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The American Craftsman Podcast Ep. 23 | Drinkin' On The Job
43 Plays4 years ago
On Episode 23 of The American Craftsman Podcast, hosted by Greene Street Joinery, we ask "is it okay to drink on the job?"
Beer of the Week (Ross Brewing Co. Goseberry): https://untappd.com/b/ross-brewing-company-goseberry/4062442
Tool of the Week: (Lie Nielsen Np. 60-1/2 Rabbet Block Plane) https://www.lie-nielsen.com/products/rabbet-block-plane-w-nicker?path=block-planes&node=4072
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
Podcast Introduction and Video Quality Jokes
00:00:17
Speaker
Ain't no shame, but there's been a chain. Coming at you live in 480p. No, I think it's 720. It's like somewhere in the 600s. Brutal. This camera's brutal. We're woodworkers. Yeah, I have no clue. We're not AV techs.
American Craftsman Podcast Overview
00:00:38
Speaker
No. Oh, let me get the beer glasses. Yeah. We're about to begin.
00:00:45
Speaker
The American Craftsman Podcast, and this is episode number 23. For those that are counting, I got a chilled glass. Woo! I'm not even going to touch it. I don't want to warm it up.
00:01:02
Speaker
Well, yeah. Hey, another week in the shop. No week on the podcast. Twenty three. Crazy. I know. I know. This is how many months by going on what's six months. It'll be all next week will be six months minus a week because we again, we did two in the first week. Oh, that's right. We were that gung ho trying to build up the catalog.
Segment Introduction: 'Book of the Week/Month'
00:01:27
Speaker
We got a new new segment for you guys this week. Yeah, it's highly requested. We are illiterate fellows. More than some. Yeah. Yeah. Less than some. So so we're bringing out the book of the week. Yeah. Book of the week or I have in here maybe month. Yeah. Book of the month is probably probably better suited. Yeah. I have.
00:01:53
Speaker
I got about half a dozen stacked up for the year so far, so I think we'll be alright. Maybe we can hit them once a week. We'll roll them out as they are available. We'll have to start doing picture books if we run out. I could talk at length on the classics. My name was Ishmael. That's right.
00:02:15
Speaker
Call me Pip.
Introduction to 'Beer of the Week'
00:02:18
Speaker
Let's get into the beer of the week. I have it sitting in a Home Depot five-gallon bucket next to me with some snow over top. That's right for those that I don't know who would be lucky enough to have avoided these winter blasts of late. Yeah, we have more snow on the way. Yeah, so a lot of snow on the ground out here in the Northeast. All right.
00:02:41
Speaker
So we got another one from our friends at Ross today. Ross, we had the Passaic Porter, I don't know, maybe about a month ago. I guess they used to be, or maybe I'm misremembering, used to be in Red Bank, but now they're actually, they're building a brewery right down the street from the shop. So this is called Gozaberry.
00:03:02
Speaker
Mixed berry sour, Goza-style sour ale with gooseberries, raspberries, and blackberries. From Ross Beer Company, Port Momet, New Jersey. Now, I wonder why they call it Gozberry. No, Goza is the style. Oh. Because it's got gooseberry. Yeah.
00:03:26
Speaker
practically no head. We've had some requests to always pour the beer into a glass so you guys who are watching on video can check it out. Look at that. Maybe we'll get some cool American Craftsman podcast glasses. Yeah, that's what we need. Yeah.
00:03:44
Speaker
Gooseberries! This amazing berry is at once sweet and tart, presenting hints of a more tropical fruit as well as those of a slightly sour muskot grape. Perfect then for inclusion in our interpretation of the German Gozus sour style.
00:04:00
Speaker
We load up on the gooseberries as well as blackberries and raspberries to achieve the perfect balance of flavors. Slightly funky in the nose and lemony tart with notes of red fruit, goes a berry, features a blend of sweet and sour balanced by a hint of sea salt, and a light bubbly finish, a perfect beer to enjoy anytime.
00:04:18
Speaker
That's quite a description. Yeah, I like Goza style beers. And I can't say I've ever had gooseberries. Yeah, I never heard of that. Of gooseberry? No, I heard of gooseberry, usually like with jam. Plus, you know, my culinary background, but I never heard of Goza. More of a European delicacy then. Yeah, it reminds me, it's the color of a guava.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah, they have that really cool green color. Yeah. Oh, this? Yes, yeah. Well, see if I can get it to the lips without spilling. Yeah, we won't cheers this one because cheers to all you out there. Toast it now. Yeah. Right.
00:05:07
Speaker
Mm. That's nice. That ain't bad. See, my taste in beer has been gravitating more towards stuff like this. That's like really clean and and like kind of cleanses your palate like a little bit tart. Maybe it still tastes like beer, though, in the in the back end. Right. Yeah.
00:05:29
Speaker
where some of the others didn't. Mm hmm. They were like a beverage, but not quite a beer. That's good. Yeah, I keep thinking back to that. What was it called? Soccer mom's favorite or something? That what it was called? No, no. That's what it was called. What? Soccer mom. Yeah. The cherry, the cherry one. Yeah. What's that one? Something like that. Something mom's favorite. It was.
00:05:59
Speaker
Where's my phone? I'm gonna look this up. Soccer mom's favorite? A beer made to appeal to soccer moms? Maybe it wasn't soccer mom. It was something mom.
00:06:15
Speaker
Something mom's favorite. Yeah. Yeah, I swear. Let's see. Episode. What would that be? I could tell by what angle. What angle it was shot at because we shot back that way. You remember? It is episode 19 and the beer is called
00:06:38
Speaker
Hold on to your horses. Evil Twin Brewing. Granola Mom's favorite. Granola Mom. Soccer Mom, Granola Mom. Same thing. No. Cast your vote. Yeah. Soccer Mom's definitely driving a minivan where Granola Mom, she's like driving one of those electric cars or something. Yeah, or like a Subaru Forester. Yeah.
00:07:09
Speaker
a Subaru. Exactly. Yeah. I wanted to get a Subaru. Yeah. We'll see how that turns out. You know, if you're, if you're watching, I'm sporting my, uh, my knit hat from true trade carpentry. Yeah. We got a question from, um, from Tim this week.
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We were out running errands all morning. So we had, we actually had to put on coats. It was cold. Yeah. Oh, real quick. We're going to interrupt the podcast. Is the planer, uh, hooked up to a 20 or 30 amp breaker? Uh, probably 20. I could, I could go open the box and find out. We won't get into that right now. I don't think we have, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a 20 amp breaker.
Tool Talk: Lee Nielsen Rabbet Block Plane
00:07:53
Speaker
Selling this planer has been more of a stress than it really should be. Yeah, it's an adventure like everything. Nothing's easy. I saw a meme. If you guys ever sell anything on Facebook Marketplace, you know that there's a little button that people can press that says, is this available? Yeah. I saw... Maybe it's not a meme because it's like a video.
00:08:15
Speaker
And it's like, oh, Facebook Marketplace and a guy pulls up in a car and rolls down the window and he goes, is this available? And the guy goes, yeah. And then the guy just puts the window up and drives away. I'm like, yep, that's pretty much how it is. Anywho, all right, we've divulged and degraded down into something that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Yeah. So we're moving on to the tool of the week, right? That's right.
00:08:41
Speaker
So it's a little bit different this week because really going with kind of like a first impression, not quite a full on evaluation because haven't had time. But yeah, this is fresh in what yesterday.
00:08:55
Speaker
Came in the mail yesterday. It's a Lee Nielsen rabbit block plane. Put it out here if you're if you're looking. I mean, it's at six and a half inches. It's very substantial. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's got away several pounds. Yeah.
00:09:12
Speaker
So, the thing with this rabbit block plane, as you can see, if you're watching, the blade goes edge to edge, and then it's got these little knickers you could lower down if you're doing like a, you know, cross grain cut. But it helps with, you know, stopping tear out. But it's like all the lineals and stuff. It's substantial. It's a ductile iron body.
00:09:40
Speaker
The manganese bronze. Yeah, bronze and brass. Yeah, I like those little like scoring blades. They're like you it's funny. All you see is the screw. The fit. The fitment is so nice. And that's when you look at it, all you see is the screw. But actually there's a it's like a wheel marking gauge cutter. Yeah.
