[00:00:00] Ben Poulter: While I want one, it'll make my life so much easier. But as time goes by, you begin to forget that you even saw it until you see another spot using one. Then it starts all over again. You tell yourself, I'm gonna get one of them. Toolbox talks for electricians where we load electricians with the tools and skills they need to reduce stress, gain back time, and earn more money.

[00:00:27] Hey, how are we doing? Once again, my name's Ben Paulter or Host Back again to tell you some of the tools that I took my time buying, just because there are a few hundred quid I'm a tight get, but once I bought. I can't live without them any longer. They're tools that I wish I'd just bit the bullet and bought ages ago because they make my life so much easier.

[00:00:50] But it's the main reason why you don't bite the bullet and buy something. It's because of the price. You think, no, I'm not spending that much. I'll struggle for that little bit longer. Well, sometimes there's no point. Once you buy this kit, it'll make your life so much easier. So I'm gonna tell you about the tools that I put off buying, but once I did, yeah, I can't live without , I will replace them every time they go faulty now because the lesson that I learned that once I stopped being a tight get, it made my life so much easier, and it helped me get the work done a lot quicker too.

[00:01:24] So the first one is a multi tool. It's a vibrating, interchangeable blade that comes in handy when you're cut in sort of boxes into maybe plaster ball, breeze blocks, or even brickwork. Sometimes you can change them blades and you do go through a lot of blades cuz. I don't know. You hit concrete and it makes 'em blunt, or you might hit a nail and it ruins them, but it's worth just having a pack of blades inside that toolbox as well where you can use it all the time.

[00:01:51] It comes in so handy. I can't remember the last time I used my little pad sword to cut out maybe a box or anything, the plasterboard, because using this sort of multi tool, it just makes it easier and it looks so much neater. But I did, however, in the true Ben style, try and go the cheap route to start with.

[00:02:12] I bought myself one of them ones from Screwfix, where you plug in. Ah, with most cheap tools. I had to take it back a couple of times cuz it burnt out and I didn't use it as much because you had to plug it in all time and be an electrician half the time, the powers off. But that was back when there weren't as popular I don't think.

[00:02:32] Now you've got every brand like Nikita, DeWalt, Milwaukee. Everyone does a multi tool and the reason why that is, I suppose, is cuz you can use your. Batteries that you have. Like in my Makita kit, everything's 18 volt batteries, so even my SDS drill, my little screwdrivers and things like that, , they've all got 18 volt.

[00:02:51] batteries on them. So then the McKee are multi tool, sorry, it's, it also, it's got an 18 volt battery, so it all sort of interchange when it all works together , and being battery powered, it's so much easier, so much lighter. You can just grab it, cut a box out, you dare have to find a lead.

[00:03:06] You don't have to plug it in. It's just so useful all the time now. So if you haven't got a multitool, go out and get one. Give it a. And you won't realize that what you've been missing, how easy things can actually be. Now, this next one, you can get as cheap as a fiver or you can spend up to 400 pound.

[00:03:27] But electricians are forever putting in down lights, right? Especially in kitchens and bathrooms. And you need to get 'em spot on because if the customer notices it, the one that's slightly out, they'll call you up on it. It doesn't matter that you wired the whole circuit and you've gone from the board and put three switches in with an automatic undercovered, lighting, everything.

[00:03:48] Fancy that you are proud. The customer just , sees what it looks like, the finished product, and they look at it and go, yeah, that's a bit wonky. She's like, Hmm, okay, so you need to get them straight. You need to make it look nice. I've had it even before where you thought you've measured off the wall with these down lights and you think, right, that is spot onto that wall.

[00:04:07] But then you find out later on that the wall's out, the plaster is wall. , the builders, whoever they've built the wall wonky. So that's put your lights out. So it makes it look wonky. , it's disheartening when you do that. I've done it before and I had to change 'em and straighten 'em up. Just maybe a couple of mill here and there.

[00:04:22] But before I used this tool, , I used to, Use it like a tape measure and measure 'em out, like I said, or I'd use a chalk line. Well, until I found out that that chalk line, even if it's got no paint on it, if you ping a chalk line across and yet you've got a nice, beautiful line, you can see where you put in your lights.

[00:04:39] You put your lights up nice and neat. But then when the painter comes to paint it, That chalk just comes straight through the paint. It's, it's super strong chalk. I don't know what it was. It was some fancy chalk, and , it happened once, and I thought right after that I am not using a chalk line.

