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The American Craftsman Podcast Ep. 8 | Wild Willy
52 Plays5 years ago
On Episode 8 of The American Craftsman Podcast hosted by Greene Street Joinery we sit down with our friend Will Fegan AKA Wild Willy. Will is a furniture designer woodworker, and musician. (https://www.instagram.com/wildwillyswoodshop/)
Beer of the Week (Jughandle Sour Wheels): https://untappd.com/b/jughandle-brewing-co-sour-wheels-jug-lada/3924925
Tool of the Week (Halder Simplex 30): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008XHR6W2/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=greenestreetj-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B008XHR6W2&linkId=b731d60fc683eb1d6d9c44fe17c4539f
Greene Street Joinery is a custom design & build shop located in Monmouth County, New Jersey. We build multigenerational furniture with an eco-friendly and sustainable mindset.
Inspired and guided by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, we believe in the use of traditional craftsmanship and simple, well-proportioned forms; sustainability and ethical practices; and importantly, taking pleasure in our work as craftsmen to create quality pieces of enduring value.
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Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Achievements
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everyone, Jeff here. I apologize for the poor audio quality. We had some hardware issues about 30 minutes into the podcast, so you'll notice the quality is a little poor. Actually had someone run it through a program to try and salvage the footage. So enjoy. If you find it's hard to listen to, I apologize and catch us next week.
00:00:43
Speaker
Ain't no shame, but there's been a chain. You drove over here. You gotta have at least one there. Exactly. Okay.
Meet Will Fagan
00:01:05
Speaker
Hello, everybody. This is welcome to our eighth
00:01:08
Speaker
Yeah. Podcasts the American Lion hasn't been grasping podcasts.
00:01:14
Speaker
The number two design podcast in Slovenia. Yeah. And we're up there in Belgium, too. Yeah. Number three in Belgium. We hit eight for three days in the US. Yeah. Wow. Yes. No, no kidding. We're rocking in Slovenia. Shout out to Slovenia. Oh, yeah. With a very similar name.
00:01:40
Speaker
So we have our second guest this time, and his name is Will Fagan. Welcome, Willy. He works at Wild Willy's Woodworks. I always get around with these guys, I call them, I call you Wet Willy for the longest time. Or inappropriate, however. We'll get to talk to him a little bit before we get into, we can do a beer a week, but musician?
Will's Diverse Background
00:02:07
Speaker
Carpenter. Yeah. Woodworker. Mm hmm. Once a criminal. I have been in jail overnight. And I heard that you were a porn star at one point in time. Not yet. Still, welcome. Welcome to the show. Let's do the show. So let's get on with our start and we'll have the beer of the week and the chips. Yeah. So it's me this week.
00:02:33
Speaker
So we have another beer from, um, the same as burger again, joke handle. All right. It's local.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, so this is out in Tim Falls, which is, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes from here. Yeah. Yeah. If you're, you're not from the Northeast, you probably don't know what a junk handle is. I think what? Only in New Jersey, right? Yeah. I mean, I didn't know what a junk handle was when I moved here. Yeah. How would you explain that to someone that it's a U-turn? Well, not necessarily U-turn.
00:03:10
Speaker
It's how you make a left when you get there. Yeah, we don't make left turns on the highway in New Jersey. Yeah, everything's divided. When you come from a place like New York where you just turn left. Right. And also you don't have to deal with these types of highways. This should be interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So this is called Sour Wheels. Sour Wheels, juglata, pineapple, coconut and lactose. That's what lactose tastes like. Like milk.
00:03:41
Speaker
It's a milk beer? Doesn't seem very carbonated. No. That's not something I would buy by description. Cheers, gentlemen. A little tang to it. Not bad. Yeah. It's sour. Oh, it is sour. It doesn't taste like beer. No, it tastes like a almost like a spritzer.
00:04:09
Speaker
That's a jug lata. Yeah. Oh, they'll hear from us later.
00:04:13
Speaker
Was that a kickback kickback piece up there? Yep. That's part of the wall of shame. Yeah. You know, our wall of shame. Yeah. We will need Nielsen brush. Yeah. How do you know you're in a snobby woodworking? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I see this guy. You should have heard the conversation about 15 minutes ago. Got pretty dark. Well, well, welcome to the show.
Journey into Woodworking
00:04:44
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about how you got into woodworking. Honestly, it all kind of started with, I grew up running BMX, so we always were needing things to jump off of. So my buddy, who is now an architect, he always kind of, he would be the guy who figured out, you know, how to make the transition. So he did the, like, we made, we did like the string line thing. We would trace it and then I would cut it with my stepdad's crappy jigsaw.
00:05:11
Speaker
I was never afraid of doing the things with the tools like they were all you know the other guys were with us like oh we don't have tools and so I'd go to my stepdad's garage I grab a couple things I just start cutting wood and I was like alright this kind of makes sense I know like I knew enough about stuff my dad's a roofer so I had been around been swinging hammers since I was born blah blah blah but didn't really actually get into it.
00:05:35
Speaker
like in a real way until I was like 22 ish I guess I would work with handyman and we would do painting and I knew how to like cut miters and do trim and stuff but I never like thought it was cool or whatever I was like oh that's easy I grew up doing that whatever so I guess the real woodworking started when I worked with like a contractor
00:06:00
Speaker
who is mostly a really good trim carpenter, but a framer as well. So we started, I started out framing, started out digging a lot of holes as I've talked to Jeff. Jeff's on someone like a couple doing like the, you know, the really rough labor stuff. Like we, it was around hurricane Sandy time and we were the first two houses. I think I worked on him or with, uh, we just like ripped out the whole first floor. She rocked up halfway up the wall, replaced all everything like super dirty stuff. Just like,
00:06:29
Speaker
Picking water out of basements, just everything. Wearing Tyvek suits for weeks at a time. Like, just nasty shit. So when it came to like actually doing the wood stuff at the end of the job where we were like retrimming everything, I was like, okay, this is cool. Like we're putting lipstick on a pig in a way, but I'm learning. I was like, I was seeing the finer details I were going and this was like low end construction stuff, but I was still, I found an interest in that. And my boss was one of those typical, um,
00:06:58
Speaker
like boomer types, it's just like fucking screaming at, you know, I'm just an asshole to him who he pays as little as he can just to, you know, get his job done. Quality job. And, you know, and then, you know, we worked on went from there and we he was a really good trip carpenter. We were doing a lot of crown molding. We were doing all these interesting jobs. He definitely didn't say no to something they didn't know. He knew how to do everything, basically. And it was just one of those cool people to learn from. And he was very skilled.
00:07:28
Speaker
It's similar to Jeff's experience in a way. Yeah. And around the same time, because it was, you know, after Sandy is when I got into doing all that stuff. And same thing started out, you know, digging holes, insulation, clean out the attic, the crawl space. We'll get the worm drive from the van. I didn't even know what it was. It was like a lock in there. I got from my step. That's like the roar. I was like, oh, I hope he doesn't know. He took this later.
00:07:54
Speaker
I was like that kid that didn't have a tool belt and then like my boss bought me one. And then now I'm like, I love tool. Yeah. Can I borrow a pencil gear? Yeah. If I didn't have a pencil, I would never hear the end of it. Like, you know, sounds a little bit like the guy that John Peter said that he worked for Power Framers. Yeah. Yeah. Like I picture like a typical like like North Jersey kind of like rough around the edges. Yeah. Oh, please. Like.
00:08:19
Speaker
the fifth
00:08:36
Speaker
I'm afraid to tell you what I just did. I told me to drill the hole. I drilled the hole, but it went actually through something else. What do you mean? Like into a pipe? Yeah. With a fucking like five inch hole. So he's like, yeah, just lift up the siding right there. And then he'd walk away and I'm like, did he tell me to do it here or here? And I'm like tapping on it with a hammer. Like, it sounds hollow.
00:08:58
Speaker
Oh, man, the things I did. So, you know, you have to have patience with. I know I have patience, but I can only imagine how fucking he felt a couple of those times. And then, you know, I do way higher end stuff. So when mistakes happen, they are big money. Yeah. So I've definitely eaten my own ass on some stuff because a kid made a mistake on it or I mean, a grown man who I've hired that has made mistakes on things like that were unforgivable. So he had to go.
00:09:39
Speaker
I was living in the city. I was living in Brooklyn. I was going back to, we had a job in Alpine, New Jersey, which was a lot of trim work, a lot of more higher end stuff. So I was like, and very interested
Transition to Furniture Making
00:09:49
Speaker
So how did you make the transition from like residential to residential carpentry to more woodworking?
00:09:49
Speaker
in it. And that was when I was starting to get the feel for stuff. And, you know, we were kind of, it was like, wait, when I first learned how to scribe and I remember like, he asked me to do this thing behind, like the client came in to me and he was like, Oh, do you think you could take this piece of wood and like,
00:10:02
Speaker
like kind of shadow this line that's there, but like make it a half inch by. So it's like basically was making my own molding, but it was like it didn't exist. So I like took a piece of wood and I figured out how to like take a half inch block and tape. I like screwed a pencil through a hole and like just traced it and like did it. And I was like, oh, that's cool. That worked like whatever. And then my boss said, how the fuck you do that? Oh, you're getting pretty good. And I was like, you know, he would never say that. He actually didn't. I think he was just fucking with me about.
00:10:31
Speaker
He's like, who do you think you are? Yeah, he's like, I'm the only one around here who knows what I'm doing. So don't even start. But so basically, I'm in Alpine going back and forth right over the VIP. So I was like, quick commute.
00:10:47
Speaker
Um, at the time I was drumming a lot, so I was trying to pursue the music career. So I was working during the day and have gigs at night and then like I got asked to go on a couple of tours. So I knew that like my boss wasn't going to be down with me and just like come leaving and come back. He was like, you can't just fucking do whatever you want. You know, um,
00:11:08
Speaker
So I started to fuck around with like furniture like for my house like I had pallet wood and I had Wood that I found in dumpsters like really nice four-inch thick by like ten inch of fur beams and hard line beams and at the time I didn't even know what they were but I had a worm drive and I would borrow my boss's uh, you know miter saw and like Power planer and I just started like messing around with them and see I was like wow There's this beautiful wood underneath this
00:11:36
Speaker
Horrible looking wood that's in the dumpster. Like why are they throwing this out? So I started like hoarding wood from dumpsters and making like bookshelves and stuff and I made an Etsy And I was like, there's no fucking way someone's gonna buy something from this I remember telling myself this like I was just like does do it just see just for fun Like it's gonna be funny if someone buys so I was like, there's no way no one so I made a bookshelf
00:11:59
Speaker
That was like three feet wide by five feet tall. And then I made like another book stuff that leaned against the wall. So it was like a ladder book. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it was like notch. It was data together. So I was like, that was the only thing I had going on at that time. I was like cutting notches with a fucking worm drive, like making nice lines and cutting them and snapping them off with a chisel and cleaning them up. Then I'd take like two nice timber bait.
00:12:22
Speaker
Deck bolts, you know fucking lock the whole thing together. This was made of wet wood. So yeah, eventually they'd all shrink a little bit But it had that classic like reclaimed wood look
00:12:33
Speaker
And then one day I get like an email, it's like somebody bought your bookshelf and they're like in Brooklyn. So I delivered it and everything. And I got I made like 200 bucks. And I was just like, holy shit, I can do this. I think I'm going to try to do this, like, because at the time, I barely made five hundred dollars a week, like my boss. I was like, if I can sell two or three of these little things in a week or two, I'll make the same money. I'll work from here. I'll still be able to focus on music and have more time.
00:13:01
Speaker
So I kinda stopped working in Jersey over the course of like a couple months after that. Then I found a job while I was working for like a landscape design build and I was doing the carpentry for them.
00:13:14
Speaker
So I'd get like a set of plans and like this guy would like, he hired me based off of the things that I was doing with the Etsy stuff. And then like the pictures I showed him with my old boss, like we did some really wild projects. So it was like kind of easy to find a job as a carpenter in the city. And I always thought it would be harder because I was like, oh, there's gotta be all these talents and guys there, blah, blah, blah. But then you find out they mostly work in production shops and what do they do? They mail shit together. They basically are ripping MDF on table saws all fucking day.
00:13:41
Speaker
and not much crazy craftsmanship was going down and uh you know i didn't and i mean there is i know of it now but i didn't know of it then and uh
00:13:54
Speaker
Um, yeah, so I'd be like outside building these things. Boss would come and be like, Oh, why is that like that? And I'm like, cause that's what it is on the drawing. And he's like, well, like kind of wanting me to read his mind and all this stuff. And like my favorite project with that was like, we did like, uh, we did a pergola that was like really, really cool. It was like a canning leaver. Like we had to put the blocks in the ground. We had to look like.
00:14:17
Speaker
You know, square it up to this fucked up backyard that was all out of square and we put a fence in first and then we. So I was like me and this dude were like the only skilled. I was making it up. I was like, what are you doing? I was like, get a string line out and we're going to put a level on it. And I was like, we got to figure. So I was like watching my boss. I watched my boss do all this stuff with roofs. But he was like one of those guys that he'd be on the floor doing math, looking at it like.
00:14:44
Speaker
Oh yeah, it's a bastard hip and it's like a 13 degree with a 71 over here. Oh my God. And he was super badass with that stuff and just amazing.
00:14:57
Speaker
Then I thought, like, I'm going to work for guys like that. And then I get to the city and I'm working for, like, this designer, basically, who knew nothing about building anything. So he would design stuff, give me a plan. It wouldn't show any of the internal, like, structure of a piece. It would just show, like, a rendering almost. Right. Like, you know, on SketchUp, how you can do, like, the outside and then you can, like, flip it upside down and look at the inside. He would never have that. It would just be like make I'm like framing
00:15:22
Speaker
my own way. It all worked out. It was making storage benches and all kinds of cabinets and fences and stuff. But it only seemed like he would be concerned. The only things he was concerned with was like timing. And he'd be like, oh, it's taken so long. I'm like, well, you're don't you want all your screws to be straight on the fence? Like, do you want them to just be anywhere? Like you can go get us a fucking framing nail and we'll pop this thing together like any other asshole would do. But yeah, we were taking our time and doing stuff the right way. And.