00:10:00
Speaker
So you loosen the screw or there's one on each side and you can turn it so that you get that scoring before the iron. Almost like a little scoring blade. Yeah, before the plane iron actually hits it. And all I did was lower the blade down and I took a few scrapes on some cherry.
00:10:22
Speaker
Right out of the box they do come sharp and it produced a paper thin cut also took off a you know, a pretty healthy cut and I think Lee Nielsen what they say is it's ready to rock and roll out of the box, but
00:10:40
Speaker
If you want to put a secondary bevel of five degrees on it, that's what you do. That's when you're going to get like that real razor sharp action. Oh, yeah. But it's it's 37 degrees of a cut, the 25 degrees from the blade, and it's set at 12. So your typical low angle. Yeah, yeah.
00:11:02
Speaker
I'm really looking forward to it. It feels great. And if you've listened to us, you know that we're big fans of Lee Nielsen. Oh, yeah. I visit the website often just to look around.
00:11:19
Speaker
And you know what? It wasn't really that much money. I know we talk about this a lot. No. Was it 150 bucks? It was with tax and shipping and all that stuff. It was just 200, let's say. So I think it was about one hundred and eighty five dollars. Listen, some of you spent that on beer last week. If you add snacks. Yeah. But you.
00:11:46
Speaker
I mean, it's you can't beat it. You can't beat it. It's it. The cheapest plane you can get that's going to be even serviceable is about half that, let's say. Yeah. But you're going to grow dissatisfied with that over time and you'll wind up wanting to replace it. Yeah. Yeah. So whereas this is, you know, a joy forever. You'll pass this on. This will probably be your plane. What?
00:12:15
Speaker
And you can buy an iron. That's right. I don't know what the hell you would have to do to make it beyond repair, but you can buy a new iron for that for 40 bucks or something. Yeah. But the body and everything, all the mechanics, the feel of it in your hand, everything's just so well thought out and they're built here in the US, up in Maine. Yeah. I don't remember if I mentioned it last week, but we were talking about the 62, the low angle jack.
00:12:44
Speaker
And Lee Nielsen put up a thing on their Instagram saying like, you know, happy 27th anniversary to Jim or I forget the guy's name. He's been assembling the number 62 for 27 years. Jim's got kids. He's got grandkids. He's buying them Christmas presents with the money he's making, putting those together.
00:13:05
Speaker
And you know what else is funny that not funny but a coincidence is we we talked about that question from last week we had the gentleman from Britain ask us about using 62 on
00:13:20
Speaker
What was the word he used? Shooting in, and I should clarify, I had that messed up. He actually meant like fitting the door to the opening, to the frame. Right. Like what we would call fitting a door. And that's exactly what I did yesterday with the... With the 62. Yeah, the lower doors. I was thinking about it. So yeah, that's what it's good for. Yeah, that thing is for end grain. That thing is great. Yeah.
00:13:46
Speaker
So check it out. If you're not familiar with Lee Nielsen, go to their website. Yeah. Stop listening to us and go check it out because. Yeah. Yeah. We're just a couple of guys. We we like it. But if if you ever get a chance to use one, you'll you'll be a fan as well. Yeah. I can almost guarantee we were the only guys in Harbor Freight today that only know some tools and have my two hundred dollar pants.
00:14:12
Speaker
We needed an engine hoist, so we checked around and of course Harbor Freight is the cheapest place around by far. This will be our second Harbor Freight engine hoist, the first one we used and then sold for about 70% of what we bought it for, so we can't beat that. We don't quite fit the Democrats.
00:14:33
Speaker
Our buddy Manny, you might be able to see if you're watching, we have the metal strapping here and the bending form. Manny welded these up for us, made some nine foot straps, and Manny lined up an engine hoist for us to borrow.
00:14:48
Speaker
It was buried in snow. Yeah, buried in the snow and probably a, I don't know, 25 minute drive to get there. And then we got to bring it back. And so we decided to pull the trigger and just, just get one and we're going to keep it this time. Yeah, we could use it. Um, we have to move the big sander around, get the shaper and the planer in here. So, and get this one into somebody's trailer. Yeah. 189 bucks. That money's that's well, so yeah, it already earned its keep. Yeah.
00:15:16
Speaker
All right, so two of the week we'll get you more info like We usually put that on the website. I'll put a link in the description. Yeah. Yeah It's uh, it's something I have been wanting for a while but having that debt hang If anybody if anybody can harken back to some of the earlier podcasts
00:15:42
Speaker
I had a debt hanging over my head because I was borrowing Rich's plane and he was waiting for me to pick up something and I knew he was going to want this. So I kind of stalled my acquisition of it because this one's, you know, it's twice the plane that... Oh yeah. And I was only borrowing it. I wasn't keeping this.
00:16:08
Speaker
But he kind of pulled one over on me there. He was going to like get to keep something. It's wheeling and dealing. That I was just borrowing. Hmm. This is more of a more of my style. Yeah. Yeah. That thing's got some meat to it. I like one about half the width. So it's like almost a shoulder plane. Yeah. Like if it was the same width as the little 102 or 103 or whatever that one over there I have is.
00:16:32
Speaker
Well, we've got a lot of ground covered in our cross grain planing. Oh, yeah. Between this and a couple of shoulder planes we've got here. Yeah. So, yeah, we like to we like to bust them out. Telly Nielsen, we sent you. You're going to say who? Green? What? A lot. A lot of good. Green Street? What?
00:16:56
Speaker
Oh man. So I'm looking down at our notes here. We're already at the gripe for the week. I just keep rolling with it. It'll be nice when we finally get our vaccines, we can have some guests because, you know, Jeff and I, we talk all day, every day. We're getting a little tired of hearing ourselves.
00:17:19
Speaker
A lot of hot air coming in. So this is my gripe of the week this week. Everybody probably knows somebody like this and I have a hard time encapsulating it into, you know, one or two words, what the gripe is, but it's this is the way I'll describe it.
00:17:38
Speaker
like you know when you go to let's say the Home Depot and you're in the plumbing section let's say and you need some help trying to find a fitting or something but the guy who works in plumbing he's like one of those guys that's like always in back trying to take a nap or he's out on his smoke break and so
00:18:00
Speaker
You wait there for 10, 12, 15 minutes until somebody from carpet has to come over because the person who works carpet, you know, they're a legit employee. And even though they only know carpet really and not plumbing, they come over, they do their best to help you. But it's always the one guy that's not doing their thing, you know, the grocery store.
00:18:27
Speaker
Clean up on aisle seven. And the guy who's supposed to do cleanup, he's never there. The absentee employee. And then so there's always somebody have to come in behind him and do their job and this guy's job. Picking up the slack. Yeah, that's my gripe of the week.
00:18:47
Speaker
The best is when you're at like Home Depot and you're like, you know, when I go to plumbing and electrical, usually I don't know what the hell that's right. We're out of our depth. Yeah. It means I'm there for something weird. Yeah. And then you get somebody that's just walking through the aisle like somebody from, like you said, carpet is walking to the front.
00:19:04
Speaker
Oh, excuse me. And they're like, oh, let me call the guy that works. And then, yeah, he's staying there for 15 minutes. Yeah. They never show up because that's the guy. Yeah. He's he's out in his car listening to like a bread or some dead dead wood. Dead wood. He's dead wood. He's out there listening to his cassette tapes. You know, probably what a dick.
00:19:31
Speaker
So we've all had to work with somebody like that too, unfortunately. But it's annoying when you're on the, you know, the service end of it as well. That's really, you know, where this thing crops up. So if you've had an experience with something like that, feel free to chime in, let us know. You can, you know, name names. We're okay. We're okay with that.
00:19:59
Speaker
Your secret safe with us. Yeah. And whoever might be listening. Right. That's going to bring us to our.
Book Segment: 'With the Grain' by Christian Becksvoort
00:20:08
Speaker
Yeah. New segment. Yeah. The book of the undetermined period of time. Yeah. There you go. So today I brought in a little book that is called With the Grain, a craftsman's guide to understanding wood by Christian Bexford.