[00:04:54] I resulted to using a string and then I put my holes up to each corner of the lights and then put a string so I could measure out the rest of them, which was time consuming, and it, it had to string all over the room to be honest. So I've always been looking for a, a better solution to mark out your down lights.

[00:05:10] And I saw these guys that were fitting a full ceiling. It was in an industrial site. You, you probably know them full ceiling's, got the tiles in. They had this laser that went all around the room so they could fix the perimeter. So they got , their, I think their framework up and then just drop the tiles in.

[00:05:27] But , I didn't see 'em using levels at all. So I thought, well, how did they get at levels? I was talking to 'em and they showed me this laser. and it's so much easier. You can just put the laser on the floor or even fix it like you've got magnet on there. You can fix it to the side somewhere maybe, and it springs up.

[00:05:44] A basically a grid onto the ceiling. How can you go wrong? And you can adjust that grid and you can see exactly every little mark where you're gonna put your light. And the thing is, with a laser, don't use too much batteries. You can leave it on there all day. Why is your marking out? Why is your wiring out?

[00:05:58] Even you can do it when the ceiling's not up. So you know exactly where you're gonna put your down lights. And , I can't live without a lazy now. I think they're brilliant. I can guarantee you as well if you treat yourself to a laser and you start using it when you're doing down lights, if you do a lot of down lights, you've gotta have one already.

[00:06:15] Cause it makes your life so much easier. Like I say, even when you're measuring it out for where the wires are gonna go for the borders to basically put their plaster board up. Cuz these days, most of us sort of thing, we say, right, don't worry about plasters. I know exactly where my cables are. And then they're just bore straight over 'em.

[00:06:31] So then you can cut your, cut your holes out later. So, yeah, being with a laser, it'll make your life so much. But with this next one, there's a bit of a story behind it of how I found out how they come about. It was designed and bought to the market, not even by electrician. It was a lady who was on Dragon's Den.

[00:06:51] And once again, these tools you, you can't live without. Once you use them, once you think these are so freaking handy, , you gotta keep 'em. You use 'em all the time. The amount of time where I've been feeding like trunk and. , you got that yt too. You take a bit of lid off, you cut the end off into a little hook and , you're hooking it.

[00:07:07] You're trying to fish this cable through the plaster wall or underneath floorboards and it can turn out to be a bit of a nightmare cuz maybe that trunk in market caught it. It'll snap the lid off. You get caught on the wrong thing. It is just a night nightmare. So what this lady sort of manufactured or bought to the market were electrical rods.

[00:07:26] If you haven't got any fishing rods, As I call them, sometimes they're like nylon rods. They can save electricians hours of time and make your life just that so much easier. , and this is another thing where I obviously I carry a couple of sets of these cuz sometimes they've got caught stuck in a wall or they've got stuck somewhere where you can't get 'em out.

[00:07:47] So you've had to chop the end off thinking, right, that's a loss. I'm not gonna go rummaging round inside that water. I'm not gonna smash the PLA ball off to get that one rod out. So yeah, you have to sort of leave it there. Sometimes they're coming sort of one meter lamps and you can screw 'em together.

[00:08:01] To whatever length you want. I've used them to pull wires through ducting, lofts, floorboards all over, and they've been handy and fantastic for every single job. So if you haven't got yourself a set of nylon rods, then invest in some, it'll save you time Fishing for cables. How long do you sometimes sit there and try and fish?

[00:08:22] You get , your little bit of cable. I've , normally used to have a little bit of 10 mill. 10 mill. Bend it round the right way. Try and fish round to try and find the cable. But all these nylon rods, you can even be hook on the end. Stick it in there and , it doesn't bend as mu as bad as cable.

[00:08:36] It's a nylon rod, so you can stick it as much as you want to get through the insulation to find your cables whenever, wherever you left them. . So this next one is probably a common thing for yourself as well as electricians. Were always looking for a solution to make things quicker, more efficient, and to earn more money basically.

[00:08:56] So when I was younger, I thought, right. I started looking for a new job testing when I got my two free nine one, I thought, right, yeah, I'm gonna become a tester. That's, that's where the money is. So I was periodic testing all over the UK. , uh, for some reason I had it in my head that , it was the way to make a good amount of money.

[00:09:13] Cause I've been subcontracting for a long time on site and I thought, yeah, , I'm earning a good amount of money, but I wanna earn more. So I thought, right, I can do price work on testing and that was all I did for five days a week. Testing. And as you know, more than likely that when you're holding a test kit with each test probes and you're trying to balance 'em on the terminals to get a decent loop reading in it can be tricky at times.

