Today I'm going to be sharing with you 10 more of my favorite shop hacks tips and tricks in the hopes that they will make your life a little easier as they've done for me. Let's not waste any time, let's get right to it. Hi, I'm Andrew Burke and this is Burke Make Stuff. Welcome to the workshop. I'm glad that you're here with us. Based on the amazing feedback I got from you guys when I made my first shop hack videos, I decided to keep a running list in my shop that I use all week long and every time I realize I'm using a shop hack I write it on that list. Every time I get 10 or so I'll come out one of these videos so that you can hopefully learn something from them and use these shortcuts in your own shop. The first one is one I've been using for a long time and I didn't realize it was a shop hack at all. Shop hack number one deals with this, an extension cord, something I and I'm sure most of you use every single day in our shop. Now if I only need four or five feet of extension cord, I don't want to unroll a 50 foot length. That's ridiculous. Not to mention putting it away waste a ton of time. So instead of winding it up from the ends, wind it up from the middle. That way if you don't need to use all 50 feet of the cable, you can just unwind what you do need and have both the cable side and the plug side at your disposal. Then when you're done you put those five feet that you use back in and you're ready to go. Whenever I'm taking something apart and I want to make sure I don't lose any of the nuts or bolts or screws, I take a small magnet and I put it on the bottom of the metal container I'm using to hold them. That way it offers a lot of extra strength to make sure nothing gets lost. I picked up this little blue handheld paint bucket at one of the big box stores for a dollar and it served me really well other than using it again and again and again for painting. Anytime I need to drill into drywall I simply put a piece of blue painter's tape across it, stick it to the wall underneath where I'm drilling and I never have to clean up afterwards. Very often when you're working with dowels you'll need to find where the exact center of that dowel is. But how do you do that? I'm going to show you how to do it with just about any piece of paper you have laying around and a pen or pencil. But I'm going to show you this one on paper because seeing it big will make far more sense than seeing me trying to explain it on here. Let's use this circle to represent the end of a dowel. Grab yourself a piece of paper that has a 90 degree corner and line it up on that circle. Draw the two lines in that create that 90 degree angle. Then take the same piece of paper and line it up with one of those two lines you just drew and add one more line creating two 90 degree angles within that circle. The final steps are to draw lines that connect the corners of the 90 degree angles with the adjacent points where the line meets the circle. That'll give you the exact center of a circle every time. Since we're already talking about finding the center of things now is the ideal time to show you my next chop hack. And that is a way to find the exact center of the side of a board which I often need to do in my shop. Let's go over the drill press and I'll show you how. If you don't have a drill press that don't worry you should go check out this hack video that I made and it shows you how to drill an exact 90 degree hole without using a drill press at all. All you need for this one is any piece of scrap wood you have lying around. I'm going to use three pencils because I have them handy but you can use dowels or screws or pins whatever you have around. You also need a tape measure and a drill bit that matches the diameter of whatever you're going to be using. In this case I'm using three eighth inch pencils so I'm going to be using a three eighth inch drill bit. Make three equidistant marks along a straight line on the piece of scrap wood. Drill out each of those three marks with the drill bit matching the diameter of the pins you're going to use. Put the pins in place and you're ready to go. Chop hack number next deals with dividing a piece of wood into equal sections. Now I am not good at math. I don't pretend to be my wife is an accountant and I let her do the math. For me I try to find every way around doing it that I can. So if what I want to do is divide this into four equal sections I'm simply going to take the next highest number on the ruler that's divisible by four easily. So in this case the number above nine divisible by four easily is 12. I then take that 12 inches and put it at an angle across the board. Now 12 inches divided into four equal sections is three inch sections. So I'll mark out three six nine and 12. This allows us to use much easier math to get our four equal sections from a board that we would otherwise not be able to do that so easily with. The next shop hack I get to talk about is one of my favorite inventions out of all of mankind. And we've invented a lot of stuff but this one is Velcro. Velcro is one of the most useful things we've ever made and in my shop it keeps me safe so I absolutely love it. I have machines everywhere, extra cables everywhere, wires everywhere and they're neat and they're organized so they're not dangerous. And the way I do that very easily is by wrapping everything up and putting Velcro around it. So it's still very accessible and it's still very safe. That's how I like it. No shop can ever really have enough light especially when you're working on something small or intricate. You always need the extra bit of light to make sure you can see what you're doing and stay safe. Now you can without blinking an eye go and spend hundreds of dollars on specialty light for your workshop. And in some instances that's definitely called for but in my shop I spent six bucks on this. I've been using it for years and I love it. It's a clip light. Check it out. That's an efficient inexpensive light source. I am fully aware that this next shop hack slash tip slash trick is nuts. It is. I know it but I am a firm believer that any good maker's shop should have one of these. I hair dryer. What's this? I said take only what you need to survive. It's my industrial strength hair dryer and I can't live without it. Not just to keep you looking luxurious but because it is a versatile tool. A heat gun puts out way too much heat and it usually has limited settings. This you can control the heat that's put out. You control the air that comes out of it. If you are drying paint. If you are drying glue. If you are drying touch up. If you are shrink wrapping things. This is your friend. My 10th and final tip trick hack. Isn't anything you'll find in your workshop but it's something you're going to find online. It's probably my new favorite app. I'm on it way too frequently but it's amazing. It is called Makers Playground. And before anyone asks no I don't make a cent from them. They don't pay me to advertise. That's not what this is about. It's just an amazing amazing app. It's basically a social network for Makers. For people who build. For people who create. For people who like to make stuff. Makers Playground is actually put out by Izzy Swan. You guys might know him if you don't. He's got a great YouTube channel. He's a maker and inventor and all around. Awesome dude. I absolutely love this app. You should definitely check it out. It's a great place to get ideas, to share, to ask questions, to get knowledge, to gain knowledge, to share knowledge about whatever it is that you like to make. Whether it's wood, whether it's sewing, whether it's painting, whatever you're into. Go check it out. I hope you guys love this tips, tricks, and hacks video. If you did make sure to hit that subscribe button. I know there's a ton of you guys watching this video that don't subscribe and of course you don't have to subscribe to watch this video because that's the way YouTube has it set up. But subscribing helps the channel immensely and of course it's free so you don't lose out on anything. Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for sharing this experience. I'll see you guys next time. Hopefully Wednesday at four o'clock but if life doesn't allow it, definitely once a week, every week. I'll see you guys there.