick, you're going to want to go
with a quarter inch dowels. With the three quarters up, I just use these three
eighths inch dowels, which is what this dowel
pin jig is set up for. You can drill up to five in
a row and then this thing will automatically adjust
to the size you need. So if I was just wanting
to do a butt joint there, I could dowel that in, and it's going to be
perfectly flushed top inside. If you want to do an inset, actually done a three-eighths inch inset on my work bench here. This is where I first used the Dowelmax. It worked extremely well. Everything came out flawless. So it's extremely easy to use. All you're going to do
is set this on there. Make sure everything's
tightened up up here.
These four thumb screws, you'll tighten these two up, and that's going to make it snug against the workpiece. The check mark is your top side. There's a check mark right there. You know, make sure that's flush. This boot side is the face of
your work, so that you know that each piece, whatever
face you're going to be using, then put the boot to the face, is the way I always kind of remember it. Perfectly centered every time. Now we want this piece to
go on there and the face. So we've got to make sure
we put the boot to the face. Once they're snugged up, all you got to do is drill your two holes. That's a perfect joint. It's perfectly flush here. It's perfectly lined here, flush. I mean, it's just, it's
as easy as a pocket hole. So the Dowelmax actually comes
with several space plates so that you can actually create a reveal, or an inset on your work.
So if this was your leg,
and this was your apron, and you wanted it to inset,
you know, a certain amount, whether that be three quarter, half, whatever distance you wanted
to inset that inside your leg or inside the frame, you would
just use these spacer blocks. And they come in from one 16th inch thick, an eight, three eighths, three quarter, and then I think this
one's an inch and a half, or an inch five eighths,
something like that. All you have to do is drop those in place over those thumb screws
and then tighten them down. That gives you your reveal. So when you set this on your work piece, it automatically gives you that offset, that three-eighths inch offset here, or whatever one you put in there. I'll go ahead and put that
offset in there for you. As far as keeping up with
everything with the Dowelmax, I just used a rigid tool organizer that you can pick up at
Home Depot or wherever.
And that way I keep up with
all the parts, pieces, dowels, drill bits, everything that I need
to use with the Dowelmax stays right in this organizer. Y'all know I've been called
the Pocket Hole King, but this Dowelmax makes it so easy to use that this is my preferred joinery method, if I'm wanting to make
something extremely strong, and there'd be no signs of joinery there.
You glue this up, man, this thing's going to be there. It's super solid. And it's easy to dry
fit things with dowels. It makes everything super simple to use. It also comes with a
45 degree offset plate. I'm not sure if it comes with it, or if it's an extra add on,
you want to check on that. 45 degree plate will allow you to do things like picture frames, and other things like that, or any type of 45 degree
angle you may need. I'm extremely glad to
have this in the shop. It's small and it works extremely well. You put four to five dowels in a piece, that thing's going to be there forever, or for as long as it can be anyway. Like, it's extremely strong. If you want to go see
the Dowelmax and action, check out the workmates build, where I assembled the
frame using the Dowelmax. If you like any of the
tools that were shown today, check the links in the description below, and go check them out for yourself.
They're going to make
your life a ton easier in the wood shop. If you got value out of this video, click that box right there. It's going to take you to
the next set of videos. Click on that box, and get you that big
old virtual fist bump. Also with that box right there is one other one of my favorite videos. Thank you so much for watching..