00:20:23
Speaker
It's a Lost Art Press book. If you don't know Lost Art Press, they're in, I want to say Illinois or Indiana, somewhere in the Midwest. And they do like all the book binding and stuff in the US and they republish some like old woodworking books. So this book
00:20:43
Speaker
It was good. It's a quick read. It's very informational. There's not a lot of fluff. The table of contents really breaks it down really well into what it is. So the first chapter is trees and wood technology. The second chapter is wood and tree identification. So the first chapter goes over like sort of the anatomy of a tree, the anatomy of wood.
00:21:07
Speaker
On a cellular level or? Yeah, yeah, like diffuse porous and I forget what the other, the other one is there's two types of, like when you're looking at the end grain, semi ring porous and diffuse porous.
00:21:23
Speaker
So ways to look at the end grain to identify wood. Then in the second chapter, they get into identification. So it goes through, I think, 30 different species that are all North American species. I was going to ask you that. So we got from.
00:21:43
Speaker
Like what are some of the other trees that, I mean, because we use oak, maple, walnut, cherry. This has the trees that you don't see at the lumber yard. So we got, well, I'll just rattle them off because there's not that many. Eastern white pine, sugar pine, and there's all these fun facts. It shows you the, if it's a deciduous tree, the leaves, if it's a evergreen, it shows you the needles and the cones. So
00:22:07
Speaker
White pine, sugar pine, tamarack, which has these and it's funny because you see like these little cones and you say, oh, I've been seeing tamaracks my whole life. Like when we saw the sassafras. Yeah. We have sassafras growing over there in the back 40. White spruce. Doug fir. Got redwood. Bald cypress. Hmm.
00:22:34
Speaker
I think it starts out with all the coniferous trees. Northern white cedar. Eastern red cedar. And you see the silhouettes there too, which is helpful. Yeah, yeah. And you can really like, if you look into the forest, like you can start identifying trees in the winter time just by what they look like. Poplar, which we have so much poplar here in New Jersey. Black willow. Black walnut. Butternut, really cool tree.
00:23:01
Speaker
Shagbark Hickory. Never heard of that one before. Pecan or Pecan. Yellow Birch. We say Pecan here. I say Pecan actually. Hornbeam Beach. Hornbeam. Yeah. Hornbeam is like what my chisel handles. Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:18
Speaker
Beach is cool. John Peters was talking about beach the other day. Like the beach holds on to its leaves in the winter time. Really? So it's really easy to pick out in the winter because it'll have all these like brownish, like caramel colored almost leaves. Cool. American chestnut, which is starting to come back a little bit. Red oak, white oak.
00:23:40
Speaker
You got your live oak, which I think is the densest wood in North America. They have them down south. This gives you the range of where you can find them, all that. And it has pictures of the bark, pictures of the end grain, pictures of the face grain. I mean, this is like super cool. American elm, mulberry.
00:24:03
Speaker
I've always wanted to eat them. There's a mulberry tree close to here. I wanted to try them. Osage orange, tulip poplar, which I'm not sure which one we see more. What's the poplar that we get, you know, as our secondary? That's what I'm saying. I don't know if that's tulip poplar or just regular poplar. We had a tulip poplar in the front yard when I was a kid and it gets these wild flowers. These things open up to these like lily looking flowers almost.
00:24:31
Speaker
Then we got sassafras, which man There's probably a 500 dozen sassafras Little seedlings out here sweet gum which drop those those Sticky balls man. I hate those things. My whole backyard is full. Yeah with the with the five-star kind of leaf Sycamore which we have a lot of here apple tree Black cherry love it
00:25:01
Speaker
Black locust. Some of those back here too. Holly. What was the thing about Holly? I think Holly is actually a deciduous tree. Tree is unique that it is broad leafed and not deciduous. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a, you know, you think of all coniferous trees as having needles where the Holly actually has leaves. Um, sugar maple.
00:25:27
Speaker
Red maple. Basswood. Flowering dogwood. Persimmon. Has like a black, almost like a black wood. White ash. Hardy. Catalpa. That was one I had never heard of. Yeah, the leaf is almost like a... Looks like a pepper. Oh no, it's the fruit. Oh yeah, the leaf. Reminds me of like a spade from a deck of cards. Yeah, that's what like the poplar leaf looks like too.
00:25:56
Speaker
Then they get into woodlot management and harvest. So it actually like gives a brief overview of how you could buy a plot of land and start to use it to to basically create your own lumber. So you go and you can trim out all the bad stuff. You have to leave certain amount of space between the good trees so that they grow the right amount, you know, cutting the limbs so that you get nice clear, clear wood as it grows. Then it gets into
00:26:26
Speaker
sawing and drying, so giving you resources as to where to find sawmills, how to cut the wood, how to dry it, drying times. It gives you charts with drying times of each type of wood.
00:26:40
Speaker
which is really cool. It gives you charts of how much wood is gonna move in relation to the relative humidity and the climate. So you could look at these charts and say, okay, I'm in New Jersey, we're gonna send something to Texas and we're making it out of cherry and the relative humidity or the relative moisture content now is 8%. So we need to account for this much movement. So it's a really good resource.
00:27:08
Speaker
And then yeah, that's in the working with solid wood is the last section so it gives you all these tips On how to account for movement in the wood. That's cool. So it was a great book. I like to quick read It's only I don't know maybe 200 pages Not even 150 pages
00:27:27
Speaker
Definitely worth it. I mean, that's like a reference book That's something like right you read through it one time and you pick up what you can and yeah Then when you need to know you pick you pull it out and yeah, that's like the human dimension and interior design or whatever that I pulled out for the chair
00:27:43
Speaker
The other day. Good choice. Good choice. You think I recognize that guy's name. He's a big contributor for fine woodworking. Yeah, it did sound familiar. I know. I tend to gloss over the names and magazine articles.
00:28:00
Speaker
because I had a subscription of that for decades. You know, that was like one of the few steady resources for this kind of stuff outside the library. It's a pretty unique name, so. Yeah, that's right. Not many Christian Beckvorts out there. I know. That's why I remember it.
00:28:21
Speaker
That would be a great book if it was available at your local library or something too. I'll be honest, our libraries around here, they're shit for woodworking books. I did get Nakashima Soul of a Tree, they had that.
00:28:36
Speaker
and I was having trouble finishing it because I didn't have time to sit down and read it and I renewed it, renewed it, renewed it and then finally I was out and I had to bring it back. I told you that was it. Yeah, I've been trying to find a copy for a good price for a long time, but it's hard. It's a very sought after book. I'm looking. Check out these hawks. Oh, wow. I mean, there's like three hawks out in the yard now and they're not small.
00:29:05
Speaker
You see that big one out there? Oh, that's a black vulture. Oh, wow. Yeah, I see him in the tree right there. Yeah. Teaming with wildlife here at Green Street. Yeah. Somebody's looking for lunch. Yeah, we had a late lunch today. We, uh,
00:29:25
Speaker
We had the sauce wall picked up yesterday in a big crate and They were having trouble even finding somebody to pick it up like a freight company. So the guy shows up finally Because we don't have a forklift or a loading duct. No, no, and he's like how the hell are we gonna get this on the truck? They knew the situation they never tell the guy in the field anything I know on so we had to
00:29:53
Speaker
calling a favor to some people that we just met earlier in the day. Hey, you just met us three hours ago, now we need a favor. Not a simple one. Not crazy, but they had a telehandler. These are people catty corner across the street. It's like a landscaping, a yard for a landscaping company.
00:30:16
Speaker
They had to take the telehandler, change out the bucket to a fork, and then I had to drive the crate over there on a trailer, and he picked it up and put it in the truck force. So we sent him some lunch. Yeah, we did. We sent a nice platter of sandwiches from Mike's Big Red store, a little red store, Big Mike's Little Red. Yeah, so I hope they enjoyed that. Yeah, we'll be calling it another favor pretty soon. They did say we could. That's true.
00:30:45
Speaker
So we onto the questions of the week. Yeah.
Charging Design Fees in the Industry
00:30:48
Speaker
I don't even know how we got to talking about that. Oh, we're talking about lunch. Oh yeah. Yeah. Somebody's lived the birds are looking for lunch. Yeah. Yeah. We got, uh, got some good questions this week. Yeah. Not a, not a whole ton, but some, definitely some ones we could, you know, as we could talk about anything.