00:15:49
Speaker
That didn't last long because digging holes in a cold ground like we were doing concrete countertops one day and it was freezing and he was still telling us pour the concrete, we got to get it over with whatever. I'm like, it's not going to dry. What's the fucking point? So he'd be sending us places and we'd be screwing shit up and then he'd be getting mad at us. So I just quit. I was just like, I'm not enough for this guy.
00:16:11
Speaker
And then I found a really cool production shop that I worked in in the Navy Yard, which was amazing. Huge view of the city. And it was a huge shop with like all windows. And I worked with like two like actors. Basically, they were actor carpenter guys. And then I was like, OK, cool. More people like me that are doing other things are not just like focused on being like, you know,
00:16:32
Speaker
Cause my old boss, I'd be like, what'd you do last night? I was like, oh, I went home, I had dinner, fell asleep on the couch. Like they had no other interest on hunting. I mean, it's good every once in a while, but like I was like super busy all the time. I was like always trying to do something. I was like riding a bike or doing anything. Like I was just excited.
00:16:56
Speaker
Production shop thing was cool because I met this guy, Jacques, and he was from Michigan and had been a carpenter his whole life. His dad was one. His mom was basically like, they built houses, they built barns. And he knew all these little tips and tricks and I still use them to this day. Just remember him cutting laminate with a chisel, holding it up on an angle. Big chisel and just holding it.
00:17:19
Speaker
sliding it across and not and not using a trim router. And I was like, fuck, this guy's like a fucking ace. And then he would show me stuff that he was doing on a table saw and I was just amazed. And I was like, wow, like I'm going to pay attention to this guy. That was where I started to get into like the Instagram stuff. Yeah. So you're in this production shop. Yeah. So it's like me and these two other guys, they're just having a good time. It was fun to be like music playing or working and we're building all these crazy projects. We were building like
00:17:48
Speaker
you know, somebody would rent out Best Buy theater and have a kid's birthday party there and we would make and we would like reskin everything with a different fucking laminate to make it look like a different place.
Discovering High-End Woodworking
00:17:58
Speaker
So, yeah, that was cool. And then I learned all these tips and tricks and all this stuff. And I remember like the first time I saw a circle get cut on a router and I was like, what are you? What? Like, that's how that happens. Like, I was just amazed, you know.
00:18:12
Speaker
We never did stuff like we did a couple arch doorways with my old boss but he would take a worm drive and he would get a ring line with a pencil and use that method and then he would.
00:18:23
Speaker
Plunge it with a worm drive and I'm like, okay, you're like a fucking genius with that thing. But like that's so sloppy Yeah, some of those guys are the way they just hold stuff in their hands and cut like just so like it's nothing It's like an attachment of his body. Yeah worm drive it became one to me in a way too and I loved it but like then that was like right during this same time was funny to talk about because it was like right when I found out like what festival was and like I
00:18:48
Speaker
What was following people on Instagram? And I was looking at the work they're doing. And I was like, you mean guys do shit like this, like all over the place. I've never seen this before. Like I knew like high end trim existed and I've seen it before, but I was like, no, they do that every day. Like they're set up on scaffolds. Like I remember like Mark Shafer for Math Fest Woodworks, one of my first Instagram friends. And it's a funny story because we've actually like hung out. And when we used to joke and pretend and we used to say we're pen pals, he's like, I don't have any other pen pals except you, Willie. Like this is weird.
00:19:19
Speaker
He's like, my wife's always asking me who I'm talking to. And he's like, oh, it's just this kid in Brooklyn. She's like, who? He's like, oh, it's this guy. She's like, do you know him? And he's like, no, we never met. And she's like, why are you talking to him so much? I wouldn't talk to this guy all day, pick his brain. I mean, if you know him, he had every festival thing before anybody else, I think, of all the people I know.
00:19:41
Speaker
And he was doing great work and just like doing cool projects that were like a mix between high end residential and high end commercial and building out restaurants and bars and doing like some really nice trim stuff. But like, you know, it was the first time I ever saw fucking Collins miter clamps and just.
00:20:01
Speaker
all these little things. And he was putting dominoes in places. He was hiding them everywhere. Anything to make something stronger or more efficient. And he's gone on to teach many kids his ways, which that's cool. He basically has a stick crew now based because him and he taught his apprentice and now him and his apprentice are partners. And then they have instructed like
00:20:21
Speaker
half of fucking Boulder, Colorado, whoever wants to be a carpenter in Colorado is like, I'm moving to Boulder and I'm going to work with them because like kids have like moved from different states to come work for them and stuff because they're just they're just fucking legendary. Yeah, Instagram is weird in that way where there's been I mean, I picked up a lot of what I know in terms of tools and even technique like from Instagram, YouTube, stuff like that.
00:20:46
Speaker
But then there's so many people that are that are like going the opposite direction and picking up all these bad habits. So it definitely works both ways. And I think it was good that I was I was doing this before any of it wasn't hyped up like it is now. Like it wasn't like every fucking jackass who has a hammer has an old look like silly Willy's one shot. You know, it's like every
00:21:06
Speaker
I literally made that to make fun of myself. One time I was in the car with like my friend and I was like, Oh, I'm going to have, I'm going to call my thing. Wow. Willie's Woodshop. And they're like, that's actually pretty cool. But I was like, it's not going to work as a business name. It will never work. Like people will think it's stupid. Still here six years later. But, um, I was thinking I'm probably changed the name if I do like a furniture line. Yeah. But I have no idea because pagan and furniture or two apps. I don't know. It's just like, I might as well just not.
00:21:33
Speaker
Change it. Yeah. Write it out. It's funny how you started where you thought, well, there's no way this is going to work. I think we all felt that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I picked up like what I thought was going to be temporary work. The restaurant I worked at got totally wiped out by Sandy. I'm like, you know what? I'll just I got a call from someone that said, yeah, this guy needs help. So I figure I'll go work for him for like a couple of months until the restaurant reopens. And then, you know, we're going on almost 10 years now. Pursuing you're going for to be a chef, right?
00:22:04
Speaker
Well, I always worked in the front of the house. So I, you know, I was like a waiter or like a bartender, you know, did some managing type stuff.
00:22:13
Speaker
But yeah, I just I really liked it. Even the like brute work, the labor type stuff, it was a whole different time of day. I was used to like four p.m. until like two and five a.m. Which gets old. Yeah. And I did both for a little while. That was brutal. That was another thing I was doing. I was doing construction. I would be going to the city and doing catering jobs because right before I started doing construction, I was doing catering to make money.
00:22:39
Speaker
So I was like, I can leave work at three thirty, get on the bus, go to the city, go to Christie's auction house and do like these serving celebrities like hors d'oeuvres and go home and do it again. So it was like I had like this constant drive to just be doing something that I wanted to do because I like once I figured out that I
00:23:01
Speaker
Because my boss was cool in a little bit of a mentor way, you know, father figure vibe where he was like, look, well, like if you're if you get good at this, like you could be making this much by the time you're 30, this not whatever age you were saying you could be making this. And then I was like, OK, well.
00:23:18
Speaker
All right. That's cool. Like no one ever even showed me that. Like I didn't have that as a kid. So like my dad was a roofer and he would be like, don't do this. See what I have to do every day. Like my back is killing me. Yeah. That's, I mean, he beat up. He's my dad worked himself into a, into the fucking, you know, laying in bed every day. Oh yeah. I mean, sad thing, but it's like, that's what happens. You know, don't take care of yourself. Yeah. I started here in the same kind of.
00:23:48
Speaker
I'm a woman thing i like crossover i was also a musician and i came back to new york and i thought i would teach. So i taught high school in new york for a couple of years and boy moved out here and i was waiting for my life and.
00:24:06
Speaker
And I've never really built anything before. I just, like you, you know, I kind of had a saw and a router and I put a sign in my front yard and I got a job. And then I got another job and I started working out of my basement. I'd buy another tool and I worked out of my basement for two years. And then finally I said, I need someplace bigger than, you know, it was literally 10 feet by 20 feet.
00:24:35
Speaker
And we put this place up and that was Who know you put it like I'm a carpenter sign in front of your house or something. I put yeah, it's like I said Barone would work. Oh, I think is it still out there? That's no that was my improved sign. The first one was like First fucking sign you made a yard sign. Oh, yeah, that's hand carved. Yeah guy that did the lettering on the trucks Yeah, actually hand carved that son
00:25:02
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was just a yard sign. Cool. And, you know, like it was like, wow, somebody's going to hire me. And I would go home. Are you sure? Yeah. People would give me like a check and I'd be driving away and it's like, man, they think this gave me a check. You know, trust me, I've had that feeling many times. Yeah. I mean, I still get that feeling sometimes where, you know, when you sell a good job and oh, yeah, there's a reward in that.
00:25:29
Speaker
Yeah. And you feel that little bit of nervousness that you, you know, that you can perform, but like you get that little bit of like, oh man, I better not screw this up. Like when we built the confessionals. Yeah. I mean, that was a serious job. So that, that's funny.
00:25:46
Speaker
And Brooklyn's changed. I'm from Brooklyn. I hear you talking about the Navy Yard was empty when I lived there. I can hear it. Well, you said you used to leave your car unlocked and put a sign in the window that said cars are locked. Where in Brooklyn? Well, I lived in Sheepset Bay, but I lived downtown on Portland First. And in the 80s, Brooklyn was, you know. Oh, God, I know.
00:26:14
Speaker
So that was like caught that and it was mostly the stuff in the car the radio red hook. Oh, yeah, shopping right. I've got a shop in the Navy Yard and had a shop in industry City. Yeah, they had been talking about, you know, revamping red hook for a decade like then lately. Well, you know, when I was there was still no man's land. You brought a car to burn it.
00:26:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was like where the mafia brought bodies to dump. Right, right. Yeah, you didn't cross. One of my favorite places. The BQE. Totally. Not over there. No, it still has that vibe. Yeah. In a way. It's still kind of like a no man's land vibe, which I love. One of my favorite bars is there, but during COVID we cannot enjoy. But yeah. The funny story is the first time one of my
00:27:03
Speaker
First shop that I was really excited to have was in Red Hook, because I was like, oh, I love this place. It's like a destiny to go down there, water, seeing the boats go by, surrounded by craftsmen down there. Everyone that's down there, everywhere you go to lunch, it's just like guys with fucking bibs overalls, and they're covered in dust. And you're like, this is where I belong. I'm like, I'm getting to this thing.
00:27:27
Speaker
Your community vibe now. Yeah, like all the really talented Brooklyn woodworkers were down there and I was like kind of getting my plants at their shops and I walk into a shop and they'd be like two three sliding table saws all set up with different blades like Guy had like all these jigs all like crazy shit I've never felt like home got sick like I would just become friends with like this old Jamaican guy that ran the shop and he'd let me use the planer and I
00:27:52
Speaker
Like, I should be charging you money. I don't have any money. I'll give you a hundred dollars. Like, that's all I got. Like, whatever. So.
00:28:03
Speaker
That was cool. Oh, the story I was going to tell was first time I'm rolling into the parking lot, there's like caution tape and the guy, there's like a security guy in the booth and he he had known me. It was like he saw me come to like pay the lease or whatever. So he's like, oh, you're new here. I'm like, yeah. And he's like, I see like all these cops are surrounding like a fucking body bag with like a scuba police scuba police and like a fire. What's it called? Coast Guard was there.
00:28:37
Speaker
So there's like what happened he's like oh we saw a floater so we called him and they came and got it and it's been sitting there for an hour like in the bag and I'm like so what is what what it was where they parked the water taxis and it was like yep there was a body in the water and me I was like oh yeah that still happens I guess
00:28:58
Speaker
Yeah, even in new age, Brooklyn. You can't get it all cleaned. Well, that's cool. I mean, I miss Brooklyn in my mind, but it's not some place that I would, you know. I love it, but it's also like, it's not the same as it was for me when I first was there. No, no. The excitement isn't there for me anymore, really. Yeah.
00:29:25
Speaker
And that was another thing about furniture being there. I was exposed to, you know, like I said earlier, my friend was an architect and he was going, he went to Penn State and did the five year program. So it's like he had all these crazy books on furniture that I had never seen before. And some of it is just like some of the classic furniture is very simplistic and just beautiful lines. And just like the stuff you guys, I'm just always very impressed by. And, uh,
00:29:48
Speaker
I didn't know that that was like I had never seen so I thought of furniture as like these ornate things like you know that you see in a museum like oh furniture makers are this type of person and they they you know they only use hand tools like that's so fucking outlandish like these like idea of like this person one guy in a shop makes all this shit for this town or whatever it is like the joiner like
00:30:11
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like people think of like Queen Anne furniture. That's what handmade furniture looks like. It looks like Queen Anne Victorian furniture. When I first started, people would be like asking me to make stuff. I'm like, I don't have a style yet. So I'm trying to figure out what that is. But I was using a lot of reclaimed wood. And at the time, that was popular.
00:30:29
Speaker
and you know people will hate on the pallet thing but here i am six years later i started with pallets so anybody who's fucking using pallets don't don't fucking hate yourself just keep doing it doesn't matter you're a little late to the party but yeah you're fucking really late but you're gonna be fine maybe you know i'll let you know back when i was younger people always used to say i thought you'd be older
00:30:54
Speaker
You know the one job we went we finished the install and the lady hands me 20 bucks She thought I was like the helper. Yeah
00:31:12
Speaker
I was trying to have a bigger business basically a couple years ago, so I was trying to hire
00:31:23
Speaker
I was calling people, who's the best carpenter? I'm going to get them on my squad. I had this vision of that. So I had a couple of guys. One of them was this dude from fucking Nantucket area. And I was like, oh shit, if you work up there and those guys are in homes, then you can definitely handle what I'm putting out there.
