Cutting Drywall, Part 3

Hi, I’m Bob Schmidt with Home Remodel Workshop. This is part three of the three videos series. I’m showing you different techniques on how to cut drywall. What we have here is called a RotoZip Router. It has a special cutting bit that is called a Zip Bit. It's made specifically for cutting boxes and drywall. With this tool, basically, what you can do is you get a mark inside the opening of your box. Before you hang your drywall then you go ahead and you hang your drywall over the box, tacking the drywall so that the box is buried underneath the drywall. With this tool here will do is once you have the box hanged, you can stick this into the hole, go over to the box, jump over the box going counterclockwise, you can cut around the circle of the box giving you a perfect cut on the circle. This takes a little bit of practice to learn how to use it properly and also keep in mind; this bit doesn’t care whether it's cutting drywall or whether it's cutting wires. So, any wiring that’s in the box, you have to make sure it's back to the backside of the box. Preferably, not hot, go ahead and shut down the electric to that box or to your work area except for what you’re using router with and go ahead and give it a shot. I would practice with this a few times. Get a few scrap pieces of drywall, tack it over to some different type of boxes and go ahead and cut it out. This mark here is over top of a round box that I know what is in here. What you need to do is start in the center mark, go over until you hear the metal leap, jump to the outside of the metal leap and with this type of router set-up, you always go counterclockwise. If you try to go clockwise, what will happen is, is the bit will run too fast and you’ll run off your mark. So let’s go ahead and give this a shot. It gives you a nice clean, cut all the way around the box. Up here below this mark, I have a typical plastic wall out of that box and then down here, this first circle that we cut was to a metal box. This bit isn’t going to cut through a metal box. So when doing a plastic box, you have to be careful that when you go to your right, when you hit the box, you don’t sit there too long because eventually this will groove through the plastic. I notice before I hang over this, before I put my mark in this box that this box is actually shaped with these two little humps that accept the screws. This will follow right around that but you have to be aware the gentle outlines of what you’re cutting before you start to cut. Otherwise, you’ll hit something, you’ll go wise and going straight and you’ll melt right through that. So be aware of the general shape of what your cutting before you start cutting. Let’s go ahead and give this a shot. There you go, I took my time. I went real slow and pretty much followed even the little humps right around the top. The old fashion way of cutting out a box is to go ahead and get your measurements before you hang the drywall, get your four marks for each four sides of the box either taking your pencil or your square. Go ahead and transfer those marks to the drywall and then take your trusty keyhole saw, press it in there and just go ahead and cut out the four sides before you hang your drywall. How to cut an offset out of your drywall? Let’s say you have a little bump out in your corner. Say, this is a ceiling piece and you need to cut a little square out of your drywall something similar to this. Once you measure it and mark it, a basic technique is to go ahead and take a keyhole saw, cut down in one side of your offset then once you get one side done, go ahead and take your razor knife and cut the other side, break it back, put your knife in there and cut it all. I pretty much have this channel gear for helping out homeowners and I don’t generally recommend buying a custom tool for a project where you’re probably not going to use it very much after that project. But, this RotoZip, I wanted to mention something about this. There are many different guides and handles and bits available for this that will cover many different projects. It has wood cutting bits for let’s say cutting boxes into the back of existing cabinets. It also has tile-cutting bits. There are just many, many different uses for this other than drywall. That’s about it. I’m Bob Schmidt with Home Remodel Workshop. Thank you for watching. I know we covered a lot of material real quick in this video but my videos can only be so long. Thanks. Have a nice day. If you like this video, please subscribe. If you’re not interested in this topic, please go back and check out our home channel. I’m sure you’ll find something there you like. Thanks.