[00:09:38] So I bought myself one of these remote test probes that you can also hold. You can hold 'em with both hands to be honest with you. And then test it. And there you go. You've got your button actually on the probe. It's an extra plug that goes inside your multifunction tester. and you can get a remote test pro for, well, for all of them I think, cause I used to have a fluke testing kit and I got nicked out the back of the van.

[00:10:01] But when I replaced it with a qec kit that also had the capability to put a, um, a remote test on it as well. Cause I really wanted that, that saved me , a load of time and save me balancing it. You've got the strap to put it around your neck, but sometimes you need both hands. So I get this remote testing probe to make it easier.

[00:10:22] And I think we've tested, maybe you can earn some good money, but I was so. I say so bored. I went into PAT testing then and doing universities. I used to pat test everything in the university on a price as well, which you did earn good money cuz you weren't per item and all you had to do is test them.

[00:10:40] Nine times outta 10 they passed. So you just had to stick a sticker on and put the date on and print it out. I bought all the kit for it, but yeah. , well it's always looking at ways to earn more money as an electrician and testing. Yeah, you probably could earn some good money, but it was boring. So yeah, I quit that job after a couple of weeks.

[00:11:01] Now the next one is a 20 mill hole saw it's electrician's best friend, right? Because we cut 20 mil holes in everything either to fit a 20 mill bush to get a cable through for the sockets to maybe fix onto trunking, or even just to put like a 20 mil grommet in something. , but then what do we normally do if it still doesn't fit, if that cable doesn't go through that 20 mill grommet?

[00:11:27] Well, obviously you try and get that 20 mil whole inside the 20 fives, so you can cut it out a little bit bigger and put a 25 mill stuffing gland in there. Um, most of the time, yeah, you make things a mess. They slide off and they scrape the box or they, they damage it and it just, it just looks a mess. So I come across this other little thing that, that first I bought from wish.com.

[00:11:48] They were crap, they were rubbish metal. But now I get them from the wholesalers, which is called a step drill bit , or some people call 'em a cone cutter. I bought a set that I used , that can drill a hole up to 35 mil. and it's so handy. It saves time and effort. Even when you cut in a 20 mill hole these days, I rarely get that hole saw out.

[00:12:09] I just use the cone cutter or the step drill, whatever you call it, just to cut it out to exactly what I want. And there's so many things that sort of come and go in the electrical tray while over the 20 years I've been involved anyway. and you do you get interested. You gotta give them a go. Cause if they can make your life or your job just that little bit quicker or that little bit better, then you're gonna give it a go.

[00:12:31] I did the same with these. I go to a lot of these shows, like this is showing Coventry local to me, and it's the Alexa show. And you go in there and they've got, Hey, check out this. Oh, I did. I, there's a great sales pitch. I fell for it. I got this thing called a gecko, and it was one of these things, a magnet on the end.

[00:12:48] You put it into maybe a dot and dab wall. and then you can fish your wires through, add a bit of string attached to it, but you had obviously attached to your cable to it as well. And you fish your wires through the dot and dab to exactly where you want to put that socket, which it was great. , it did the trick.

[00:13:06] It did what it said, add a magnet on the end. The thing is, when the magnet got dirty, if it was a clean wallet, it made the wall bit dirty. So when it got stuck after a few months of buying it, , I didn't go and replace it cuz I, I didn't miss it really to be, But like I say, these things, you gotta give or go.

[00:13:22] You find them exciting, they look like they, they're gonna save you a lot of energy and a lot of time then it's the more unique it is, the the more appealing it is. It may be just being a bloke to be honest, but, uh, well, it could be an electrician, but I do know blokes like tools and they're like faffing around the.

[00:13:42] So if you are the same, let me know in the comments. If you've come across any like super handy tools that you think, yeah, this saves me a time, and you've obviously kept over time and proved that it's a, a good tool, then let me know down below in the comments. Because as yourself, you probably get excited to check out new tools all the time.

[00:14:02] And if you want to get your hands on any of these tools that I've mentioned in today's podcast, then go to my link tree in the show notes and click on the tool section and it'll take you straight there. And I'm confident to say that all these tools mentioned in today's podcast help me make more money and be a lot quicker as electrician.

[00:14:21] So until next time, I'll see you again.