00:31:03
Speaker
All right. You want me to read the first one? Yeah, sure. All right. Uh, this is coming from Jerry, who's one of our patrons, uh, G A wood shop on Instagram. And Jerry asks, do you guys charge a design fee? I was listening to the modern craftsmen podcast today and they were talking about people calling to hire them, but they don't have a design. Their thought is that the client needs to either hire a designer or pay for the design work since you have to put time into the design effort.
00:31:34
Speaker
I mean, I can't argue with that logic. No, no, not at all. First, I want to say, Jerry, we're doing cheat notice.
00:31:44
Speaker
Listening to other podcasts. I never even heard of these guys in modern craftsmen Those guys are that podcast is insanely Successful, they're huge. Yeah, we actually we met those guys in Vegas Nick John and Tyler really nice guys. We're happy just to be in the same sentence. Yeah
00:32:08
Speaker
When we came up with the name, the American Craftsman podcast, like it's it's so close to the modern craftsman, but it never even never even crossed our mind.
00:32:19
Speaker
But yeah, I think in terms of charging for design, we do have like a line item that is design and we call it design and consulting. Yeah. I won't say that it always gets worked in accurately. Like we may spend 12 hours on design between going back and forth with the client. And in that line item, there may be only four hours or something.
00:32:47
Speaker
So we do charge for it, maybe not as accurately as we could because it's hard enough to get the job as it is. And we don't really take on work that we don't design. For the most part, our work is all designed by us.
00:33:03
Speaker
There's the rare instance where like these Chase lounges coming up the designer came with a design And even if they have a design, it's not it's not really a design. It's a picture. Yeah, it's an inspirational Photo that we have to create working drawings from we have to engineer it. Yeah, it's a concept I'll say that that's the best that we get as a concept
00:33:26
Speaker
For example, we just bid this door for a landmark building in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. And, you know, we told the client, okay, if your architect can give us working drawings, it's going to cost this much less. Otherwise, we have to charge to, A, go out there, get the measurements, do the working drawings, you know, figure the whole design of the thing out because it's a landmark building. So there's some specific things we have to hit.
00:33:55
Speaker
So it's kind of a complicated answer. We do, but not as much as we should, I guess. Yeah, we tend to offset the cost of the time we spend. Yeah, it's an investment. It's a time investment to get the job, typically. Right.
00:34:16
Speaker
What I always I mean it's we're kind of a design driven business in a sense our particular businesses because we do all our own stuff. So.
00:34:27
Speaker
Back before we had social media and things like that to promote ourselves, I always considered it the advertising budget in a sense. You know, my design to somebody would be advertising for the next job that came down the road. And I think Jeff agrees with that sort of philosophy and
00:34:53
Speaker
Even though it's a labor of love because we love that part of the job, it's only right that we get reimbursed for it. And I think it's also partly an investment.
00:35:06
Speaker
in our young business as well. One day we will hopefully be able to charge for that upfront, where people just to get a look at what we want to design for them will be able to charge for that. Yeah, and I know a lot of people do that. Like that guy Sean Van Dyke is his name.
00:35:27
Speaker
He's profit first for contractors. Like he says, you know, if people want you to bid the job and provide drawings, it's like you charge a flat upfront design fee. Yeah. You know, we're not in the blessed position to do that right now, but although, you know, it's getting to that point with how busy we are.
00:35:51
Speaker
Yeah, we're closing in on that. So we're chipping away at it. It's a great question. And in a perfect world, we would charge full boat for the design stuff so that we're, you know, fairly compensated. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, use your judgment. If you have to invest five hours and you think you're going to get the job, well, it might be worth it to just not say anything. Don't charge. But if you have a client that's continuing to come back with revision after revision, revision, revision,
00:36:20
Speaker
Then it's time to talk budget, to talk about design fees, all those things. Yeah. We tend to try and vet the client at the beginning so that we know if it's worth our time. Well, because if they have unrealistic budgets in mind, we'll go, this isn't worth spending too much time on. Yeah. And I'll tell people, you know, I don't think we're right for that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's good.
00:36:47
Speaker
All right, you want to move on to number two? Yeah, we got an update from our buddy Jack. Jack Thornton, 98 on Instagram. All right.
CNC Machine Speculations
00:36:54
Speaker
Jack wants to know how would a CNC machine affect your work? Would it change what you do or speed things up or sit unused? And he said the apprenticeship is going great and he's learning heaps. Nice. Glad to hear it. Yeah.
00:37:08
Speaker
Big hand to Jack, putting in the investment, serving as an intern. Congrats all around. Hopefully you're getting paid. Refer to question one. It's hard to say how it would affect us. I mean, this is all given the perfect world where we'd have the space
00:37:30
Speaker
And the time to master the machine and everything like that. Yeah. I mean, I could see instances where it would come in handy, but I'm not sure really when we would use it to get the most out of the process.
00:37:49
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm looking at it right now as this. OK, the project we're building now, this this cherry, you could see the little corner over here, cherry secretary. But it's not so simple. There's a coffee system built in the water system, the font.
00:38:07
Speaker
things like the bracket feet, the Gothic arched panels, the fangs that we're calling them that go on either side. Those are all great candidates for a CNC because the repeatability, the the fact that you can just let it run in the background and you come back while you're doing something else and you come back and the pieces are cut. I don't know enough about the CNC to be able to say that
00:38:34
Speaker
it would take less time to do it that way than it would to do it the way we're doing it now. Yeah, we'd have to have the programming knowledge and put that all in in the front end. Yeah. I mean, even though the drawings that we create now, they all fit together like puzzle pieces. If we could somehow translate those, you know, easily to a CNC and then
00:38:59
Speaker
stick a block of wood there and we didn't have to do all kinds of like spindle bit changes and everything like that but you know nothing's ever that simple it's not like it's magic the CNC you know even in a kitchen the most
00:39:16
Speaker
of the same part that we have is like what, maybe 16 of the same cabinet sides maybe or the styles and rails. But then we're talking about a big CNC with, you gotta have somebody there standing all day changing sheets out.
00:39:34
Speaker
We could cut them on the table, so I know, I know. I mean, that's the, you know, the thing in a small shop like ours. We we try to stay in our lane and we're set up to do what we do. Like I made the styles and rails for those doors the other day.
00:39:54
Speaker
just banged them out because the it's the shop is set up for that you know just did it on the table saw nothing fancy yeah um so it's it's hard to say if if we had the time like if we could you know spend a month just learning how to use the cnc machine but if we had to somehow work it into our workflow while
00:40:19
Speaker
paying the bills. You know what option would be probably most likely sit on you. It would pop up you know every now and then with.
00:40:35
Speaker
For me, it's like those like things like these fangs where I'm having to create blanks and then a template and then flush trim all these things with these multiple steps like that's what a CNC is good for. But then.
00:40:50
Speaker
Things get complicated. You have to lay them out on the board that you put on there. You want the grain going a certain direction. You're like trying to lay things out. So it's I mean, it's not that simple. Can you zero out like a board like one? Like how would we cut the pieces like those fangs? That's we're calling them are basically. Arched carved out like a triangle base rails, though. Yeah, you know, it's the it's it's part of the top rail almost.
00:41:19
Speaker
Yeah, like if you had a CNC, you could literally make the entire top rail one piece. Like instead of having the fang set in a little bit, it would just be one. Right. And they cut it out like an eight inch board or whatever. Yeah. Twelve inch board.
00:41:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to say. We probably don't understand the full capabilities of a CNC machine. We kind of see it as something that maybe is good for repetitious work or carved style work. I'm sure it does a lot more.
00:41:51
Speaker
I'd say that if we had one, the carved kind of stuff would be what we would use it for the most. Yeah, that would be cool. Or like one thing I said the other day, the form, the bending form.
00:42:06
Speaker
I just jumped ahead and read the second question. The next question. The bending form. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that took me, I don't know, half a day to get those made. And then I had more work putting them together and all that. You know, you could program that into a CNC and throw a shoe to MDF and cut out X number of pieces and stack them up. Yeah. And they'll all be identical. So, I mean, there is a place.
