FOR A FEW days this week, I played with the hot Yule tool, the Black & Decker BullsEye Laser Level and Stud Finder. I pushed the button activating the laser-level function and a cool-looking thin red line jumped out of the device. I pushed another button and the stud finder beeped and lights flashed when it passed over a stud, or support post, buried in a plaster wall. Besides being a hoot to play with , this tool actually appears to be useful.
I let Danny Williams, a carpenter at The Sun with 35-plus years' experience, use the tool for a few tasks. He was impressed, especially with the self-leveling laser feature. Projecting the laser on a wall is a good way, he said, to guarantee that pictures hung on a wall will be level. He said it would also be helpful for big jobs, such as one he took on a few weeks ago - installing windows in a mountain cabin. He balked at the price - I paid $70 - but he predicted that by next year when the newness had worn off, the price would fall.
Right now, however, plenty of folks would be more than willing to fork over the money for the BullsEye Laser Level and Stud Finder - if they could get their hands on one. It is almost impossible to find in stores, and Web sites selling tools say it won't be available until the first few weeks of January. I tracked one down at the Wal-Mart in Port Covington after being shut out at several other hardware stores. My favorite rejection comment came from a hardware guy at Stebbins Anderson in Towson, who told me the Laser Level and Stud Finders were "scarcer than hen's teeth." The Black & Decker customer service line (800-544-6986) directed me to a recorded message for folks hunting for the tool. It said that some hardware stores were experiencing "short-term stock-outs" and preached patience. In other words, wait until a week or two after Christmas.
The tool first appeared in stores shortly after Labor Day, according to Black & Decker's Joe Deering, director of product management for consumer tools. Fueled by a television advertising campaign (which has since been put on hold), the tool sold much better than either Black & Decker or retailers expected. "It started to fly out of stores," he said. "We have been chasing demand ever since."
He added that "tens of thousands" of the tool had already been sold and that the company's plant in China was "making them as fast as we can." Guys seem to like the tool's gizmos and heft. When I flashed it around the office, some of the fellas quickly gathered around it. Testing the stud-finder function, we moved the device over a couple of walls. It emitted signals that calibrated the density of objects inside the wall. This meant it beeped and flashed a green light when it found a stud.
These particular walls had metal studs in them, but the device claims it can also detect wooden studs, if the walls are no thicker than 3/4 -inch. According to my friend Danny the carpenter, most modern homes have walls that are either 1/2 -inch or 5/8 -inch thick, so the stud finder should work fine.
However, when I took the device home and tried it out on the walls of my 120-plus-year-old house, it balked. I couldn't get a reading. Apparently the walls, filled with lath, plaster and horsehair, were too ancient for high-tech calibrations. I read the accompanying brochure that warned that the stud finder also lights up when it passes over a water pipe. That meant that before a homeowner started to drill, he should be wary of any reading from the device that showed the "studs" he was hunting were not the normal distance of 16 inches or 24 inches apart. If he hit a water pipe instead of a stud, he could wind up with a flood.
While guys are enthralled with this tool, I think gals are the contingent pushing its popularity. I think plenty of women are buying this tool for themselves, or for the men on their holiday gift lists.
For example, I became aware of the Laser Level and Stud Finder shortage when a woman I work with told me about it. She had been lurking around Home Depots in Howard County, trying without any luck to buy one as a Christmas gift for her husband.
Moreover, the clerk at the Wal-Mart where I grabbed my Laser Level and Stud Finder (leaving just one on the shelf, probably gone by now) told me he had recently sold the tool to a woman who "jumped with joy" when she found it. It was a gift for her husband, the woman reported, and she had been looking all over town for it.
When I mentioned this gal angle to Deering, he said it might have some merit from a marketing viewpoint. "It is a decent price point for a gift for a close family member who is a tool lover," he said. He also pointed out that since it is a new product, a woman could be fairly certain that the tool lover would not already have it.
After fooling around with the tool for a few days, I handed it over to my office colleague who alerted me to it. She plans to wrap it up and give it to her husband for Christmas.
I enjoyed fooling around with it. But I surmised that with a tool like this, the list of "honey-do" projects I faced - putting up shelves, hanging pictures - could be endless. And if a fellow owned a tool like this, he would not have a decent excuse to avoid doing them.