00:31:42
Speaker
And I had this bar job coming up and I wanted to do like all the, everything from scratch. It was like all red oak, red oak ply and red oak hardwood. I was getting stained like this dark walnut kind of color. And I was like, this is going to be my showpiece. Like I was going to, I was like, everything was like floating shelves on brick, scribes and brick, everything fucking ate my own ass on the job. I had the worst people, worst experience of my life. Never want to do it again. Kind of thing. Like I have trauma from this. Like I swear to God, I swear to God.
00:32:13
Speaker
I never want to see this. I went to the bar. Don't even like, I don't even like it. I didn't like the design.
00:32:21
Speaker
which sucks because my girlfriend's design company was part of the design. The people just took over and they had too many opinions and they hired this artist to do this mural. And I was like, I don't even want my work in this place. I was like, this is the art you guys put in here? Fuck off. There were so many things. And then I realized I need to stick to a certain aesthetic and I need to keep my stuff
Balancing Work and Life
00:32:46
Speaker
small. I need to stay small and work on how to
00:32:50
Speaker
Be efficient with two people, three people.
00:32:53
Speaker
That's it. That's that's kind of the ideal size when you're trying to do crap type war. I believe so. Yeah, especially because you can you can get away with outsourcing a couple of things here and there if you need to. You can still make the money that you need to make and you can still have, you know, I want to have fun at the end of the day. I still want to have fun. Like I'm not going to die fucking miserable and be like, why did I do this with my life? Yeah, like it's fucking fun. It's quality of life here as well.
00:33:21
Speaker
We get to build shit that lasts for a long time. And like another, I was just filming a TV show over the last five weeks and with the guy, a designer on the show, we had the conversation at one point, we were like, yeah, you know.
00:33:36
Speaker
Both had to fucking make that that choice where he went to design school and everything and a lot of those kids don't end up in a shop a lot of men of Designing or you know, there's no problem with and he was very interested in the shop and as a you know He's a black man as well. So there's like not very many of those types in shops. Yes small demographic in the wood shop and just a super badass designer and woodworker like really really good and
00:34:01
Speaker
And we were like, yeah, man, I remember that moment where, like, I was working at the production shop and we did this huge job for, like, two months straight. We built all this crazy shit. Everything was laminate circles. Fucking like half of it was like a putting situation, you know, like putting putting green, but like mini golf. Yeah, mini golf. Like, yeah. Like all these like loops and things like for kids.
00:34:27
Speaker
it was cool to do all that and then we fucking went and picked it up and threw it all in the garbage like oh god you just cut it in half with the sauce all the next day and then i was just so depressed from this i was just like what did i just do like we're gonna do that again now like this is what we're gonna do for the like the rest of the like because i like the shop i got made pretty well and i was like this is fun
00:34:47
Speaker
But after that, I was like, I can't do that. I was like, I need to do stuff that lasts. I want to put your name on it. Right. And like, if you tell somebody you did it, it's like, oh, where'd it go? We threw it in the garbage because the rich people were done with it. So we threw it out. It's like so much waste, too. And that was a part of my thing was like I was rescuing wood that was going to get thrown out and I was making it into something that you could keep. Yeah, antithetical to the other work you're doing. It was literally like the opposite of it. And I was like, I can't do this anymore.
00:35:14
Speaker
So that was another thing that pushed me harder to continue to do my own thing. Well, we have that vibe here, too, as you probably know. So, you know, we have a lot of things in common. It sounds like kind of woo woo, but like you really do put a piece of yourself in everything that you make. So to to see it cut and thrown away. Right. It's like, why would you want to put the effort into it again? It's just going to be junked.
00:35:37
Speaker
There's a little bit of loss after you've worked on something and then you install it. You feel like, oh, there it goes. See you later, you know. And you come you come back. I was going to say home. Come home to an empty shop.
00:35:53
Speaker
Yeah, we deliver that kitchen. I mean, this place was packed. That's weird. And you come in and it's empty. Yeah. It feels good. Yeah. Like something's missing, you know. Yeah. Then then you can relax. But then that's like a feeling that like it's like, OK, cool, we're done. And then you start something new and it feels good to start something new. It does to me. I love starting a new thing. Sometimes I start two things in the same day and work on them a little bit here and there, which I probably isn't the best, but it helps me keep
00:36:22
Speaker
A little bit balanced, I guess. When you work by yourself, you have to pick and choose, you know, sometimes during the day, what's going to keep you motivated. Yeah, I work with my, I mean, my assistant is, uh, he's like three days a week most of the time. So I'll get something to a point where I'll be like, all right, now, now this is for you. And then like, I'll take it from there and do something else to it. And then just depends on what it is really. But yeah.
00:36:46
Speaker
He's been picking up a lot of good. That's cool Yeah, you're lucky to have somebody totally. I'm very lucky to have him. He's very dedicated
00:36:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's half the battle. He's super fucking rad, dude. His story is cool, too, because he just started getting really into it the last couple of years. I've been working with him for five years. He's like my apprentice. So it's like I have a lot of pride in seeing the way that he's developed skills. And I'm sure he feels the same way. But it's like I remember he had never held a power tool before. Like he came to my shop.
00:37:23
Speaker
and i was doing a bar with all pallets but i was like ripping them all down and cleaning them and it was supposed to look like a more of a nicer looking pallet wood thing that you've been doing i guess and uh he got like i gave him yeah it was i made it for a fucking restaurant in the hampett so it was pretty decent but uh
00:37:45
Speaker
I just remember him with the saws, all like cutting the nails on the pallets. And he was like, you do. He's like, you think you do. So I was just like, listen, you think you can make stuff? And I was like, yeah, I do. I'm like, I mean, they're going to do it by myself. We're going to do it with somebody else. Like, you know, I had two brothers that worked for me. We talked about it.
00:38:04
Speaker
So it was all the span of like 10 years all through their school, you know here at junior high and high school and The youngest one I'm still close with both of them, but he I was just talking to him. He's an engineer now. He's been a
00:38:20
Speaker
you know, at work, out of college, about three or four years, and he still misses working here. He says, you know, I have a great job, but you spoiled me for all future work. Yeah. Max is a model. Yeah.
00:38:56
Speaker
It was better off having someone come in that has no experience. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So like everything that he knows is my, like, either my theory or my facts. Yeah. Where's that from? I don't do that. So he must have got that from Buggy. Did you watch the YouTube videos now? Who do you think you are? Actually, we've got a question about that. No, I've actually learned a ton from you.
00:39:07
Speaker
Yeah, he's from Sacramento.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah, well, let's not spoil the question. You want to get to the cool thing? Yeah, let's do it. All right. Well, I'm going to bring out my tool of the week, and it's a predecessor. This is more of my small tools. This is sort of unintentional. This is my halder. You know, it's a soft head on one side, and hot glasses on the other. It's a 30-millimeter hammer.
00:39:57
Speaker
It is a nice hammer. It did show up a little bit smaller than I expected, but yeah, it feels good. I actually used it to chop chisels. My birthday chisels I refer to them as. We had to take a part of the door. My birthday chisel for another show.
00:40:32
Speaker
I have to say something nice about that. There you go. Let's hear it.
00:40:40
Speaker
I said I was gonna hit a bull's eye. Yeah, yeah. I see I got a born over here made in the US of A. Yeah, mine's made in Germany. Yeah, it's a it is a it's a nice looking and nice feeling. It's just too small for my taste. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's predecessor. I got this from my uncle.
00:41:00
Speaker
My two uncles were upholsterers in Brooklyn and you know that those old wooden frames and everything And this was left over when they closed the shop so I used this for about 12 years and and Put it through its paces. This camera's got to be like 60 years old
00:41:24
Speaker
So it's got more charm than function. It's actually very balanced compared to that. Yeah, this is more of a drumstick feeling. Yeah, right. You could see that somebody sat in a chair and that one and did this. So that's the tool of the week. But the point is you got to have some kind of small hammer. You know, those guys like 12 ounce hammers. This one actually just by chance, it fits nicely into a hoop in my apron. So
00:41:52
Speaker
That was the bonus of it being this small, but don't want to justify. Oh, you got it. Oh, yeah. He ordered it by mistake. He thought I thought it would be a little bit bigger, but I'm happy with it. No regrets. Yeah. Is that an Amazon picture that is a little too small? No, you know, I believe Valley. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With the legs.
00:42:15
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's what your garden told you because it's one of those things you can't tell the scale because it's just a picture of a mallet Yeah, yeah, right same thing with that pencil. Yeah, I did that with a I bought this Japanese now and it's so light It's like I got a rubber side in the wooden side. Yeah, it's like, okay cool This makes me look like I know what I'm doing. I guess I'm not using this for anything You're gonna tap in a plug. It takes like three taps
00:42:39
Speaker
Yeah, like a little weight, a little weight. I have the, I actually love the little, the little finish hammer. This is only six ounces. No, it's yeah. That's perfect for a lot of stuff. You know, with a sharp chisel, I felt it really was, you know, perfect. I mean, if I'm using a big chisel, as you could see, I have that big round mouth. That's, that was the
00:43:04
Speaker
The handle was a little bit, the handle is a little thin. That's what kind of gives it that dainty sort of thing. That's probably it. You got to get used to it, I think, too. But that head comes off. Yeah, it does. You could put a new handle in here.
00:43:25
Speaker
So that's it. You know, check it out. Don't be a hand car project. Yeah. You don't want to surprise them one day. I got enough on my plate. Let me know your feelings on this. Uh, you know, too small, just right. You know, is it, uh, the Goldilocks syndrome? So that's the tool of the week, the halder 30 millimeters, simplex 30. Cool. All right. Yeah. Cool. Melon.
00:43:54
Speaker
Oh, well, well, yeah, Frank Carpenter, Carpenter, one, three. He's got the bigger one. Yeah, of course, the regular size. I can imagine him having that little twig. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's refined detail detail work. I said, Richard, you use those models. Yeah, I'm afraid to use that thing. But it's going to break. So that's not going to be the one tool that you're able to steal.
00:44:20
Speaker
No, no, no, no. Definitely. I'm waiting. I'm waiting racially in the weeds. Yeah. Rich has carte blanche to steal one tool from Rob. So, yeah. So what's next? We got this. This is kind of one of the favorite topics we've found. People really.
00:44:38
Speaker
I guess there's a lot of gripes, a lot of things to gripe about out there. Yeah. It's easy to get a grumpy in the shop, I'd say. Yeah. So we'll be in our guests, you know, I guess decide what they want to do here on the podcast. And you decide you want to, you know, break out the petty gripe for the week. I guess I think that's been on my mind. I've talked to a lot of designers.
00:45:02
Speaker
every week not a lot maybe three which is a lot and I come across some that don't know how to describe certain details or certain finishes and it's just maddening to me because like I'll send samples and I'm like okay you know I can hit this five percent sheen and we're gonna call that Matt right now okay and then we're gonna call satin pen and then we're gonna call like eggshell something else but like
00:45:27
Speaker
I'll tell you like they'll be like oh send us a walnut sample so I like matte looking stuff like I have a couple things that I go to first time or I know you guys use a lot of dark pung oil like the oils which I've adopted from you guys actually and Jeff talking about them so much I had to try them
00:45:44
Speaker
And I love them.
Challenges with Designers & Materials
00:45:45
Speaker
And I did a couple samples I send to the city and then I get an email back like, we want it to be shiny. We get that. And I get that. I get it. But like then I find out that like someone's this this person's interior designer's assistant is like, you know, 19 years old, 22 years old, whatever it is.
00:46:07
Speaker
That person's job is to be getting better at their job, just like it's our job to be better woodworkers and better crafts and better business people because that's what we do. To me, because you're young in the industry, you need to be like, okay, I know what Matt is. It's very simple to look it up. There's a lot of new videos on finishing, there's a lot of cool stuff on finishing. I'm kind of into it in a way.
00:46:35
Speaker
just like that kind of thing and not being able to describe details and then that gets lost in translation and then there's a piece that's already almost done and then they come to see it and they're like what's this like what's that what's this oh I'm like that's on the drawing and you didn't change the fucking drawing so now it's made and now you're telling me it's not right what the fuck like how did you not just like get that across first yeah we've run into that on occasion and
00:47:04
Speaker
There's nothing worse than having to justify the stuff that you painstakingly recreate from drawings that are signed up. You're probably just like us. We spell out every detail because we work remotely. We'll present the project virtually, the drawing, written description, and then we produce it. So we don't want to leave any
00:47:30
Speaker
you know, errors, chances for error. Yeah, it seems there's not a lot of reciprocation, like with designers, where we'll go out of our way to learn whatever type of terminology that they're using or, you know, techniques, whatever. But there's no reciprocation on their end to learn, you know, what we're talking about. When in reality, everybody should really know what's, I mean, it's. Yeah, the language has to be universal. Design world and adult world, because
00:47:59
Speaker
There's a lot of kids that, like I said, you can make that choice. Am I going to actually make things or am I going to just design them on the computer, which I have no issues with at all. But I think there's a lot of people that get real talky about being a designer and not knowing how something's actually close together or the amount of attention that gets put into some of these things that are being made.
00:48:20
Speaker
And they're like, oh, I made this. I designed this thing. And I'm like, well, how we. Before you go, I'll agree about it. Right. Yeah. Like if you don't know what rails and styles are and which ones are which and you're a designer, but then you need to learn that stuff. That's the very basic. And then they want to say like, oh, like.
00:48:41
Speaker
This style acre kitchens are really hip now. They've always been fucking hip. What are you talking about? It's been around for 16 hundred years. If you look at Arganectal Digest, every single one of those fucking things has a acre-style kitchen in it. They're all a little different and you can do so many different things with all of them.
00:49:04
Speaker
with all that stuff, everything. And like, I don't know, people are like, oh, there's a trend in this. There's, there's friends that happen in kitchens right now. There's like weird color on which I love actually. But that's what's going away. Oh, go now. Exactly.
