Tips of the Week is our weekly peek at some of the best making tips, tricks, and recommendations we’ve discovered in our travels. Check in every Friday to see what we’ve discovered. And we want to hear from you. Please share your tips, shortcuts, best practices, and tall shop tales in the comments below and we might use your tip in a future column.
Hot Glue Gunning Tips
Make:‘s Photo Editor, Hep Svadja, put together this little social media share-card with some helpful tips on using hot glue. Please feel free to drop some hot glue science on your friends.
Cable Clips as Brush Holders
Former Make: Creative Director, Jason Babler, shared this tip with me. He makes paint brush holders for his figure modeling wherever he needs them by installing one of these adhesive-backed clips used for cable management.
Pointing a Detail Brush with the Palm
Now that I’m doing a lot of miniature painting, and investing in high-quality brushes (not seen here), I’m more interested than ever in properly maintaining them. Keeping a point on your brush is essential. You don’t need half-a-dozen brushes, including ones measured in goose eggs (0, 00, 000), you really only need one high-quality brush (e.g. #1) that you scrupulously maintain. To that end, I got a Windsor-Newton Series 7 #1 and a pot of Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver. After I have thoroughly clean my brush, I give it a final twist through the Masters (it also contains a conditioner), and then I use this trick I discovered years ago of using the meat of the palm of my hand to squeeze and re-point the brush. Works like a charm.
Removing Drywall Screws That Missed Their Mark
The always informative Leah Bolden of See Jane Drill is back with another great construction tips video. In it, she runs through 4 common drywall mistakes. One trick she shows is how to remove a drywall screw that has missed the stud. If you just try and back it out with your drill, it will spin and not reverse. To put some reverse force on it, place a putty knife under the edge of the head and apply some outward pressure as you reverse the screw. (BTW: That’s a counter-sinking drywall bit on her drill.)
Steering Into Your Weirdness
In this freewheeling interview with Jimmy DiResta, Rick of Wood.Work.LIFE talks to Jimmy about everything from his early influences to the YouTube makers that inspire him to tips for up and coming makers and YouTubers. [Caution: Salty Adult Language Ahead.] One moment I especially enjoyed was when they talk about bringing out your unique talents and character, what Jimmy calls your “unfair advantage.” He quotes his pal Nick Offerman who once said in a talk, “Embrace your weirdness. Don’t suppress it. Express it.” To my mind, this is more than just a tip for being a compelling YouTube presence, this is a top life tip!
Come in Late, Leave Early
In the same Wood.Work.LIFE interview, Rick and Jimmy briefly touch on another great age-old tip for making compelling video: “Come in late, leave early.” This is an old trick of film and fiction. You don’t have to show everything, only the key points needed to advance your story. And if you create the impression that there is a life before and after the viewer enters the scene, it creates a deeper impression of what they are looking at. In the early days of film-making, if a character was going someplace in a car, they would show them leaving the house, getting in the car, driving, arriving, all of it. They soon realized that you only have to show a few seconds of leaving, driving, arriving, and the viewer will fill in the rest in their imagination.
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