00:42:30
Speaker
But again, the demand here for one is not so high that it's worth. No, there's other tools we'd get more use out of. Yeah. So I hope that I hope that answers your question in some roundabout way.
Shop Facilities and Favorite Materials
00:42:44
Speaker
Jordan E. Jack Pallet. I love that name. Jack Pallet works on Instagram. He's asking us, is there a bathroom in the shop or do you have to waddle to the house?
00:42:58
Speaker
There's no bathroom in the shop. There's wide open spaces outside. We'll either go around the back and skunk proof or the house is about 40 feet away. Yeah. Seems like in the summertime we'll go in and get a little touch of air conditioning. In the wintertime it's easier just to go. Yeah, yeah.
00:43:22
Speaker
right behind the dust collector room but there's no we don't have any that's the the main amenity we're missing in the shop is we don't have any water service to the shop it was something I weighed when we put the building in it was just we
00:43:37
Speaker
I dug trenches and ran electricity and I ran gas and believe it or not because it was so long ago I actually ran a phone line a physical phone line in the ground to come out here Yeah, I mean that phone that phone only was gone not that long ago. Yeah. Yeah but the the reason I didn't run water out here was because I
00:44:00
Speaker
to really get good use of it, you have to have drains. You have to, you know, so I didn't want to go to all the expense of running like a sewer line back here and tying into the main sewer. Yeah. This was for however nice it is. This building was put up on the cheap. Yeah, you'd have to put like a septic tank or something. Yeah. I mean, we could trench it and tie in where it comes out of the house. But that's a hell of a job. Yeah. Those drain lines are guaranteed super old.
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah, and it's like 12 feet deep in the ground from ground level. So it just waddle into the house. I mean, we have a water cooler. I said we'll drill a hole in the wall and put a funnel in the corner and just pee right to the outside. Yeah, we just walk around inside the building and get some fresh air. Yeah.
00:44:51
Speaker
It's nice except for when there's snow that's melting on the roof and then it just drips on you the entire time. Cold water drips on the back of your head. Yeah, thankfully the 1620 pants are waterproof. Yeah, so there you have it. That's our concession. That's our big concession. Yeah, it ain't that bad. No, no, we've been getting by. Got our next question here.
00:45:17
Speaker
What's your favorite species of wood to work with and favorite piece of furniture to build from John B Trinity tradesman on Instagram? That's a good question. Yeah. Um,
00:45:29
Speaker
I mean, I work a lot with cherry because it's available. I think I'm going to say walnut, though. I don't get to use it a lot. I really putting on the oil finish is always really satisfying. It takes that oil really well. And as far as a piece of furniture, I'm going to say something.
00:45:56
Speaker
table-like, you know, something where you can put together a nice top. You know, whether that's like a small desk, a table, a dining room, anything where you can put together a nice top and show off the wood. That's my favorite. Yeah, I'm going to say cherry.
00:46:16
Speaker
The only thing I the one thing I don't like about cherry is how easily it burns and how hard it is to get those burns out. Yeah. So if you're doing anything with a router and cherry, there's quite a bit in this. Yeah, man, the bracket feet on this thing.
00:46:34
Speaker
where the main curves are. It's literally all end grain and it burnt even with a spiral compression bit. It burnt to hell and I was sanding for about an entire day. Yeah, I was going to tell you that was a day's worth of sanding. Yeah, my fingers are just starting to feel whole again. Favorite piece of furniture. I mean, honestly, I like them all. I don't have one in particular that I like. I like something new. Yeah, like.
00:47:03
Speaker
When the job gets to this point, I'm ready to get it out and start something else because I just get sick of it. Yeah, like, I'm like, all right, let's get get this over with already and do something new. Yeah, something fresh. So whatever the next job is, that's what I like to build most. Yeah, that's a good answer. Well, how much waste do we account for on a project? That's the question from Nick T. Nick Trayer on Instagram.
00:47:30
Speaker
Well, it depends on the project and depends on the wood. Yeah. Yeah. So like we have a walnut job coming up. Wait, are we doing walnut? Yeah. Yeah, walnut. So like. Well, I guess this one's a little different because we're getting like our supplier has two levels of walnut. They have regular FAS walnut and they have what they call black walnut, which they're both black walnut, but.
00:47:53
Speaker
The black walnut is rated on the actual FAS scale where this is getting confusing the way I have to say it. What they're calling just regular walnut is graded on a whole nother scale. So the FAS and I think actually in this book they have the charts as to what constitutes FAS and common and all the different grades.
00:48:21
Speaker
What does FAS stand for? First and second. So there's a certain criteria. There needs to be X percentage of clear wood. It has to be this wide. It has to be this long, blah, blah, blah.
00:48:33
Speaker
Well, Walnut is graded on its own, just like pine and stuff. Walnut's graded on its own scale. So they take basically the best of that, put it up against the real FAS standard, and they sell that as black Walnut at, you know, 80 percent more than, you know, it's like nine dollars and twenty five cents versus five dollars and twenty five cents. No, no, I had no idea that there's a different scale.
00:48:59
Speaker
because we built something from Walnut not that long ago. There was so much waste that was about 100. It was, would it be 100% weight? No, 50% waste. Yeah. Yeah. So with Walnut, like if you're buying just regular Walnut, you might have to account for 50% waste. Yeah. If you need 100 board feet, you're going to need 150 board feet. Yeah. Or even 200 board feet. That would be, that'd be a hundred percent.
00:49:26
Speaker
Yeah, but that's what I was just debating in my head. Doesn't 100% waste imply that it's all bad? I don't know. Because it's 50% good and 50% waste. That's a good question. Like with cherry, I always add like 35%. Right.
00:49:43
Speaker
That's typical, like a regular job I add 35%. And also the way I like to figure it is, in my head, I'm thinking, all right, we're gonna get boards out of 96 inches.
00:50:01
Speaker
Or if we're gonna order 10 footers 120 inches, then you got a knockoff, you know 6 to 8 inches off the length then they're gonna be If it's cherry, they're gonna get 6 7 inch boards so that's how I imagine it and then I figure out in my head a quick
00:50:23
Speaker
sort of all right I'm gonna be able to get a door out of this board that board and kind of do it that way instead of like with math yeah the way I do it like um let's say we have to build a cabinet that's 48 40 36 inches wide and 36 inches high so I'll say all right you know it's gonna have a face frame it's gonna have doors and it's gonna have panels which uh let's just say they're plywood and this is instance
00:50:50
Speaker
I'll just take like 48 by 48 times 1.25 divided by 144. I just take the whole face of the cabinet. And that's how I get my waste.
00:51:01
Speaker
So I just add, you know, like, OK, it's 36. Well, we're going to make that board four feet long. Yeah. And 36 high. We're going to make it four feet high because that's my six inches of waste on either side and and waste in terms of the length of the board, you know. And it both works. Yeah. Yeah. So it's all about how much time you want to invest in. And you've found a quick way to do it. Yeah, that's that's one of the few and I like the advantages of being old.
00:51:30
Speaker
trial and error Yeah, so we you know a good 35%
00:51:41
Speaker
for the hardwood on a regular job. Yeah, if it's like a painted job and you're... Oh yeah, almost nothing. Yeah, and it depends on the kind of wood that you're buying. If you're buying FAS, the waste is going to be lower. If you're buying a common or something, you're going to expect yourself to cut out the good pieces.
00:52:02
Speaker
Yeah, and if it the bigger the pieces the harder it is to get good long clear runs of the lumber Yeah, if you need a lot of small pieces you could work, you know, you could cut up Even a twisted cupboard into short pieces. Yeah, if you're building a door
00:52:20
Speaker
And you think, OK, I'm going to need two styles and three rails and panel material. Well, there'll be a knot right where you need. I mean, one of those style boards could be F'd up and then OK, well, that's a lot of waste because that's an entire 10 board foot board that you can't use. No good. That's what fills up our woodshed. Right. Then we use it for whatever. That's right.
00:52:48
Speaker
You know, that's a really good question though, because people who are just starting out building stuff out of hardwood, they might not realize you have to buy so much more to get what you want. And like when you're investing in the project, the bulk of the cost is your time.