00:49:30
Speaker
Have them like at my house. No. No, after we were doing it, it was whitewashed.
00:49:38
Speaker
Pickle though. Yeah, pickle ball. Yeah. Pretty sure I was in like elementary school. But like I've had this conversation with Jeff before about how you would see things with cherry. Good. I was like, I'm always afraid. I never liked. I used to tell people I don't like cherry. I don't like the wood. Yeah. Couple of weeks ago, I made a bunch of stuff with cherry. I'm like, I fucking love cherry. What is wrong with it? We hear that so often about cherry. Yeah. Because we broke it down.
00:50:08
Speaker
Because in the 90s or the early when wasn't whatever late 80s early 90s like all those red Blacker kitchen that looked like shit. Yeah, and that was what I indeed. That's what I Yeah, it's all birdie thing. Yeah, it was maybe a birdie be saying whatever they wanted and cherry was the vibe they're going to like carry look really good like This is all cherry right here
00:50:36
Speaker
Brown. It's not pink or red at all. It's a gorgeous color. Yeah, it's my half-assed cloud lift. Green green stuff. Very simple to finish it. That carries over to
00:51:02
Speaker
inspiring someone who's not into flashy shit. You know what I mean? Like that's where I was inspired by a lot of simplistic stuff because I was like, okay, I like the lines there. I like that. I like this. I can mix those things together. I can take a round over and do that. It's like, yeah, that's where inspiration comes from with a lot of furniture, I think. And, and, you know, cabinetry, because at the end of the day, cabinetry is furniture grade, beautiful stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
00:51:27
Speaker
you know playing with the shapes negative space to do that that's part of what we do here as far as designing simply and right proportions are so critical you have to have the eye for that immediately like you have to walk into a space and see a thing like if you're looking at this wall and you all right you immediately start thinking what you're going to do you don't go home and then you're drawn on the computer it's already there right right it's already there
00:51:51
Speaker
That's exactly it. If it's not there, then it's not going to be there. No, no. The same thing with music. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, that's cool. Yeah. Well, what's your gig at the stone? Oh, yeah. He said it to me. Oh, yeah. That was the first one or I think that was your first gig as a band. The Earth. OK. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Funky one.
00:52:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. One time I played at the Wonder Bar. Oh, yeah. Ran down the street in the rain. My phone fell out of my pocket, slid into a puddle. It was destroyed. I was on tour. I was I was running to go play at the Stone Pony on Halloween night. So I think that was four years ago now. So I think Wonder Bar. Yeah. Yeah. And then ran right right back to back sets with two different bands. That's pretty cool.
00:52:40
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know what's gonna happen. What do you think is gonna happen with bars and things like that?
00:52:48
Speaker
I hate to say it, but I don't think anything's going to happen anytime soon, really. No, I mean, we don't think we're I don't think people are responsible enough to work. Yeah, we did one kind of gig. What was it about two months ago? We did that televised. Oh, yeah, like the televised. But it's a live stream thing. And we're going to a couple of people from the band are going to help out somebody and do something else in a live stream through in a couple of weeks. But
00:53:15
Speaker
It's not the same. Yeah, man. I mean, I used to love playing live so much in the age of 20 to 26. I played every Wednesday night out of place from 10 to four, 10 to two plus other gigs and on every other day. But like that was the first band in New York. That was in Nyack, New York.
00:53:32
Speaker
Oh, OK. Where'd you play in New York? Were you any of these places? See every venue that exists, I guess. I played best by theater. I played like in all every event, every venue. All the small ones, all the bigger ones, never the garden, but. So should we move on to 20 questions? Yeah, because we're starting to touch on some of these other questions. So we're getting ahead of ourselves.
00:54:02
Speaker
All right, so we do this thing when we do this thing. We did it once before and we're doing it again today. We have like 20 quick questions. Don't think about them too much. Just a quick answer. There's one word answers. Yeah, maybe two words. Well, it's one or the other. Yeah. Coffee or tea? Coffee. All right. Domino or Dalles? Domino. Boxes or briefs? Box or briefs. Pain interstained.
00:54:33
Speaker
thing. I've barely ever paid. Summer, winter, summer, 100%. There you go.
00:54:41
Speaker
Tape measures, 16 inch, 25, 16 foot, 25. You said that last week. That's a tape like that. Rob would use 16 inch tape. You're not going for it if you don't need legs. Cheetos, crunchy or puffed? Crunchy. Yeah. Now you like a regular mechanical pencil. That's tough because I like both, but I guess mechanical is easier and more consistent.
00:55:09
Speaker
Seinfeld or the office? Oh man, Seinfeld, 100%. Square drive or Philips? Square drive every time. Are you a Windows guy or Mac? I'm a Mac, I barely, I don't even have a computer right now. Push saw or pull saw? Pull. Alright, Sicilian pie, corner, edge or center? Oh my God, yeah.
00:55:38
Speaker
Yeah, that's the only way yeah, so you go for the level or the laser Depending yeah, I guess on an install we would say yeah, I Mean laser just makes every life your life is here, but it's a big job. It's gotta be a laser and we like set up all day kind of thing Levels are good for small stuff Fagin, what Becker?
00:56:04
Speaker
I mean, rest in peace. Donald Fagan, obviously. I mean, Walter Becker, we can talk about this for a long time. But what's to say? I mean, they played two different instruments. I'm more of a fan of rhythm, I guess. But guitar playing is untouchable. I love Donald Fagan's records and Walter produces them. So Donald Fagan. 10 inch or 12 inch miter saw?
00:56:32
Speaker
I've never had a 12, so 10. All right. Beach or mountains? Um, I was honestly, I'm kind of more into the mountains these days, but I love, I love the beach. I grew up going to North Carolina and I grew up in Lakewood zone, not far from here. The beach, I guess. Yeah. Let's do the beach tight bond. One, two, or three. Um, mostly three pizza or Chinese pizza.
00:57:01
Speaker
And the round it up. I guess I shouldn't say that. Finish it off. Champer or round over.
00:57:08
Speaker
Oh man, that's funny because lately I've been doing chamfer, but I used to always go for a round over, but lately when I want to do like that little detail. Yeah, just that little finishing. I did a tiny chamfer. The big round over is kind of your thing. I love the big round over, but yeah, that's for certain stuff. But when I'm doing like, yeah, just to knock the edge down. Yeah. Cause I got too many people telling me that's my thing. So I started doing something. That's smart. Cause somebody else is going to take it and it's going to be their thing. Yeah.
00:57:35
Speaker
Well, we've got a lot of questions to get to. There's two pages. I had to actually make the font smaller. Oh, these are questions from Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. So some of these are kind of just generic and others are a little more direct. So this is from Jack Thornton, 98. This guy had a bunch of good questions. He wants to know where you can get those fish crocs.
00:57:59
Speaker
I had to show these guys what they were. They're called the trout slippers. They're pretty hideous. They're fucking horrible. I bought them to just convey. I'd literally just buy them just to see it. I love the reaction I got. You gotta wear them to work. I wore them to work. No, I can't wear them to work. I work frocks. That's bad enough. But I wore a...
00:58:19
Speaker
I wore those slippers to a restaurant in Lambertville and I just had one up on the chair. I came and she was just like fucking dying. She loved it. I was like, you know, like it makes somebody smile like that. Yeah, that's the deal. Tell you can get him in the shop. Yeah. Rocks with a steel tail. Lambertville does seem like the kind of place where you get away with the fish slippers. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:58:42
Speaker
There's your interesting fashion going on and not in Lambertville. Lambertville is cooler than New Hope, actually. The architecture is insane. Yeah. There's arts and crafts homes on one street. It's like a row of like 40 of them. Gorgeous. Who's got the next one? Take it, Rich. OK, this is again by Jack Thornton. He's got a lot of questions. He's got about four in there. Are you self thought, thought, you know, books, classes, university, you two working with someone?
00:59:13
Speaker
Four out of five, four out of six of those, I'd say. I'm very self-taught, I'm very YouTube watcher. I love a good YouTube video. I don't think, I watch too many instructional videos. I'd say, I remember one thing, a great example of me watching YouTube is me taking fucking a screenshot and pausing videos and like watching, like looking at a jig, like Jory Brigham. There was this bed he was making one time and he did like a dovetail.
00:59:42
Speaker
thing where he like slid a side table onto a bed, but with a dovetail. So he like slid. It was a big, big dovetail. Like sliding. I was like, that's fucking badass. I got to figure that out. And I just like pause the video and zoomed in on the gig. And I was like, I'm going to make one. And I made a bed that had a dovetail, like half lap dovetail joinery. And that's like where I got that idea from. Because people were, where the fuck did you come up with that? I was like, well, I'm crazy. And I watched this video two o'clock in the morning. I was like, oh, that's cool. I'm going to try that.
01:00:12
Speaker
And, uh, you know, Instagram, like I said, like wasn't much of me watching like how to stuff. It was just watching the way other guys did stuff that I had, you know, their methods and.
01:00:24
Speaker
the way they would set set up on a job, honestly, it would be cool to because, like, the efficiency on a job site is I learned a lot of that stuff from watching like these guys that I kind of looked up to at the time and being like, oh, my God, if you set it up like that, it'll go away quicker. And like you get these bulk work benches and like that's very super efficient. Like being efficient is very important, especially in the city where like, oh, you got a load in and out of, you know, I was building loft beds on fit in the fifth floor walk up and carrying plywood up by myself and
01:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, I worked for a commercial GC in the city. So yeah, I mean, just getting in and out of a building. Everything takes probably six times longer than it does in a suburb. Yeah, it's insane. Like you can't you know, you never just pull into a driveway and drop off something. It's always like there's always a headache involved.
01:01:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it did that kitchen install Midtown. And we parked right in front of like this brownstone and it still sucked. Oh, just having to get there at five o'clock in the morning to get a spot in the commercial line of, you know, parking like seventy two dollars a day or something. Yeah, I just I have no desire to. To do that recent, the elevated guy. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
01:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, well, this was a three story single, you know, single. Yeah, because, you know, you can't even get up to the apartment if you don't, you know, make the right handshake. Yeah, that. And just like they see you walking up there like, no, Fredo.
01:01:54
Speaker
If you ever want to feel like you're a lower on the totem pole than somebody else, go to a high-end building in New York. They'll let you know that you're a piece of shit real quick. Exactly. Who are you got a tool belt? Go around the side.
01:02:11
Speaker
Well, not like us, these younger guys, I guess, I mean, Rob, we are self-taught books and actually working for someone. Yeah. Picked up a lot of information. I'm not as comfortable with the medium as far as learning off of a video. I learned most of the stuff from books and watching.
01:02:33
Speaker
Well, making your own mistakes. I made more mistakes, for sure. It makes me think the first time I made a dovetail. So I had a hand cut it because I didn't know any other way. I had my book to have my two pieces. Yeah. So I'm looking at them. I still didn't know how to get them together. Really? After you cut it. Yeah. You're like, what the fuck is this? Is there a page missing? It's like, oh, there's a puzzle. Remember doing puzzles under your hand? It's the same thing, kind of, right? Yeah.
01:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm mostly like a YouTube guy. Yeah. And I mean, I guess I could say self-taught. But using like YouTube, I haven't really read a lot of books, which is something that I'd like to do more of. But yeah, I like picking stuff up on the job. That's great. Like you are some of those stories you're telling are great. When you come across somebody, you go, well, I got to like shadow this guy. Totally.
01:03:28
Speaker
Yeah, you got to pick up as many of those little things as you can, even if the place, like as a whole, isn't somewhere where you want to stay. There's always something that you can pick up from somebody. Yeah, it's like that in the kitchen. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's always something to learn. I mean, I always like to say you learn something new every day. That's my line. That's still my line. Yeah, we learn stuff here all the time from each other. We're here every day with each other. We still pick up little things here and there.
01:03:56
Speaker
Yeah. And sometimes you just, it's by mistake. Yeah. Not even by making a mistake, but you just come across something and you're like, Oh man, do it this way. Or if I do this, this is going to happen. Cause I've done stuff.
01:04:08
Speaker
by myself for a long, long time. And I've developed, and I've developed my kind of form of building with like, you know, a lot of festival machinery. And it kind of hurt me in a way because now I'm in this bigger shop. I've never, I never worked in like a real wood shop before I made my own wood shop. And that's what I learned how to do everything with like festival stuff and routers and, uh, what do you call it? Track saws and everything.
01:04:34
Speaker
and a table saw obviously but like mostly just all festival stuff and no big machines so now i'm in the shop with all these huge machines and i was like when i first got there i was like pretending i was like yeah i got this and i'm like some guy would be like watching me like what the fuck like aren't you supposed to be some good woodworker that these guys are talking about and shit i'll be like get i would be like so embarrassed because these guys have been using these types of things for 40 years yeah and like
01:04:58
Speaker
one time i went to set the fence on the joiner and i did it wrong and the guy's like that came back the next day and he was like hacks don't touch the fucking pointer like follow me you didn't know he didn't know i did these guys are one of them brutal they're like brutal but they're cool
01:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, I had never cut a fucking miter on a sliding table saw before until yesterday. And I just made some sick miter making these side tables. But until yesterday, I'm 33 years old. I had never done that before. So it's like there's something new to learn every day. Oh, yeah. And that was a scary one. You know, it's like the blades, those things, 15 horsepower.
01:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, 16 inch width. We had similar paths. I mean, I made my first wood shop myself too. And if I didn't have it in my shop or know how to use it, I didn't know anything about it.
01:05:49
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I mean, I didn't work from rough lumber until whatever 18 months ago. I had never. Oh, really? I had jointed stuff because it was came jacked up as for it. Right. Right. But like I had never. Oh, you guys ordered S4S at the old shop. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And like that doesn't even seem like it's worth it.
01:06:07
Speaker
bundles of like just crap like came bundled up as like a 100 board foot or whatever. 200 board foot packages that you have, like soft maple, you know, skip planes or sometimes most of the times it was a SLR. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. So like, you know, he had like a six inch joiner or something. So you might run something over. But I mean, going right into the ripsaw, like ripsaw.
