hi I'm Shannon from Houston Prima's calm and I want to show you a quick video today on how to use a drywall rotary cutout tool so this is really handy for cutting out around electrical switch boxes light boxes anything like that especially in new construction where you don't already have receptacles and switches and that sort of thing already in the way so typically what you'd have we just got a little wee mock-up here of a wall typically you're gonna have you know electrical a switch box in this case and electricians gonna have a whole bunch of wires in there so one of the first things you need to do is just gently take his wires if he hasn't already and he's gonna really appreciate if you tuck them back in the box nice and flat back in there so that they're not in a position where you're gonna Nick them because you're gonna end up plunging this spiral rotary bit into that box to get started so so we want to keep all the wiring back and out of the way at least at least an inch back into that box next thing you're going to want to do and I mean this we're just doing a little wee piece here but I mean I do this with sheets all the time so it's just that it's a lot easier to show you in a small a little bit a little a small little piece I mean so one of the first things you want to do get all your wires tucked out of the way then you need to get a center point of all the boxes that you're going to be cutting on that sheet so measure from whatever reference point you have on to you and go over to your sheet of drywall and you want to mark a center point of each one of those you may want to even label them if you've got multiple ones and then that way you have an idea as you're cutting you know what kind of size you should be getting in case you you go off-kilter but mark all your centers and then you're ready that you can hang the board and what you have to do is obviously the boxes are all sticking out of the wall usually at least 3/8 to 1/2 an inch rate so so you obviously can't just go up to the screw you're all she trade on there because it's gonna have a gap anywhere that there's a box sticking out holding it out so what you do want to do is is you want to actually I've got to go a little bit lower you want to go and and basically hang the top of your sheet or you can put in a few screws just to hang the sheet there but you want to stay away about 16 inches from any of these devices that you're gonna router out so get your sheet up there somebody's holding it in place you get enough screws in that'll hold it where it needs to be and just get it hanging there so I mean obviously we're caught up on the bench down here but typically drywall will hang with three or four screws or whatever you got on there you're gonna want I and hearing protection because these tools are very noisy and they throw dust and debris and everything around so once you've got your sheet hanging you can't really see from the angle you're on but I've got I mean I can get my fingers back in there but you do want to make sure that it's up against that box it's sticking out the basic operation of this tool is there's usually some kind of a footplate here that's adjustable for the depth and you want to have enough bit sticking out because basically there's a cutting area of the bit here and then a smooth area a guide that's gonna run around the outside of the electrical box so you want enough bit sticking out that you've got enough guide there too and everything so you usually you want to be about three-quarters to an inch of bits sticking out from this plate here you can get cordless versions this one happens to have a cord it's a basic idea what I'm going to do the reason we marked that center point is I know that there's a box there I'm gonna plunge into that center point and then I want to slowly make my way across over to one side or the other until basically I come up against the inside of that electrical box then I know what I've got to do I've got to actually pull out of the of the cut and just plunge in on the on the opposite side so that I get just to the outside of that box and anytime you're using a rotor or I saw a router type tool like this rotary tool you want to go if you're on the outside of the object you're cutting to as a guide you want to go counterclockwise okay so I'm going to plunge in go over find the edge come out re plunge in and go around there okay and the idea is once you get on the outside you want to move slowly in the counter clockwise position but yet you want to hold enough force against the side of what you're cutting that it can use it as a template to make the cut so right there that's where I found the edge of my box and this is where I pulled out and now I'm going to plunge back in on the other side is that camera angle all right okay so once you've made that cut basically you should be able to pull this out and slip that drywall rate in great around there looks like I missed a little bit of the the cut on there but that's gonna cover with the switch box so it won't matter so you can see it's pretty noisy and it makes a fair bit of dust but once you get practiced out it you can actually get a nice cut around your box and you're not doing a bunch of measurements to try to get it all right so then once you've got it fitting well around your box then it's just a matter of going back in and screwing the rest of your sheet off around you know whatever you've got in there for four stud spacings or anything so hopefully the camera can see that maybe maybe we'll change the angle a little bit and get more of a straight on shot so we can see the spacing in that so you can see basically what I what would have happened is I plunged in somewhere in this direction or this area then I made my way across till I hit this you can actually see right here where I plunged back in on the outside and started to go around and it all went really well until I got over here and I found I had to actually push the drywall a little tighter against the box I didn't quite have my bit far enough oh that's why I kind of struggled in here to get back on track but then once I got on track you can see he basically Falls around real nice it's a bit of dust there it's just a matter going around cleaning that out after but it does a does a really nice job you get a little bit of frayed paper here but again that's all fine it's all going to be underneath the cover switch plate cover or whatever you're putting on there when it's all done so it's a little once you get the hang of it it's a lot nicer than individually cutting each one with the saw and then finding out it didn't line up especially if you've got a sheet that's got three or four different things in it sometimes it can be hard to go and measure them transfer those measurements cut it out and actually make it line up when you go to hang the sheet on the wall so once you get used to using a drywall rotary cut out tool like this you're gonna find you're gonna use a lot for drywall cutting out doorways all that kind of stuff you'll just get used to making sure you know any little gap or crack you have that little blade is gonna fall you know fall into it and follow it around but you'll get used to using it and you'll wonder why you ever used a little drywall saw like a handsaw before so I think that's all I can really show you on here we'll wrap her up at this point so if you can give us a thumbs up click down there lower on the screen that'd be great subscribe to our Channel come check it out we've got our forum page on our website we've got Twitter we've got Facebook and we're also on patreon as well if you want to have a look at that so thanks for watching