00:53:08
Speaker
If you're doing something for yourself, then of course, you know, it is in the material but it's it's relatively small Yeah, and you know it it's not always gonna work out. Yeah, so get more wood than you think you need Yeah on this job, you know, we have like two boards over there
00:53:24
Speaker
And one of them is one of them is really jacked up. We still have to make some shelves. So like we cut it very close. Yeah, we got lucky. Yeah. We got lucky. What's the next question? We got another one here from a patron. All right.
Hiring and Managing Employees
00:53:40
Speaker
It's from Adam F far out Woodworks on Instagram. He said, do you guys plan to bring anyone else on as a partner?
00:53:47
Speaker
I'm going to say that's a big NO. I think we got lucky Jeff and I when we found each other and a partnership like a marriage, like any close relationship, sometimes you learn about that person
00:54:09
Speaker
you got to live with that that roommate before you find out you know that you can't stand them or that they never wash the dishes kind of thing. And so we've been together for over a year now and this looks like
00:54:25
Speaker
You know, we've learned to live with each other. Nobody's without fault, but I think we found a good equilibrium. No telling what would happen in the future, but I would say we'd be much more likely to bring somebody on to help us, you know, a hired hands. We have several people we'd love to bring in here. If we have the room, if we have the business to
00:54:52
Speaker
Justify it, but yeah any small business people out there would know it's it's complicated to Have an employee. Yeah, like if we wanted to pay an employee $25 an hour like then we have to be making you know $50 an hour Yeah, we're $45 an hour because you gotta pay that 15% on top. Yeah, you know with the the FICA
00:55:19
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, I don't know what you guys think out there, but we ain't making a lot of money over here, so. We'd end up paying somebody more than we're making. Well, that's because we're wearing $200 pants. Yeah. And pushing $300 planes. Yeah.
00:55:38
Speaker
We do okay for ourselves. No, yeah, yeah. But we'd also be interested in paying somebody a fair living wage. Right, so yeah, we don't want to bring somebody on and be like, yeah, you're gonna make a $12 an hour. Like at that, we just wouldn't hire somebody at that point. Like to, you know, be able to give somebody health care and stuff like that.
00:56:00
Speaker
where it's all that stuff adds up. You know, it does wind up being closer to 40 to 50 dollars an hour against the company. That's that's what we'd be liable for. And so paid time off all that stuff. Somebody's got to really be worth it. I mean, they'd have to really know their stuff. And I wouldn't want someone to sacrifice all those amenities that you get from a
00:56:26
Speaker
you know, a normal job with like a larger company like pay time off and health insurance. And yes, we don't have to offer that stuff. But I don't think as just an employee, you should should sacrifice that stuff. No, you know, if you're if you're an owner, that's we don't get health insurance, but we're owners. So that's our choice and our prerogative. But as an employee, like those are things that you're you're entitled to. Right. And if they couldn't.
00:56:52
Speaker
you know, work to a certain level, it wouldn't be worth having them around. Then you get into a situation where you got to ride somebody and then what the hell do we want to get into that for? That's like, you know what it reminds me of? People who buy rental property and then they find out how much work it is to have bad tenants.
00:57:19
Speaker
So no plans at the moment. We're doing really well right now. In fact, we're probably doing better than we ever have. I think that it wouldn't be a stretch to say that. So we're going to be swimming in a kiddie pool full of dollar bills pretty soon. That's for sure.
00:57:43
Speaker
There's a good one. This came in from Aaron Lyle last night. He's that gentleman now, Madwon. Aaron Lyle on Instagram. Oh, this guy. From my wife. What's the best project to teach my wife woodworking skills? I see new tools in my future. Oh, yeah. I said to him, I said, well, it depends on what you want to get. Yeah. I said, seven and a half horsepower sawstop and all the Lee Nielsen bench planes. Yeah. Yeah. So that's going to be the project, then. That's it. Whatever it takes to do that.
00:58:12
Speaker
Aaron, I would suggest let the let the tool drive the project. If you've always wanted to turn things on a lathe. Well, then maybe, you know, your wife wants to learn how to make, you know, like a lamp base or small things like a mallet or pens, even. Yeah. Christmas ornaments or tops kind of things like that.
00:58:42
Speaker
So, you know, my hat is off to you, Aaron. Yeah, God bless you. Because I send my wife over. Jeff and I, we hide. In fact, you could hear a pin drop when my wife comes knocking at the door like, what? It's the wife. It's the wife. What's wrong? Yeah.
00:59:06
Speaker
We hide in here more than anything else. Yeah. I need our separate time, separate time. So be careful what you ask for, my friend, Aaron. Yeah. And I think the next question will probably have some good answers for you as well. What's a good beginner intermediate woodworking project for developing skills? Chris C. Dabriskie on Instagram is asking us.
00:59:35
Speaker
Yes, I'd say Aaron any of these are probably good good candidates. Beginner intermediate. Well, we're kind of. I guess we'll talk about not beginner beginner because if you're leaning towards intermediate, you have some knowledge already.
00:59:52
Speaker
You know, little stuff like little footstools and small side tables, stuff like that, I think is side tables a great idea because you could make it easy or you could make it a little more difficult or you could make it very difficult depending on the details you throw in there.
01:00:13
Speaker
Yeah, like it could have a drawer or not have a drawer. The drawer could be dovetailed or it could be rabbeted or it could just be an open shelf. I mean, there's so many options. You could have mortise and tenon joinery or domino. I mean, if you're a beginner, you're probably not a domino, dowels or whatever. I mean, the pocket screws. Yeah, there's so many different
01:00:38
Speaker
iterations of something like that. Something that came to mind just now was like the Adirondack chair. I mean, maybe that might be a little involved because that's going to probably take several full days to make, but we have the plans for that on the website. Yeah, that looks a lot more complicated than it is. It's mostly about cutting out the parts.
01:01:01
Speaker
which anybody could do and also if they're irregular whatever it's not gonna matter no I mean we got a regular stuff in this we're professionals that's what happens yeah that's something you know you could you could screw it together if you had you know there's a lot of screws in that project anyway but you don't have to cap them if you didn't want to yeah
01:01:26
Speaker
that's a good idea yeah yeah and it's something you could enjoy and kind of show off a little bit and use you know it's something you'll use yeah sit outside yeah check it out and that's something also we would we have a vested interest in so we would want to walk you through it yeah yeah questions yeah i always say when i send out send out like a folder of the plans last night i said if you got any questions just let us know yeah yeah
01:01:52
Speaker
we're here we're here um but i like the idea of like a bedside table or an end table yep that's a good one even a coffee table
01:02:02
Speaker
Yeah, like figure out something that you need in your house and make that. Yeah. Because when there's like a clearly defined function for something, you run into like problems with building it that you need to figure out. And I think that's like the biggest opportunity for growth is figuring out how to solve these problems. Yeah.
01:02:26
Speaker
rely on some of the skills you already know and put in one or two things that are going to push you and challenge you. Yeah. Not the whole thing. Make sure you have a basis so that you don't get defeated by something. Yeah. Like these gothic arch.
01:02:43
Speaker
We've never done that before, but we're just figuring it out. That's it. And you know what? They're going to look great. Yeah, they are. Just like the bracket feet and everything else. Yeah. Yeah. That's the fun of it all. I mean, I'm glad you asked the question. I'm glad you're out there doing it. Yeah.
01:03:04
Speaker
What's next? We got this from Nathan T, Tree of Life Woodworking. How often do you set aside time to improve workspace, like new shop or jigs, for example? That's from Nathan T, Tree of Life, right? It's kind of as needed, but it happens.
01:03:23
Speaker
Not on a regular basis as far as like on the calendar, but on a regular basis because it's a constantly evolving thing. Like we're getting two new machines at the end of the week. We're always adjusting. Oh, you think it would work better if we move this over to here or move that over there?
01:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's something that always needs to be in the back of your mind and you'll know when you have to like literally drop what you're doing and address it. It tends to happen for us like between jobs because there's usually a day or so of downtime there, maybe more.
01:04:07
Speaker
So you'll things will rear their ugly head during the job where you're like, holy shit, this is like totally screwing up the way that the workflow is happening. And and now a list will kind of build up mentally and or we'll talk about and go when we get some time, let's let's make a rack for this or let's move this jig over to this side of the shop.