01:06:36
Speaker
What the fuck? They would go from possibly the joiner to the wide belt sander and get brought down to like, flatten it on a wide belt sander? No, he would set it through the planer. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was S4S, but it's not black.
Tool Talk & Ryobi Anecdotes
01:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, this is his favorite. I've used a lot of S4S for a lot of the stuff that I do because I didn't have access to it. Yeah. It's heart meeting city. My shop is throughout the size.
01:07:33
Speaker
I only started using rough lumber because
01:07:40
Speaker
I was forced into it because the SRS was never, you know, flat enough to do the kind of work I was trying to do. And so then by the time I got it flat, it wasn't three quarters of an inch anymore or an inch. And I said, well, I can't get the product myself. Yeah. And I don't know if there's any truth to it, but I feel like they save the better material to sell as rough. Like maybe I'm talking out of my ass, but
01:08:09
Speaker
I feel like the quality of the rough, rough zone like FAS is better than the, than the S4S FAS. Cause I mean, we're getting, sometimes we're getting 1516s out of a piece of four quarters. But you know, the machines that used to do S4S, they have the double side of the inner thing. They just, it fucking rips the grain apart. And then the, the rip saw, they use, like the rip saw has the two blades in it. So it's like, depending on how wide the piece is, you get this and that.
01:08:37
Speaker
all the s4s i've ever seen always had like one horrible side yeah and the grain might not be oriented the planar marks are so deep it takes hours to sand them it's like if you have the right stuff just get a rough lumber it's cheaper yeah and then you get you got a couple extra pieces so you can choose them choose throw them and
01:08:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I've talked to a couple of guys like about what we pay for lumber and they're like their jaws hit the floor. Yeah. I mean, I remember when you were like, oh, because I started like trying to hustle some wood. Yeah. Well, I think I think you guys are getting it the same place we get it. So Mackelman. Oh, yeah. We're getting it from O'Shea. I saw it in the back of your thing one time.
01:09:16
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, we buy because we use so much hardwood, we're buying it in quantities where if you're just a guy that just does this for fun or you you build like kitchen cabinets with doors that you order, a 300 board feet is going to last you like the whole freaking year. I mean, having it up on the floor, but it's also it's just inspiring to have wood around like I. I always buy actual wood. I just ordered some like 12 quarter ash and oak just because I know I'm going to be using it, but like.
01:09:45
Speaker
I want to have Jack out there, Phil. Right. Yeah. I mean, we've been sitting on like 200 boards for you to eight quarter cherry for like a year. Yeah. Right. And then you might get an idea or somebody might say, hey, I want I need a tabletop next week. I'm really it's like it's a rough job. But can you do it? Yeah. We got this right here. What do you think? Yeah. Stuff like that happens all the time. You know, I think you should take this next question. You. Yeah. Yeah. You're this is one of your favorite tools. Yeah. Because the next question from Sal, the carpenter on Instagram.
01:10:16
Speaker
He wants more Ryobi content. Oh, this guy. Yeah. They blocked me on Instagram. He saw Jeff's glue gun. His Ryobi glue gun with the Makita battery set. He wants more. It's just not enough. And we did have some Ryobi in the shop. That was yours Rob. We, we banished it. Yeah. It's gone. You know, I have a Ryobi weed whacker.
01:10:39
Speaker
And, uh, Makita everything, like all that stuff. I was, I was out there with my Ryobi weed whacker with the big battery and I had to go to.
01:10:48
Speaker
Is it Home Depot or Lowe's? Home Depot sells the Ryobi and they were having a sale and I just got suckered in to the tool with no battery thing because it's like, wow, that's the battery at home. Yeah. I see the prices off that. Are you fucking serious? Like how Google was like $24.99 or something? Like the battery. $29.99. It's like, oh my God. That was your pen gun.
01:11:13
Speaker
Yeah. So I got the 18 gauge nailer, which we did use once. Dude, if that thing works for a week, it's worth the price. We fired one one nail over at a non. No, I took it with me to do. Oh, yeah. Mary Steinberger. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I loved it. We won't mention that.
01:11:34
Speaker
But they throw it off the bridge. It was there on the on the last piece of crown. Yeah, that's right. It worked. We went up there and had the last time it worked. You need it for one. You need it for one thing. That's it. It's in a milk crate in the basement right now. Yeah. I mean, I have like that five hundred dollar grex and it gave me more heartache than I introduced to buy those things. That's my third one. All right. Second one is old quarter table guns. Yeah. Like old hachi stuff off the sky.
01:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, big screen tools, good.
01:12:05
Speaker
Um, Sal's funny because Sal like used, I used to go in on me and him were on this, uh, this forum on Facebook and all these carpenters all in the world and whatever. And he would always be like posting his stuff. And I'd be like, what is that? What's that? What? I don't know. I've never seen that before. It's like joking with them. And we'd get some bent out of shape. Cause I just, it's like, you, you're not giving it a chance. And I'm just like, I'm never going to. You're not going to change my mind. Yeah. Yeah. But he does, he does.
01:12:35
Speaker
Yeah, sounds got a bunch of those. I think the 18 gauge. I mean, I understand people's
Quality Issues in Commercial Work
01:12:40
Speaker
like reasoning, like it's cheap and if it works, then it's fine. But they, for some reason, Ryalby has a fan club. Oh, yeah. Big time. Well, Richard now isn't right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's the same thing. Is it the color? No, I mean, the same by the same people. No, I mean, it's a fan base.
01:13:02
Speaker
Oh, I have no idea. I think because they're cheap and and you can like beat on them and they might not perform the best, but they like kind of keep going. I think it's based off of price. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much like I can get that it works for cheap. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. I've worked on some commercial jobs with the guys with all the Bauer tools from Harbor Crate like a bull hit.
01:13:26
Speaker
But it's Chicago pneumatic. Yeah. And that power stuff isn't even that cheap. That thing. No, no, it's bad. Those are those are real prices on those tools. You remember Loose saw. He had that Ryobi saw. It opened a full 90 degrees from
01:13:44
Speaker
Oh my god. And it had no guard. So it was like, if it was running and you walked by, you would just be like completely gutted open. Yeah. One time I was on a job and these guys were claiming that they wanted like, you know, they hired me to be Mr. High End Craftsman guy on this deck. It was like this huge rooftop deck.
01:14:04
Speaker
And you know, we had to scribe around some stuff and whatever. They were concerned with the screws being in a straight line, the framing being really nice. And you know, we did all of that. I can show you pictures that came out really well. Then they started higher and they started thinking we were too slow. They wanted us to do all these other like fences and stuff on the roof. And we're like, I'm not going to be able to get to that until like December. Like what are you talking about?
01:14:28
Speaker
So they hired just like, I don't know. I was like, where are you finding these guys? The Home Depot parking lot. Cause like these guys would show up with, um, one guy had a Ryobi saw, similar way you're talking about no guard, which was whatever. I haven't saw without a guard for a long time, but the blade couldn't cut E-pay. Like you're cutting, we're cutting E-pay and it was like smoking the blade and the guys holding it down on it screaming. It's like,
01:14:54
Speaker
And I got the GC comes over and I look at him I go I'm about to walk off this fucking thing Like if you got you got guys like this showing up like you're talking to me about how we ought to be safe We got to wear hard hats This guy doesn't even have a saw blade on his saw like there's no teeth left on the sink Like what are you talking about? Like that's your full like I've had to call him out because I can't do it Yeah, the bar is pretty low
01:15:17
Speaker
It really is, and that's the problem with a lot of that shit, because they want to pay you whatever they want to pay you. They want you to do your best work.
01:15:25
Speaker
Then they want to throw in some other guy. Yeah. Pick up the slack. Pick up the slack. But then like, where's the separation between what? Oh, well, I did that. You can tell. But then this guy did that. You can tell. And it's like, who did it? And I don't tell anybody I did that job anymore because no one's going to care. That's like benchmark. Yeah. The guy who put the kitchen that that rock. Did you build it with Rob or just help him? So yeah, you know, yeah. So.
01:15:53
Speaker
Put your guy's kitchen on the side of his van. Yeah. And he put in the tile floor. He put in the tile floor. And he's got a van raft with the picture of a kitchen that Rich and I built on it. It's really nice. And we're like driving down the road one day when we see it. We're like, what the? Yeah, I saw it at Home Depot a couple of times. No way. Yeah. All right. What's next, Rich?
01:16:19
Speaker
What are your favorite or least favorite pieces of furniture to build and
Exploring Unique Furniture Projects
01:16:23
Speaker
why? This is from Ryan Hinchey. Yeah, I'd say Hinchey. Check out his Afrobeat band, the Brighton Beat. Yeah. We don't need another Afrobeat band here. Rich's not a big fan of Afrobeat. I'm just trying to stoop down and figure out who killed his mother. Nigerian government, that's it. Rest in peace, Bellacooty. So what is your favorite or least favorite piece of furniture to build?
01:16:48
Speaker
Yeah. I guess he means like, uh, like a table or a dresser. Like what? Yeah. Oh man. Um, lately I've been making a lot of tables. I do love a table. It's a place where people come and I get together and it's a long lasting. Yeah. It's an experience, experiential piece. Um, I do love chairs. It's like, I have all these ideas for things that I want to make. I just haven't gotten them to them. You know, I don't,
01:17:17
Speaker
I don't know how to explain this. I mean, I just did a TV show where I built five challenges in five weeks, which was interesting because we didn't even have time to really think about stuff that you would normally get to think about where you're just like doing it. But I mean, anything I kind of don't love things with a lot of drawers in them. That's probably my least favorite thing to make.
01:17:35
Speaker
Why were you taking the words right out of my head? Anything that doesn't have a lot of drawers, I would say, is still, like, very enjoyable to me. I think once you start adding drawer boxes and a lot of hardware, it starts to... I also love pieces that have multiple functions, like a built-in that has storage or a piece that has, you know, three or four pieces that are all, you know, they're combined and they make one. One, like, vibe, I guess you could say. What about you, Jeff?
01:18:02
Speaker
Um, I like the kind of weird, like one off stuff. Like, you know, we did the altar rail for the church. We did the confessionals for the church just because they're so like purpose built that it's not really. Doesn't really have like a. There's no model for it. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of problems that pop up that you have to solve and a lot of specific conditions that you need to meet. So I'm into that kind of stuff.
01:18:29
Speaker
OK. Rich. Yeah, I don't like repetitive work. It's just like everything we do is kind of new. Yeah. Even if we make another bookcase or another blanket chest, it's still going to be a little bit different. Don't repeat much around here. Yeah, no, we don't. That's what's great about it. That's me, too. That's hard. It's hard for me to answer that question, honestly, because I do.
01:18:50
Speaker
You know, like I was, I was doing a record console with cane doors. And then the next week I'm making a table like out of cherry. And then I'm making these different furniture pieces for different. Another thing that happens is that people hit me up to make their furniture lines that they designed. So these are already talented people that are coming up with really cool ideas that now I get to translate them to real life.
01:19:11
Speaker
Which is cool because like, I would have never thought to do that. You know, so now I'm like, Oh, that's another heroin. Right. Yeah. Yeah. When you do commission work, like we don't really get a choice to pick what we're going to build. We have to build what the client brings to us. So they might not like it. Yeah. I mean, if I had a choice to build a.
01:19:33
Speaker
you know, a line of furniture. I'm going to build this table and this, well, my answer might be different, but we have to just build whatever. Yeah. I'm like, well, I, you know, a dovetail is nice. You know, if there's one or two involved in the project, maybe you're making a case with dovetails, but I'm the drawer guy here and it's like in the kitchen. It's I'm there for a week.
01:20:00
Speaker
And you just when you think you're like on top of it and you're stacking your fog and all those on the with a jig. Yeah, we do it all. Yeah, that kitchen had how many 40 drawer boxes? Yeah, I don't. Yeah, it was a lot. You know, it's a week. Half half half off those bottoms. No, three. We went to three eights bottoms because it fits better. All right.
01:20:20
Speaker
No, not for a kitchen. We do. I was going to say that. Yeah. Yeah. Because the move and they're through dovetails. We're not that crazy. Yeah. So it's all through dovetails. They make them sand them. Oh, yeah. Finish them. Then the bloom hardware. You know, then you got to drill the hole. You got to cut the notches. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you can buy a drawer box for 40 bucks. And that's where like the good one that it's insane. You go one working in. Yeah. We use have used the place. New Jersey drawer boxes.
01:20:50
Speaker
That's cider presses. I swear to God, there's a drawer box stack that fits inside this room right now. I bet. All the stuff that they're doing, it's the size of this room. And it's up to the ceiling. This entire room is drawer boxes for the projects that they're doing. They get them dropped off every day. It's insane.
01:21:09
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, we do take some pride in our draw boxes. I mean, it's a
Design Influences & Creativity
01:21:14
Speaker
point of pride. That is a view of like when a kid you can always tell you guys for, you know, of us guys like us and people who pay attention to open up a drawer. Right. Right. I've been in these super, super amazing homes in the Hamptons and I open up a drawer and I'm like, well, that's cool. Or more like, well, are you fucking kidding me? Like, this is like the kitchen. And you know, you know, somebody charged them. Yeah.
01:21:38
Speaker
Lots of money for that custom. Yeah. The best is when you open it and it's like a walnut drawer box, but it's those those shitty half blinds and they're not flush. You put in walnut drawer boxes and they suck.
01:21:52
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I saw one that was made with maple walnut edge banding on the top, but it was like a thick edge banding. I was like, what the fuck is this combination? It was no walnut in the house anywhere. There was no maple in the house. OK, it was high gloss fucking. It was the coolest molding I've ever seen. It was the coolest friend package I've ever seen. It was the house where the original. American flag was made. Oh, well, the first, the first version of it, I guess, in South and Sag Harbor.
