How to Use a Level

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Drew Finn here for Expert Village. We are going to talk about standard hand tools and how to use them. We are going to use levels to make sure things are either nice and level or nice and vertical or even at a 45 degree angle and how they work is we have the liquid in here with a bubble. Each of the little glass tubes have a little slope to them and so when they are calibrated the bubble will rise to the peak of the slope where the marks are on the level to show you they are perfectly level. How they are set up is so you can have them this way or you can put them on a vertical piece of wood like this to get it level or if you happen to be doing a 45, something a 45 degree angle, there is also a level for that on most levels. So if you can fit a larger level on the piece of wood, it is better to use because it is going to more accurate than a short piece but obviously some things are very short and you are going to want to use a shorter level. Now are all types of levels. Some are digital and I like the old fashioned the bubble ones which we have here. This particular one has a magnetic on one surface so if it happened to be a metal cabinet you could stick it right to the cabinet and have the level on there. So there are many little differences between levels but basically you would be using them, say to make sure the shelf if level you would mark on the wall 1 point, then move it up and down till it was perfectly level according to the bubble in the center then you could scribe a line and put a little notch there depending on what you are leveling up. "