01:04:26
Speaker
Yeah, something as simple as like hanging up that step ladder on the wall. I mean, it's a big improvement. It didn't take very much time at all. Yeah. Or, you know, reconfiguring the drill press. Right. Right.
01:04:41
Speaker
We slid the bench over the other last week or a week before. That's kind of nice. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. I like having a bit of wall space because before I was on the windows, I didn't really have too many areas to put my stuff, but now I like it. Yeah. It's ever, ever evolving here. So it's something that we're definitely not static.
01:05:08
Speaker
No, you can't be no, there's no perfect shop set up and the you know, the work will dictate how Yeah, how it needs to be set up. Yeah, we we did a full major reorganization When was that last winter in this winter? Yeah, both winners we did. Yep
01:05:27
Speaker
All right. So, uh, what, what we got now? What are some weekend projects you would recommend for practicing through 10 and joinery? Is that Ira Jan suspect bucket on Instagram? Yeah. Your guess is as good as mine. I'm going to John Ira Jan. Yeah. Let us know. I was going to say era John.
01:05:48
Speaker
It's yeah, it looks like Ira and Jan as one word. And, you know, a lot of I'm pulling these names right off of Instagram. So that might not even be your name. For all I know might be something else.
01:06:02
Speaker
We do apologize if we're, you know, destroying your day. Yeah. Yeah. I go back to like the side table or footstool. Like a footstool is super easy place to start because it's nice and small. You're only going to have like, let's say.
01:06:19
Speaker
two through tenons on the sides through the top and then maybe stretchers that go through the sides. So I'd say something small, easy to work with that you can just put on a bench or wherever you're working and do the work by hand. I wonder what kind of tools he's got. Yeah.
01:06:39
Speaker
Scott, if he's got like a little mortising machine or if he's going to do the old Forstner bit and chisel to make the through mortise. I mean, I think I would I would think through tenon would be by hand. Yeah, because I mean, if you have a
01:06:56
Speaker
a lot more machine than you really need to practice. Let's get a piece of wooden. Yeah. Yeah. And I made some and they call them bridal joints. I didn't know when I made it where it's like.
01:07:14
Speaker
like on a door it's a through mortise and tenon joint but up at the you know it's also exposed at the top of the joint too yeah it's like a through mortise and tenon where one edge of the mortise is open.
01:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So you see the tenon all the way through at the top and bottom of the door. And I had one of those sliding sleds for it, like that big heavy cast iron delta sled you've seen that that that makes quick work of that kind of joint. Oh, yeah. Cuts the cheeks and everything really easily.
01:07:51
Speaker
So, yeah, anything that's, you know, a little table. That's where it's time to let your creativity flow. Yeah. A small like wall cabinet. Mm hmm. You know, because you want it to be something, too, that's going to highlight the joinery. Otherwise, what's the point? Yeah. Stickly has a lot of good basic designs for stuff like that. You could pick up some of those soft cover books with actual drawings and stuff. Yeah. For like here in the shop. Five bucks on eBay. Yeah. Yeah.
01:08:21
Speaker
So that's what we recommend.
01:08:23
Speaker
Got another good one here from Ed Johns on Instagram. Table saw for garage hobbyists currently using cheapest Ryobi saw. Budget is $1,500 ish. Wow. I mean, I know the first thing that pops into my mind. I don't know about yourself. What do you think?
Tool Recommendations and Techniques
01:08:39
Speaker
I'd say find a nice three horsepower Unisaw. That was what I was going to say. You could probably find one for less than a thousand bucks. Yeah. On a mobile base. Yeah. And if it, yeah, for less than a thousand, you can buy the mobile base and, um,
01:08:54
Speaker
Think about a 52-inch fence, you don't need it, but depends on, you know, if you're breaking down plywood. And if you have the room. Yeah, if you don't have a track saw, then the 52-inch fence is nice. Yeah, I mean, if you have 220, get yourself a three horsepower, 220. Yeah. Unisaw. Really, I mean, 110 is only gonna get you so much out of a table saw. And you know, you could, for, I don't know the dollar amount, but really for cheap,
01:09:22
Speaker
you can get an electrician to come out and add one 220 outlet right and if it's in the garage and your panels there yeah you know because it's it's really a simple matter you could you could run it in conduit on the exterior of the wall make sure you have some good dust collection
01:09:40
Speaker
Yeah. You know, that could be a simple, what do you call those cylinders, those bag filter dust collection units. Yeah, I think they're just like a regular dust collector. Yeah. But you can get one of those for a couple hundred bucks. Yeah. You could probably be in and out all day, $1,500 for a nice used Unisaw. And have an electrician come out and get a dust collector. Mobile base and a little dust collector. I would say
01:10:05
Speaker
Shop used. Shop used. I mean, I see Unisauce pop up all the time near us. Sometimes these guys want crazy prices, but the market is so... This is what I tell people when I offer them something and they're like, oh, no way. The market for this stuff is so small. If you look at the auction websites, check this out, irsauctions.com, I think it is. It's industrial recovery services, not internal revenue services.
01:10:32
Speaker
You can literally buy like an entire paint booth for like $10. You just got to go pick it up. Yeah. No, but Unisaw, you could get a good Unisaw for less than a thousand probably. Yeah. But if you live like in the Midwest where a lot of these auctions are happening, table saws come up all the time. Yeah, they're selling for 500 bucks.
01:10:54
Speaker
Not even a hundred bucks, a hundred and fifty bucks sometimes. You know, the reserves are super low. Like, you know, you see CNC machines going for a fifth of what they actually. It's a little bit of a shame in some respects and tells you the state of things. But yeah. Yeah. Look used. Don't don't.
01:11:16
Speaker
Yeah, no. If your budget is $1,500, I would definitely buy something used. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what you saw stops go for, but probably probably a little bit more than that. Yeah, you hardly see them. But I bought, I can't say I've ever seen a saw stop for sale. We, I looked when we were thinking about buying ours, I found one. I don't remember where it was. It was, you know, in the US and it was about 70% of new price.
01:11:47
Speaker
But my old Unisaw was 1,500 brand new back in the olden days. Yeah. We were looking at those prices today. How much is going on? Yeah, everything's gone up. Yeah. Except wages. Oh, Nathan. Tree of Life would work on Instagram. He wants to know. What's our favorite use for CA glue?
01:12:11
Speaker
Well, we don't get a whole ton of use out of CA glue here. I'd say for like little cracks and stuff occasionally, we'll put it in there like stuff that, you know, probably isn't going to close up, but you need to like sort of stabilize like a small track and something could fill it with CA glue and let it dry. Over here, I actually have like a piece of plexi CA glued to the router, so I can use it as like a little router table.
01:12:38
Speaker
That was a cool little trick with the masking tape. Yeah, that's one that's been going around a lot lately. You put blue tape on both and then then glue the tape together, basically. Yeah. Yeah, we use it for tiny little sliver cracks and stuff like that because you can sand it out. It'll seep in. It's thin enough. Yeah, why not? To seep into a crack on its own through gravity and then you can sand it off and you don't even see it.
01:13:07
Speaker
So yeah, we I mean we always keep it around. Yeah, you definitely want to have it. It's good for gluing like repairing like stupid little stuff around the shop and say. Now we're drinking polar 100 percent natural seltzer, calorie free, ruby red grapefruit. Calorie free. So that's it.
01:13:34
Speaker
This is a good question too. What's your preferred method for cutting long miters on casework? And can you suggest any alternates? Ryan Yu, outdoor cat would works on Instagram. I like that. And his profile picture is like an orange tabby cat. I would say, depending on the size, if it was less than
01:13:58
Speaker
whatever we have here, 40 inches or something, I would cut it on the sliding table saw. If you don't have a sliding table saw, I would cut it with a track saw. And if you didn't have a track saw, I would cut it with a circular saw with some sort of guide setup.