01:22:22
Speaker
New York and they've recently recently redone it so it's like all freshly renovated and they had like I guess the molding was like a three stack everywhere though like the just door moldings high gloss gray probably like eight to ten inches wide like super deep like ten quarter but it was one piece of wood it was poplar or something and it was like I was like that's fucking yeah the more trim the better you know yeah
01:22:52
Speaker
But it was like a statement piece, you know, when you walked in the room, you're like, really? You did this everywhere in here? Yeah, you see a lot of people trying to replicate that sort of look, but usually it blows up on the impact. We've got next. This is again from Jack Thornton. Please ask Will, where he draws inspiration for his work. I've always been interested in his design aesthetic.
01:23:20
Speaker
Uh, I mean, my favorite, I guess is towards Nakashima. I don't think I've tried to emulate him, but I just love like that organic vibe of like, you know, if you, if you read up on him, Jack, you'll, you'll see, there's a lot of cool aspects of his life where he brings his work in life intertwined. And a lot of my inspiration comes from.
01:23:48
Speaker
books and you know not so much YouTube I'd say a lot of Japanese woodworkers I'm obsessed with I think I love like you know the stuff that you guys make I think is really cool I think it's cool that you're you know I don't see a lot of people making craftsman style and stickly style stuff and I think you're just executing it really well and it's like cool that you're local to Jersey and
01:24:09
Speaker
just like a lot of cool designer type people that show me stuff and like interior design as a whole I guess you could say like when you walk into a room and you and everything kind of works you're like okay I want to be a part of something like this so it's like once you get to that level of where this you're not just making something you're making something that works with the whole experience of a room
01:24:31
Speaker
That's something that keeps me going and wants me to make more cool shit, really. It's just like I'm inspired by making things. And the more I make things, the more ideas I get and the more I see things come together. I might change an idea or I might say, hey, I'm never going to make this again, but that was cool. I'm glad we did it. Whatever. So there's like a lot of designers from the 40s and 50s that I'm into like, you know, Charlotte Perrion, I love. I love like.
01:24:58
Speaker
And Donald Judd I love which is a super simple shapes basically, but he turns it into like this Amazing thing that he does with his art, you know, and I love the idea of like Artist craftsman kind of vibe where you know I might do a sculpture one day and I have no idea what I'm about to do I put a piece of wood on a table and I take out a chainsaw and you know, we've been micro dosing and stuff like that, but like That might help a little bit but like, you know, I'm not
01:25:26
Speaker
i'm just like in this idea of like where i started like i explained i basically started from nothing so it's like there's no i don't have anyone to judge what i do i don't give a shit what you think about what i do i'm gonna do it anyway i'm gonna try it and if it works it works if it doesn't then i
01:25:43
Speaker
I failed and I know that I failed. I don't give a shit. You know what I mean? You just got to not give a shit. Yeah. And what if you think like, cause there's, there's other guys I was like, Oh, was somebody going to think about, Oh, somebody else did that. And like, I'll, I'll catch myself doing something that I saw and not knowing where that came from. And then I know, and I'm like, Oh, I copied that because I saw it in my head. And that happens to me. I love house all the time because love house has all these new contemporary designers and I'll be like drawing something in my book.
01:26:11
Speaker
Oh man, I really love this thing. I don't like show somebody and then they're like, don't they have that at Lovehouse right now? Or like that details on something. I'm like, damn it. I knew I got it from somewhere, but. Well, it's like music, like everything's already been done, really. Yeah. So it's all just a riff on something else. You wake up and you got this great song in your head and you realize it's satisfaction. Yeah.
01:26:35
Speaker
So this kind of ties into the next question. This is from Kevin Lauk on Instagram. How do you decide the proportions for a project? The eyeball? Is it more experience? You want to expand on that? 100% I think Max tells people this is like
01:26:57
Speaker
I very rarely work off drawings for my own projects. I kind of just start making something and I know it's the right thing to do in a way. And I know that not everybody has that. And I know that it's like an ability that might be a gift in some way. But it's very much like you know it's going to look good. And like I said about if you're looking at this wall right now and you know that there's not as much room on that side as there is on this side. So we might have to do something over here to make that not look like that.
01:27:25
Speaker
So you have to love things like that sometimes and if you're working in a house that isn't perfectly level you're gonna that doesn't mean your piece has to be perfectly level so they might want the client might want it to line up with the way that you're walking in the room and shit like that so a lot of that stuff is vision and a lot of it is like the proportions of something i guess i
01:27:46
Speaker
I definitely have made a lot of mistakes making them look really weird at times, you know, or, or just basing it off of just classic, you know, math and stuff. Right. There's definitely the golden ratio and golden ratio. Yeah. Yeah. I find myself doing like, you know, multiples of 1.6 working. I don't have an eye for it. I have to actually do the math and all that stuff.
01:28:11
Speaker
Um, what else was I gonna say? I mean, it's funny somebody was saying something it was uh, Excellent remodeling we were talking about something And I was like, you know, I always go to 16 on stuff sometimes because I I can see right there There's there 16 like you when you frame when you grew up I grew up framing house So it's like I know what that looks like. Yeah, so it's like
01:28:33
Speaker
I know that that might not work here. Like if you're making a chair, 16 is a nice width, 18 is a nice width. And then if you wanted to make like an obnoxiously wide, comfy chair, who's telling you that it can't be this wide, where your arms are up here and they're on a cushion and you're sitting really low or something like...
01:28:50
Speaker
that's like people saw that last chair that i did with like clawed home and they're like oh it looks so weird it's so low to the ground i'm like it's fucking comfortable sitting it like it it doesn't have to be what you think a chair is like there's no rules to this shit like there are to some people those people are square you know yeah you gotta be an adventurer yeah you really do and there's no i don't know i kind of don't stop experimenting like i think that's a thing that's
01:29:14
Speaker
Quite a few people have told me over the last, like, oh, look how much you experiment. And I'm just like, well, you know, I think that's a big part of this stuff is really figuring that kind of stuff out. And finding your own aesthetic is based off of experimentation. There you go. Find your own. Right. And like language. And it's based off of other pieces of furniture that I love and other craftsmen. But like, do you want to be someone else or do you want to have your own thing?
01:29:42
Speaker
And that's hardest, hardest fuck to do. Yeah. I think it's something that you, you have to have some innate ability to be able to do, even if you set out to, you know, carve your own niche, you know, and, and forge this identity.
01:30:00
Speaker
You might not have the ability to do it. I think those who've been successful had that drive, but they also had that inner ability for whatever reason, if it's a gift or what have you. So sort of the idea of if you're listening to a record, like, you know, you've got all your favorite guitar players and drummers and stuff.
01:30:19
Speaker
I know my favorite drummer when he hits a snare drum like he doesn't have to hit anything else I know it's him you know what I mean you hear that yeah there he is that's it that's like that one guitar tone that somebody has and you're like that's gotta be him like you know right and like a lot of music is really cool like that and fern and you know there's furniture and art that is exactly like that too and you're like well that must have been his earlier work you know like you could see where they're developing into this right thing
01:30:46
Speaker
I was influenced a lot by Frank Lloyd Wright in his the way he approached the houses as being this whole and you spoke of this this this experience as you walk into the room he wanted you know the roof
01:31:02
Speaker
the ceiling lower so that you could. Right. Right. And how you make the furniture and the piece is all specific. And we carry that through in our work. We go to their homes and made the plates. He made them. Yeah. Yeah.
Craftsmen Marketing & Business Aspirations
01:31:18
Speaker
It was extremely like extremely. That's the coolest thing. Exactly. So cool.
01:31:23
Speaker
Like with Cheryl Parker, how do you use this? Where do you put it in your home? A meeting isn't just like, what do you want? I always do that. I have to see where it's going. We ask people questions. I think they must say it to themselves.
01:31:40
Speaker
Why is he asking you this? I'm sure they do. Like, what are the very specific, the most specific functions of this piece? Do you have something that you're going to put on it? What is it? How big is it? Right, right. Because you show up and you put it in and then, oh, well, I put this, uh, whatever. I put this statue up. I used to put it where I had the other thing and now it doesn't fit. Well, then we failed because we're supposed to figure that out.
01:32:04
Speaker
Yeah, and the proportion is, it's, I mean, Kevin, it's great they even are considering that because proportion is really, it's everything. And there are certain classic examples, you know, the golden ratio, I mean, the Greeks and
01:32:19
Speaker
The Parthenon, how there's really, you know, those straight lines aren't straight and the circles aren't circles. It's all to look right. So half the answer is if it looks right, it's right. Yeah. Pretty much if it feels right to your eye and your body.
01:32:35
Speaker
But you know if you're inexperienced, there's the classic examples to sort of get you grounded into Where's a good place to start that most people think looks right and I think a good example of this is if you're making like a shelf and like, you know We're half of you know Separated into thirds fourth fifths then you can decide
01:32:59
Speaker
Do I like that busyness with five shells? Do I like it with four? Will it be can I split it in half and do three on this side and two big ones on this side? It's like you can do all those things in your head. You don't need to do it with wood, but some people can, I guess. Or you could draw it or whatever way you need to do it. You need to try it because you might like
01:33:20
Speaker
make it and then you're like looking at it and you're bummed out. Don't be bummed out. Try it again. Try something else. I don't know. Like that's how people are. Yeah. You need discovery. You got it. You know, you got to sail away into the horizon. Another firetruck going by now. Oh man. They've been crazy like a dozen today. Well this question from Adam. You know what? I almost said that for route. For route. Woodworks. Far out Woodworks on Instagram. What's your current passion project?
01:33:51
Speaker
I'm trying to make a furniture line right now, and I think it's definitely more of a struggle than I thought it would be, and I definitely want to stand out from the crowd. Unfortunately, I'm not being compared to anybody, but I'm in a world of a bunch of cool people that are making furniture, and I want to be able to impress them, and I want to be able to sell stuff. I like doing commissions, but I want to have a website with a click-to-buy kind of vibe.
01:34:21
Speaker
still work with designers with commissions, but I'm, I'm going towards that route. Is that like a business model similar to what Thomas Moser? Yeah. Um, it is a business model at the end of the day. It's kind of a, it's kind of a lifestyle thing. It's kind of like,
01:34:41
Speaker
I want to have a shop with a wood burning stove and I want to crank tunes all day and just make stuff. And I want to have to make prototypes that for other jobs to make and you know, like that kind of stuff, because like I'm becoming like this specialist in certain ways. There you go. But, uh, yeah, probably passion project would be that or, you know, and definitely.
01:35:03
Speaker
It's definitely that because it's like a comb. It's a culmination of the last probably six years together. We'd love to be kept abreast of the progress. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sending. I'm sending. Well, he was he actually started the first drawings of it. That's why that I'm here. Yeah. That was I had a crash course. My car like that. I don't really love. But it was cool. I wanted to just see stuff because that's how I I have these things in my head. And then I draw them on paper. And I'm like, this isn't good enough to show anybody. Let me see if Jeff can do.
01:35:36
Speaker
Well, that kind of touches on Kevin's question too. Like if you can, um, you can start to draw in scale on Sketchup or something like that, that'll help you start to see these proportions. We get a lot of napkin drawings from
01:35:50
Speaker
Yeah. Designers. Yeah. And nothing's in scale. So they'll put like five doors across something and say, yeah, this is going to be 42 inches wide. Well, yeah, those really aren't doors then. Those are nine inch doors. That's a pull out for prices. Yeah, we had the one that was 10 feet wide with standard height ceilings and it was like this tall, skinny thing. Like, do you realize that 10 feet is wider than eight feet high?
01:36:22
Speaker
That was a delicate conversation. Yeah, when I was doing this show thing with Mark Gratt, he's really good at sketch-up and he's really good at translating this visionary idea into a sketch-up drawing in a very short amount of time.
01:36:37
Speaker
So working with him, it's like I already have that mindset where I'm like kind of okay with a scratch drawing because I kind of get it. But with him, he's very, very particular about details and very, very detail oriented. Everything matters, every single thing.
01:36:52
Speaker
So I learned a lot from just being around him every day for five weeks, which is a little crass course in somebody else's brain, basically, which I think is important to do these days. Once you're when you work, yeah, you guys get to do it all. We had that. I mean, that was some of the hardest stuff to overcome for six months because.
01:37:10
Speaker
I was the main designer and I would just draw the skin of something and I go, yeah, I already know how this is going to go together. Well, I know I'm going to add that detail, but now there's three of us working on it. And they and so all day it was like, Rob, what happens here? Rob, what happens there? Yeah, we're trying to line up the works that we stand in each other's way. We also get busy. So.
01:37:35
Speaker
It's like, you know, I'm sure we could all like just look at a elevation drawing of a cabinet and say, OK, yeah, of a whole kitchen and build the entire kitchen. That's going to do it on our own. But as the trio, it's harder, actually. Yeah. Are you are you able to talk about the show at all? Any of the details? I mean, yeah, India is only mean so much. Remember, number two, design podcast in Slovenia. Yeah, it's a show for
01:38:04
Speaker
It's a design challenge show for HBO Max. It was five weeks. Every Monday we got a challenge. And we didn't know what we were going to do the next week and we had to complete it. So Monday was a design day. Tuesday was a dark day, no cameras. So we got to build a lot of stuff if we had our materials ready. But, you know, that could also not work out.
01:38:26
Speaker
let's just say on the last week this happened we ordered fabric on tuesday didn't get there till friday we upholstered a whole couch on on thursday on friday night until 5 am that's where i was last week um you know we did a mixture of wood and uh wood metal glass uh we used a lot of upholstery things we did some really long projects and
01:38:50
Speaker
very excited to see how they edit it. You know, yeah, that'll, I think, uh, you know, I think we have a great chance of winning shell. We already heard that we're in the top two, so that'll be cool. The winner gets a hundred thousand dollars. I think we're going to donate it to something.
01:39:06
Speaker
That would be awesome. I'm going to throw in a plug for a popcorn park animal rescue down in Lacey. Okay. It's my wife and I, we donate quite a bit down there. We rescue, you know, we adopt the animals per se. They're all wild animals. We have a pig and two squirrels down there, but they have like bears and camels. Oh yeah. They're all in Lacey.
