Hi, I am Bob Schmidt with Home Remodel Workshop.

It slices, it dices, and it will grate your cheese, cut your hair and cut your grass. Always makes me nervous whenever I hear them oversell a tool or a product of any kind but when it comes to this oscillating tool, when it comes to remodeling, I believe they really hit the mark.

What is an oscillating saw? Basically what it is, is if you’ve ever been to the barber and seen one of their hair razors where the blades slides side to side. An oscillating saw works on the same principle except the only difference is it will cut wood. It will tile grout. It will cut into those tight spaces that you otherwise can’t get a conventional into.

I’ve made this little mark up of a typical door casing. Let’s say you wanted to add a little decorative rosette or something in here. The option of taking these pieces down of your wall and then going ahead and installing your rosette, re-cutting your pieces and put it back up can be a pretty dawning task and it can do some damage to your wall. What is nice about these new little oscillating saw is you can line this piece up exactly where you want it, take a sharp pencil, sorry I know I am getting into the frame.

Now, taking your time and plunging it in a straightest possible with these two quick cuts you can get this corner out. If there are nails on it you got to pry it loose and as you see, without disassembling the casing you’re ready to put your plank back in.

Of course, you can do exactly the same thing on the matching click locks that go on the bottom; just use the board itself to make a matching line. Again, plunge in until you cut all the way through and then go ahead and install your plank.

Using a scrap piece of the flooring itself, you can actually use it as your guide. To get your mark and your new flooring will slip right into place, right up under that casing.

Situations like this seem to come up all the time in remodeling where you have a box or something that you want it in a very tight location, very tight to the corner, kind of hidden off to one side. Now, I fix these two shelves in place so that they don’t move. With the thought and all I did was I changed my blade to a plunge blade. So, this is designed so that you can go straight in at it, you don’t have to do a whole lot of sliding up and down. That will take out this plywood on the back side of this cabinet.

Another thing I find myself grabbing this oscillating saw more and more, I hang a lot of doors and I install a lot of cabinets, and I constantly have shims that are sticking out. Now, I realize a sharp knife and you can cut this off, but if you have a lot of them to cut off that can get really old, really fast. So, I find myself grabbing this thing.

There are sanding blaze that can go on here, grout removal blades which can go on here which I am not going to buy because they’re like $39. Unless I needed it for like getting at a counter top that I am going to replace for I want to save the back splash, then I’m sure that I will take that investment and I will go ahead and buy one.

But, what I am trying to say is, when it comes to a multi-use tool as far as for remodeling, I kind of judge by how many tools I see my fellow carpenters buying and this is one of those tools that everybody seems to have owned in the last six months.

Now, they come in different grades, they come cordless, they come heavier duty, deeper cuts. Now, when it comes to deciding what type of oscillating tool you want to buy, it all depends on your use. But, as far I am concern for remodeling, this one fit my budget and it fit the blade replacement cost. It wasn’t that high, so this is the one I went with.

I hope you find this video useful, I am Bob Schmidt with Home Remodel Workshop and we’ll see you on the next one.