01:39:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's like a zoo of sorts, but they're all older, injured animals. Yeah. Yeah. So we go down there and, you know, walk through. It's a great experience and I always need plenty of care. You're telling me you have squirrels in popcorn park. You have no squirrels in this backyard.
01:39:56
Speaker
Those are albino squirrels that have medical issues. These here, they have no issues. My squirrels have probably about 20.
01:40:09
Speaker
living squirrels here that eat like, uh, they're at the, what, uh, the old man eat better than me, I think. Yeah. All right. Let's, let's keep it moving. It's almost like the same question. Uh, well, it's a little bit different, but it kind of touched on a little bit. Yeah. Jack Thornton, again, how do you market your services and what do you market yourself as?
01:40:28
Speaker
Oh man, I used to market myself as a carpenter. I think I kind of don't even market myself anymore. I think stuff just keeps coming in word of mouth via Instagram, the internet, whatever. I used to be on Yelp. I used to build a lot of loft beds. I used to do anything to make money and build a fence and build a loft bed.
01:40:50
Speaker
I do want to get more specific once the furniture line comes out and I want to have my website will be Much different and I'm working on that right now the aesthetics of that Yeah, I mean I am a carpenter I'm a woodworker I'm a woodsmith I do things with wood and I know how to make it into whatever you want, but I
01:41:14
Speaker
I say I get to pick and choose what I do. That's a big part. That's a big part of marketing yourself is not doing the wrong project for yourself because then you don't want someone to see that thing that you did that you don't like. So don't show it because then you're going to get mixed up with some other other type of person or craftsman or whatever.
01:41:36
Speaker
Yeah. What do you call yourself? How do you market yourself? What do you market yourself as?
01:41:46
Speaker
I was saying mill worker for a long time. I was just saying custom car from a mill worker, which I still think holds true because mill work companies make furniture all the time. And I do furniture production. And I make pieces for other, for not only myself and clients, but I have partnered with a couple of people that I, they have designs that I build and we partnered on the,
01:42:14
Speaker
Exchanging of money in the sales of them. What do you call yourself? Rich? If somebody asks you, what do you do? You know what? I use the term cabinet maker because I also tell them that it's a, it's a broad term. Um, I worked with some great craftsmen that call themselves cabinet shops or cabinet makers and,
01:42:39
Speaker
That's what I call myself. It's not a good word. It's funny. I was having a conversation with an older woman the other night and she was, Oh, what do you do? Well, I was telling her and she's like, Oh, what kind of furniture? And I was telling her, I was trying to describe it because it's kind of in between a bunch of different styles or whatever. And then she was like,
01:42:57
Speaker
Oh, what about this? And I was like, yeah, I mean, I can I build do I do built ins and do cabinets. Oh, my God, you're a cabinet maker. And it was like that was the most impressive thing to her. Yeah. You know, everything I was saying was just like, oh, OK, you must be some people take that. People take that term and they don't understand it. They think having to make you a mic guy, you know, you could say you're a better.
01:43:20
Speaker
Yeah, I would go over people's heads. Yeah, that's really what the term is. It's almost like calling a furniture maker, a cabinet maker feels like calling a carpenter, a construction worker. Right. Or a contractor. Yeah, like it's a little bit of like a down contractor. And I'm like, no, contractors don't do anything. They just have jobs up. That's what contractors do. They make phone calls. Yeah, they sit in their fucking trucks.
01:43:45
Speaker
I know a lot of contractors that don't know how to do anything that goes on in this place. Like they take plywood and put it on a wall or they take sheetrock. Most of them. And they just have guys that do that. They don't even really a lot of times. No. Yeah. I think right after I started, I found I couldn't describe myself or my, you know, vocation, living, whatever with an ER at the end of it. And I would just say I design and build custom furniture.
01:44:11
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we've talked about it before where it's like all the adjectives have kind of been co-opted. So there's not really a good way. Custom has been bastardized. Bespoke just sounds like a little too focused kind of potential. Yeah. And and like overly used artisanal. Yeah. That same thing overused and corrupted. Right. I say the same thing as you now, you know, design and build custom furniture and cabinets.
01:44:39
Speaker
It's been custom. Custom definitely has been bastardized. I mean, it's good to have that in your little blurb if that's what you're looking for. It just doesn't hold a lot of weight. People will see that and they'll say, okay, maybe we'll see if you can do this thing. But yeah, there's been lots of years of just making whatever someone wanted me to make them.
01:45:02
Speaker
Yeah. I think what you said before, like about not really marketing yourself. I mean, that's really the ultimate goal is to have a, um, like a known niche and reputation where you don't have to market yourself. When you say, when someone hears wild Willie's woodshop, they know the type of product and the type of work and that kind of stuff. So I think that's really the ultimate goal for any business of this sort is to just have your own reputation and
01:45:30
Speaker
rather than market, you know, the work is kind of coming to you and they already have an idea of what it's all about. Yeah, I mean, I'm very lucky in that way, but yeah, it's definitely, it's happening. The curiosity is that how would have had to throw them in and it just, it just escaped. But the old time woodworkers, how they marketed themselves and how they got business. Do you think it was easier back then? Or do you think it's easier now to market us
01:45:58
Speaker
But you have a client base that basically doesn't know what they want. You know, I'm trying to say, it's like, you guys, the young guys now, you have all this, this, this social media to
Client Interaction & Communication
01:46:11
Speaker
work with the old time guys, Moser, like people like that, you know, they, they didn't have that.
01:46:22
Speaker
You know, there are less, there are less choices in the marketplace. So if you were, if you did work for a wealthy family and then your other wealthy friends came over and they saw your, they saw your rocking chair, then Samuel was busy at a waiting list when he died of hundreds of people. You know what I mean? So like that guy, that's an exception to that. I think, I think there's like.
01:46:43
Speaker
There's people who have made furniture their whole lives who don't have a waiting list. Yeah, exactly. They're skimming by. I used to find woodworking years when I was younger. I used to read all the time. And also he had a way with words like he was known as a socialite. He was hanging out with the friend he was hanging out with. What's his name? He had a chair in the White House.
01:47:09
Speaker
A lot of those guys are cool people. You know what I mean? A lot of the guys that are like, like, if you have a party and you meet the furniture maker, you've been looking for a furniture maker to do something at your house. You like, you like this guy, you're going to give him your money. You know?
01:47:24
Speaker
It's not a marketing thing. It's a people thing. Are you cool thing? Relationships. You can market yourself whatever, but if you show up and you're an asshole, then nobody gets caught. Yeah, it's true. It's like you could have the coolest website, the nicest fucking Instagram, all these fucking beautiful photos of every... This is our team and this is what we do, but then you put out shit work. It doesn't matter. All that shit doesn't matter. The work matters and the way you treat people matters, and that's really what it is.
01:47:51
Speaker
You could talk about what you want to do all day and all that crap, but you get caught up in that shit and just. Yeah, there's no substance to that. That's how you build your business. Yeah, it's so much more than just building the furniture. You know, and coming from the service industry. I mean, I think it's a total leg up to be able to just know how to talk to just even talk to clients. Oh, dude, when you have a good experience with a waiter at a restaurant, you're always going to go back. Yeah. Yeah. The same situation. Jeff's really good at that stuff.
01:48:21
Speaker
I mean, I got thrown into like, well, yeah, I mean, I mean, he talks to our clients. He does most of the talking. Yeah, it's because I can remember what I'm talking about. But I started like, you know, I started out as a busboy and then I don't know, one of the waiters got fired or something. So I got like thrown in at like 15 years old and I'm waiting on tables at like a nice Italian restaurant. People that are whatever four or five times my age. So I had to figure out how to talk to people.
01:48:51
Speaker
you know, from that age and make it sound like I knew what I was talking about, which, you know, helped me in the future with just dealing with. You can't talk to me. What do you mean? I talk to you all day. Not like that. Rich, what is this? Is this a real question from Tom McGuire? Yeah, Tom McGuire. He bought the first set of plans that we put up. Tom McGuire and Jay on Instagram. Yeah. Local guy.
01:49:17
Speaker
Well, the Green Street tank top is going to be a thing. Do I have to go sleeveless like rich? This was custom made for me. Yeah, we had the order. This is not cut. There's only six in existence. Exactly. And if you want one.
01:49:37
Speaker
We might be able to make it happen for you, Tom and us more. No, they weren't even thinking about doing tank top. Maybe in the summertime. I just like cuddles. I don't like the tank top. You know, like just like no spaghetti straps. No, no. Jeff,
Lifestyle Changes & Design Challenges
01:49:51
Speaker
you want to touch on on Tom's. Parge it today. About the plans. Yeah. Yeah. So we put out a set of plans today for craftsmen style Adirondack chair.
01:50:06
Speaker
get it over on the website. We're actually, they're on sale for five bucks. We'll probably bring that up to like $7.50 is what we're planning on doing. So I'm trying to keep it affordable. We actually have a coupon code American cracking it off until we get up to the plan.
01:50:30
Speaker
As our very, very first purchaser, we're going to throw Tom an extra set. Yeah. The matching, uh, Ottoman and. Yeah. You deserve the time. Maybe we're going to get in on some of while. Willie's plans. I don't know. That'll be the day I plan on it. I don't even know I've planned on it.
01:50:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's a lot of work. I mean, how many hours you put into this? You know, I thought it was going to be nothing because we already have like the drawings. So I had the drawings of this chair. Yeah. And so I said, yeah, I'll just, you know, extrapolate the little details here.
01:51:08
Speaker
Given I already have the full sketch of wrong To create it into yeah, you've built this you've been like eight of these chairs. Yeah, these are chairs I've done many times. Well now I'm trying to go through my head What do they really need to know how much am I?
01:51:26
Speaker
going to tell them or take for granted to build the chair they even know at least this but yeah it's two days right of I figured take so hey my good love
01:51:41
Speaker
Yeah, we want to bring people into the folds. I think with the drawings and the plans, somebody could, if they're really just a novice, do something like this. Totally. And that's really what it comes down to. And yeah, we're available. You know, people out of availability shoot us a message, say, I'm stuck on this. Or, hey, dummy, you left out the dimension right here. What is this supposed to be?
01:52:05
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, we got to diversify. It's tough being a woodworker these days. Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you, Willie, this is this is from. Is it? Oh, this is from us. Yeah, you. This is your. Oh, this is what my question is. So literally what I said, I have to remember. Do you think you would have moved out of Brooklyn if it wasn't for covid and and follow up? What are the main differences between working in a more rural place like New Hope compared to? Oh, man.
01:52:34
Speaker
Yes, I do. It was stress I don't do well with. I was having issues with anxiety, a little bit of depression here and there, having that feeling that you don't want to get out of bed. And I never thought I would ever be there. I'm like, I work for myself. I do something I love. I'm definitely struggling. Some mental health issues came up. We relate to that.
01:53:02
Speaker
Oh yeah no I mean they came up pretty hardcore especially over in the winter of seasonal depression but that's kind of where it started and then I would just be like nervous to face them all that time and like have a lot on my shoulders and have a lot of people relying on them.
01:53:17
Speaker
would take on too much work because I'm definitely a hard worker and I don't ever think that I'm taking too much work on at the time. And then I'm like, I would get into positions where, you know, I'd have, I'd owe people money and then I'd have the work at the same day. I'd be like, oh my, what the fuck is happening? I can't, I could, couldn't handle certain things. I needed a helper. I mean, I needed help with some of the jobs and just.
01:53:43
Speaker
I think that all of that combined was like, maybe I need to get the hell out of here and like fry some little bit of a different lifestyle. And since then, I mean, I think I slowed down a lot right when COVID started. And then I got right back into building a lot of stuff because the designers are still hitting me up. And right at that time, I had released a couple pictures of things, of projects that I was really proud of that had been taking a long time to come down the line with them.
01:54:11
Speaker
the photos and the way that some of these designers work is they don't release anything until like a bit so nice but you know they get a really good photographer to come shoot it just so happen to be in the New York Times like Sunday magazine
01:54:28
Speaker
I would say my quality of life out there is way, way better. I am very into nature and biking and doing all those things. And I just think being around a city environment for me was a lot of fun. And now I'm getting a little older. I love to go to the bar with my buddies, but I'm not going out and looking for fucking ass and shit anymore.
01:54:54
Speaker
it's like yeah that's cool but like that you get caught up in that life you know like it's like that party thing and i already did the part how about parking right in front of where you live how's that feel
01:55:07
Speaker
It's unbelievable. Isn't it an amazing feeling to go in? Having, I had to have a parking garage. It was like all the extra, all the extra money being spent every week, like... Dead girl wants to enjoy it. Oh god, yeah. You get to go out to dinner every night, you know what I mean? Like, I would be talking to people and be like, oh, you know, I'm like, oh, I'm cooking tonight. I'm like, oh, man. I'm like, you're also gonna get home from work until 9.30, like, look at me.
01:55:34
Speaker
thousand dollars a week on food sometimes because you're bored out of the house and it's like yeah and I love my apartment I loved it all it was like something that I was very proud of we basically took out a room and did all custom like ever like I did all the furniture and all like the shelving and like we had a new you know big new Gucci lamp like hanging over the table just a lot of cool shit but I'm totally over it basically I just I
01:56:03
Speaker
Also having a shop there, it's just so much stress. It's just way too stressful. I'm a different person now, pretty much. Well, I was going to say being such a big Nakashima. Being in a more natural environment, you feel more inspired versus being in the city. That's really where I wake up in the morning and I, you know,
01:56:41
Speaker
It's just so beautiful. It's like every, like the leaves have been changing, there's this cornfield, there's horses, there's cows, but you can't get mad at them. You can get mad at them. You can get mad at them. You can get mad at them. The domestic violence is to be right in front of your face. Both things happen every time.
01:57:14
Speaker
You start flipping out in your car right before you even did anything for the day and that's the kind of stuff that doesn't really happen. In summer, we're really out there, it's even more suburban. It's very... Receptive, just full of people as you would leave your building. Literally. You know, people sleeping in your wall. It toughens you up. Well, I won't say that, it makes you get a little numb.
01:57:24
Speaker
I've blocked that out of my mind like it's not possible.
01:57:43
Speaker
You have to close down some of your senses, whether it's sight, or smell, or ear type of thing. I think that should have been when it was based off of stress I was dealing with.
01:58:27
Speaker
Really having a mentor, you know what I mean? Not having didn't really grow up with anybody teaching me any of that stuff I don't have like I have very few business mentors because like the people that are those people they don't
01:58:39
Speaker
They don't really understand the design world, I guess. So like, sometimes it's like, Oh, so what about the, you know, don't you charge per like.
01:58:48
Speaker
hour there. And I'm like, no, because it doesn't make sense to her. Like, they'll be like, what do you mean? How do you don't, you're not making any sense. And I'm like, I'm not making any sense to you, but I've been doing this for this long and it makes sense to me. So I'm going to keep doing it. And then, you know, I, you've got to just develop things as you go with some of this stuff. Like there's no book about it. There are no mentoring is, is a great topic that we might, you know, talk about on an upcoming show. Maybe when you come back,
01:59:16
Speaker
We could pencil that in as a great topic because being either a mentor or a mentee is a wonderful opportunity.
01:59:30
Speaker
Probably one of the biggest life changing relationships you can have. I think 100%. That's, I mean, that's maximize relationship. We're, we're good friends, but you know, at the end of the day, he's, he's been able to see a new, a new world based off of being a woodworker.
01:59:48
Speaker
And, you know, a lot of the people that he knows from the modeling world and stuff are, are lost. Like they definitely have not, they didn't, they didn't learn any skills and they thought they were just going to be the shit for the rest of their life and be this good looking dude with his shirt off on the cover of the magazine, which you can make a ton of money, but like, where's the, there's, there's a lot of fun in this, in this world that we're in. And there's, you know, a lot of satisfaction and a lot of.
02:00:13
Speaker
When you go to bed at night, you know that you accomplished something. And I think that stays true to that holds true to a lot of careers. But I think like for a kid who is maybe a little lost or I definitely want to keep going all over the place, but I definitely want to continue to teach in a way and in any capacity. And I would love to teach.
Conclusion: Satisfaction in Quality Work
02:00:36
Speaker
maybe the underprivileged type person who you know because as much as you know my parents divorced at a very young age I didn't have a father figure I definitely didn't get lost in like a drug world or anything but I was like I was just a fucking pain in the ass I didn't know
02:00:54
Speaker
because I had a similar experience growing up without parents and it's so easy as a kid if there's nobody just to say don't do that because just think of how many bad decisions you're going to make.
02:01:11
Speaker
Innocently. But I tell people all the time, if I didn't do the things I do, like drumming, BMX, those things also led me to this career as well because you have to kind of not be afraid to try.
02:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, I also be on a bike on a bike. It's just you and the bike and the drum set. You could, you could be in your basement for the whole day and not learn that thing that you're trying to do. And you'd be so frustrated, but the next day you come back, it's a little easier. This stuff takes a long time to do. You can't like get, you can't, you know, you can beat yourself up about it, but.
02:01:47
Speaker
There's a way to approach it where it becomes therapeutic for sure and learning skills that can make you money but also learning skills that make beautiful things.
02:02:03
Speaker
I think it's very, very satisfying, especially because I think a lot of young kids are missing out on stuff like that, especially with the way that they're just staring at the fucking computer. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we get a level of fulfillment out of our job that a lot of people don't get. I mean, if you sit in an office and you were making phone calls back and forth and sit on the computer, you know, trading numbers with people.
02:02:25
Speaker
When you go home, I mean, what did you really do? What did you I mean, our work is transcending generation. So it's going to be there for, you know, hopefully hundreds of years. Yeah. I used to tell Christopher, my apprentice, it's not a race, you know, do it right. The speed will come. Don't worry about anything except doing it right. Go over there. I'll check your work. I'll let you know how it's coming along. Yeah, totally.
02:02:53
Speaker
I mean, I want it to be done well so that I don't have to go back and do it again. You know, that's the point. I don't want to go back over your work because you do too well that I don't have to correct.
02:03:09
Speaker
That's better than doing ten poorly that I have to go back over for sure and that's and I think I think you can learn a lot from sanding something that's I mean Yeah, you fucked that up. Yeah, I feel really stupid. Oh, yeah, and then you're like wait This is all like it requires a lot of attention. It's everything. You can't just pull the sander and look at the bone That's what a lot of people would think and I think yeah, it doesn't sanding is the easy part No, no sanding is one of the most important. Sanding takes forever
02:03:38
Speaker
And just because you want it to be over with doesn't mean it's like you have to do it. There's only the only way to get it done is to actually do it. And you have to go through all the crazy. It's like, Mom, do we have to, you know? Yeah, like, no, you've got to send all of those 120 marks out before you go to one 180. Yeah, it's funny. Again, when Christopher, he told me the other day it came up at work where he was sort of instructing a younger employee than him and he drew a parallel
02:04:05
Speaker
Between something he got here and what he has at his own shop or his own place of work And I told where I told them if you didn't get the marks out with 120. They're not coming out with 150 You know Jeff was talking about you can't wish it away. No, no
02:04:28
Speaker
You just got to put your head down and do it. We've had to finish a bunch of those, love to have to refinish them over and over again because the stain didn't come out the way it was supposed to.
02:04:38
Speaker
Trust me, I've had a wire brush in my hand for 12 hours straight. I've had a sander in my hand for many, many, like, you know, thank God I have like the high end stuff that doesn't vibrate your hand off. We have three vacuums and three sets of sanders, you know, the festival stuff. Yeah, it's got a nice broken sander right there. It's got a unita, you know, paddle on the top. Yeah. You like it? Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's got a three sixteenth, no, three thirty second stroke. Wow. It's constantly spins at the same time.
02:05:08
Speaker
So that thing really where it's like a road text vibe. Yeah. It's not a road text vibe. Sorry. It's like a really nice ETS vibe, but it also spins the entire time.
02:05:17
Speaker
You know, we, we just got a road text that then we're going to go. We like it. Yeah. Thanks. Hold onto your hats when you're using that thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'll rip your arm. This is our last question. Well, this is also something that I was thinking I'd ask you and it's where do you like, where would you like to see your business and you know, the near future?
02:05:40
Speaker
Um, I might end up starting another business. I kind of want to, I have a, you know, potential business partner and we kind of, our ideas very much align, but with my own work, I kind of, like I said, I want to go more into a very, um, specific, have, have a furniture line. Yeah. Maybe do custom commission based off of that line or just continue to do the custom commission.
02:06:08
Speaker
I don't really see myself expanding like in a huge way. I definitely want to continue to do this. And, you know, as things come in, we'll we'll figure out what's better to do and be smart about stuff. Because I think like I think when you try to go fast, it ends up not working out ever. And I think sometimes slow and steady wins the race. But a lot of this stuff, especially as a small. Yeah. And my mentality about keeping it small is definitely standing true because now I know that I can have some things
02:06:37
Speaker
outsourced to CNC machines and they can do it in a speed that I can never touch and like Do I care like someone gonna say look? Oh you didn't do that part? Well, you know how much money know how much shit is made that way now? I'm sorry, but like a lot of it is and that's fine. Like I'm okay with it. I was like, oh they took the easy way out Yeah, I know how to do it with a router. I could do it with a router and
02:07:01
Speaker
Make shit with a router every single day. I don't need you to tell me like I'm that but like whatever I do see myself wanting. I want to start a closet Kind of like a California closets, but hipper situation Because now they have like this Let's say this is the laser measure that you can put in the room and it stands 360 and you can it'll tell you if your walls out of plumbing for like a half an inch over there and like it'll tell you that there's a bump in the wall over here and
02:07:30
Speaker
So you can build this stuff on the computer and then have it made on the CNC machine and ship it somewhere and have two guys install it. And I just always, I just have these, I don't know, I have ideas. I have more, you know, I can keep going, but it's like,
02:07:49
Speaker
The woodworking and craft and design world there's a lot of room for a couple things that aren't there and I think eventually somebody will figure that out but I think
02:08:00
Speaker
I don't see why there should be a monopoly in the market of, like, California closets. I've never seen one that I like. I've never seen a finish that they do that I like. And I think it's insane that people pay a lot of money. Yeah, they're not cheap. They're higher. They charge more than you guys charge. And I know for a fact, because I've competed with them before, I was like, how the fuck? Like, that is that much money? Like, 12 grand for, like, two fucking boxes. Literally, just two boxes with a shelf.
02:08:30
Speaker
The shop where we used to work, I built this Wengie vanity and the Wengie medicine cabinets, and they had California closets. It was like almost $100,000. It was a big closet, but still. It makes no sense. I mean, and it's laminate. The installer had sandals on. He had slides on. The mica. With the part of the board inside. Yeah. Yeah. The really low grade stuff.
02:08:56
Speaker
And it's like, what's, what are you paying for? Well, you know what? We're going to end it on a really good note, which is to talk about the beer of the week. Well, I brought it in. So I'm going to last. Yeah, I'll go. Rich will be quick. I'm sure. Yeah.
02:09:15
Speaker
Sour wheels by jug handle this This was unusual. I'll say it was very taught that would if it wasn't so taught I would have enjoyed it more I didn't really get the coconut
02:09:30
Speaker
I'm not sure what lactose brought to the table. And I maybe a creaminess. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, the cans empty. So I guess it wasn't it wasn't bad. It's just it was an it was a good experience. I'll say it's a sour sour pineapple. I tasted coconut. I did not.
02:09:56
Speaker
Um, smooth, good. I'll drink another one. Oh, there you go. I'd be better on a hot day. Yeah. Yes, I was thinking. They're not really too seasonal. Yeah. I can't see myself drinking like one after the other, but it puts a hot day in a nice and cold. Yeah. I can drink this. Yeah. Yeah. It was a bad one. It's not like a beer. 5.2 alcohol. You can put these in. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a beer. I don't get it as a beer. It's just a beer. It's kind of shandy. Yeah. Yeah.
02:10:21
Speaker
I'm shocked. I thought you were going to hate it. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty good. I got that kind of Pina Colada. Yeah. You're more of an IPA kind of guy. No. Old fashioned. Core's light. Oh, Mitch Schlitz wrangled. I love a little bad blue myself. That was like week two. Yeah. Really? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I got that kind of Pina Colada vibe from it.
02:10:46
Speaker
Yeah. It was okay. It's very, uh, sour. I like sour beers. That last sip I just had was like, yeah. Yeah. As it gets warm. Yeah. Wow. Package eight 1820.
02:11:02
Speaker
Yeah, it was pretty good. So that's number two for Jughandle. Yeah. I mean, I have people sending beer. Yes. Yeah. That's what I'm waiting for. And Jughandle. Yeah. I mean, we wouldn't send it back. We're right down the road. I know some of the worst at four is live. Life's on some.
02:11:23
Speaker
Oh, yeah, so I'm gonna announce next week. We got Keith from two bit woodworks coming on Keith's another local guys out in Howl He's you know another woodworker youtuber army veteran All the way from New Hope and that's no no around the corner
02:11:45
Speaker
All good. Happy to be here. On a wet, rainy, bad drive. Definitely one of those days you don't want to have to get out of bed. But you're already committed. Like we got this weather for the rest of the week too. I love heading back. I got to go fucking work in the shop or whatever it is. I don't even know. Yeah, it's felt like we did a long one today.
02:12:08
Speaker
Yeah, it was blowing off. You know, maybe you'll come back again and, uh, that'd be great. We'll, uh, we'll talk about mentorship. Yeah. We always got good stuff to talk about. That's for sure. And, uh, depending on what time you can get here.
02:12:22
Speaker
Yeah, we'll bust out some food at the end of it. I mean, it's a long trip for you. Yeah. What's that two years a week? That one where I got to eat because I'm starving. Yeah, that is your buddy's deli. I was going to say, you know, a little big mics. Yeah. Little red store catering. All right. We could send you over to you like Mexican. Oh, yeah. Pueblo Magico. Pueblo Magico.
02:12:47
Speaker
Or what side? Oh, yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, if you want it like eating like a boy, you know, or there's a bar and it's got great food. It's a dingy in the back. Yeah. I don't mean it. I wouldn't call it a dive bar. Would you go there like by yourself? Yeah, I don't know. That's where I got this beer.
02:13:11
Speaker
You didn't go to the bar. No, I know. I never made it back. Dog bars are my favorite. Well, yeah, this is like a liquor store bar. Oh, cool. Here you go. It's like France, the liquor store and in the back. There's nobody in there pays a child support. Yeah, like they're probably watching. Yeah. I watch a Wheel of Fortune or like they're like a clock. There were two regulars in there already. Yeah. And they were on their third. Yeah. Good for them.
02:13:32
Speaker
Uh, so yeah, uh, again, on the website, 30% off all the 3d print stuff, the plans, uh, American craftsmen for that coupon code. We get those bottle caps. Yeah. Fire. Yeah. I've been using one myself.
02:13:50
Speaker
So yeah, that's all we got for this week. That's it. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Happy Halloween. Thanks for coming. It was great. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. Awesome. Get out there and, uh, you know, we didn't get as much feedback on the candy corn as I thought. Yeah. You know, Halloween's coming up. Let us know. You're feeling circus peanuts and candy corn. Yay. Or nay.
02:14:14
Speaker
As in general, you're going to have to eat it. I mean, what was the other one? Popcorn was a circus. Peanuts. Peanuts. Sorry. Peanuts. Definitely. Candy corn. I'll eat either one. If it's candy, it's a decoration. If it's candy. Everybody's going to be careful going home and everybody else out there. It was great talking to you. Thanks a lot.
02:14:45
Speaker
Thanks, guys. Cut! Yeah, I get that little audio fade out.