01:14:15
Speaker
The track saw we've used in the past and it's performed admirably. Yeah. And we've done the same thing with our small slider set up on the SawStop. So those are two good options. If you have
01:14:33
Speaker
I've tried using a sled before, like a homemade sled. And it doesn't work. It's not. I mean, because it's a long miter and that just that hair of slop and inaccuracy. Yeah. It it's it's not perfect. And you get to say, I use a piece of MDF with the thing screwed to it. It's just it's not. I'm sorry. I tried it. It's not as good. Yeah. The track saw is
01:15:01
Speaker
Is my I mean and depending on the situation might be my first. Yeah go to thing because that thing is so rock solid. Yeah the thing about the table saw is like you really need to keep that thing pushed down tight to the table. Otherwise you're changing the angle of your mind. Yeah.
01:15:20
Speaker
With the track saw, the track is actually clamped to the piece, so it can't move. That's why I like that, especially for something long where, you know, the slight discrepancies, well, what's the exponentially show themselves? Yeah. In fact, as I'm talking, I'm hearing myself leaning more to the track saw than the table saw for a longish miter.
01:15:47
Speaker
Yeah, my number one solution is just to not put a miter on the case. Yeah, we don't like that joint in particular. No, I mean, I could see like a mid something mid century, right? If you had to, you had to. Yeah, but me, I avoid miters like the plague. Yeah, it's the weakest possible woodworking joint and, you know, very finicky move a lot with the season. So
01:16:15
Speaker
And, you know, there's nothing wrong. Like in this case, we've got and they're sort of exposed in a sense, like you see what they are. They're these deep rabbits. But there's they look fine. You know, the sides go all the way. The sides are continuous. Yeah. And we were able to, you know, sink down some mechanical fasteners through the top and the bottom along with some glue. That's that's solid as it gets. Yeah.
01:16:46
Speaker
And they just didn't do miters on that period of furniture anyway like that. This is like late 1800s, early 1900s. Yeah. So that's what they did. I mean. Yeah, there you go, Brian. And it should have been outdoor cat, not outdoor cat. Like an outdoor cat. Yeah, outdoor cat. Yeah. I don't think I said it right the first time. Outdoor cat.
01:17:16
Speaker
I was saying, like, he's a, you know, like, you know, like a jazz guy might say he's an outdoor cat. He's an outdoor cat. We got another one from Jack, Jackdord98. How does Tongue Oil go for outdoor use?
01:17:33
Speaker
Not bad. Not great, but not bad. It's certainly waterproof with enough coats. When we talk about tongue oil, we're talking about pure tongue oil, not tongue oil finish, which is typically a very low percentage of tongue oil.
01:17:48
Speaker
Pure tongue oil is waterproof, but it's not UV resistant, so you will get fading and UV damage. For example, real milk paint company who makes the tongue oil that we use, they make a outdoor defense oil, they call it. So that, in addition to tongue oil, has pine.
01:18:08
Speaker
What are they calling it pine? Pine tar resin. Pine tar resin, yeah, that's what I thought. Pine tar resin and like zinc oxide or something, which is their UV resistant additives that, you know, make it stand up a little better outside.
01:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, and it all depends on how much upkeep you you put into it because and what look you're going for. Yeah, anything that that's outside in the weather. And we've got two Adirondack chairs sitting on the deck and the deck's covered. But, you know, it still gets wet in the rain for the most part because of the wind and everything. They've been out there for 20 years unfinished. Yeah.
01:18:46
Speaker
And they're starting to show their age. You know, there's definitely no shelf pieces. But so it all depends on what you're looking for. If you want to stay showroom, you're going to have to get out there and sand and reapply. But it'll work. Well, any oil will work to some degree. Yeah. I think this one's go straight to you, Jeffrey.
Jeff's Real Estate Update
01:19:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:14
Speaker
Did you get the house? Dustin F. Patron, Dustin Fair like Mayor on Instagram. We're fair. So I don't remember. Did we talk about this on the Patreon only? Maybe. So my wife and I are under contract on a house. We're in attorney review, hoping to be out of attorney review, I guess either today or tomorrow.
01:19:41
Speaker
Um, it's looking like we got it. I don't get my hopes up because of the way the last one went and every subsequent situation after that. Um, so yes, it does look like we got it, but I am not putting all my eggs in that basket. Until you're unload in that first box. Yeah, until I'm sleeping in the house, I'm going to say that it's a maybe. Yeah. And you know, maybe other parts of the country are like hours where
01:20:10
Speaker
It's not easy getting into an entry level house here because there's so many rural here scammers shysters flippers all and you know the the like home values or whatever the market it's insane insane. I think that you get.
01:20:31
Speaker
As you go down in price, you get less for your money. And I don't mean just because the price is low. I mean, equivalently speaking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you're right. Because it's just there's there's too many sharks in that in that pool of water.
01:20:49
Speaker
a lot of cash buyers in my price range. There's a huge concentration of money in this area and a lot of investment going on and it's hard to compete. Yeah, a lot of slumlord mentality people. They want to get something, throw some real
01:21:10
Speaker
crappy superficial improvements into the house and then rent it out. Yeah. Yeah. There was somebody on Instagram, a big account that you may know, was talking about, this is like a design and a home kind of account, talking about like, oh, buying a flip. And I messaged her and I said, honestly, you should never buy a flip because the whole purpose of a flip is to make the quote unquote flipper money.
01:21:39
Speaker
So you're never going to get the value out of a flip that you are out of a house where a family lived for their entire lives. And they they said, man, we need to replace the windows. So we're going to get these windows that are actually going to last and they're going to be good. They're not going to Home Depot and buying this fixture. That's it. Looks looks good on the picture. But you get there. It's a piece of junk. The vanity is particle board and blah, blah, blah. You I'm sure you guys have all seen these flip houses. There is no value in a flip. No.
01:22:09
Speaker
And even if the original family didn't fix anything, then the house price isn't inflated artificially.
01:22:19
Speaker
Because that's all those those flip things are. It's just artificial. Yeah, it's all superficial, you know, improvements that really don't add any real value to the house. Yeah. Yeah. Usually they're done as cheaply as
Teaching Woodworking to the Next Generation
01:22:31
Speaker
possible. So we're sending out the good vibes and crossing our fingers and toes. Yeah. Jeff, this is also for you. This is Nicholas S and let's see, and Strubhart on Instagram. He's asking you, Jeff.
01:22:49
Speaker
And he's saying, I grew up working with my dad in the wood shop. Are you excited to teach your son?
01:22:56
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I mean, he likes talking about the shop. He likes coming to the shop and he's only he's only two and a half. He's got his own tools already. Yeah. He comes in and he says, what does he say? Where's my red desk? Yeah, my red desk. It's a little stool and we give him a mallet and some piece of wood and some of my miniature tools. Yeah.
01:23:21
Speaker
Yeah, so I think I mean, it'll be good for him. It'll be good for me. You know, my dad didn't do any woodworking or I mean, he was a handy guy, but I didn't really have anything like that. Like to do with my dad, you know what I mean? Like there was no we didn't work on cars or do woodworking or just because he didn't really have any no hobby like that. But he's only two and a. Yeah.
01:23:47
Speaker
so he's more of a hazard now than anything but i mean in the time he's been here he's he's got to watch his head now used to be a walk underneath everything like the sled and all that stuff now we got to tell him watch your head buddy
01:24:04
Speaker
So yeah, we'll see. I'll start, um, you know, introducing him, introducing him to more things. And hopefully he loves it. Yeah. And he likes, I mean, he loves to play with the little toy tools at home and, uh, Oh, come help me fix this. So he's, he's into the whole making things and fixing things and stuff like that. So.
01:24:26
Speaker
All right. Well, this next question comes with a backstory. Yeah. So Tim yesterday, Tim from True Trade Carpentry, he sent me some video questions for the podcast. He gave the backstory. He's got a buddy who guesses the GC on a job and had to bring in some subs.
01:24:47
Speaker
Come to find out this guy shows up to the job and the foreman and the workers are drinking on the job.
Professionalism on Job Sites
01:24:57
Speaker
You're not talking about Kool-Aid, I guess. No, they're drinking alcoholic beverages on the job. With power tools? Yeah, and the owner of a foreman and the owner of that company are drinking together on the job. I'm not sure what trade they're in specifically, but Tim wants to know, when is it okay to drink on the job? After the 5 o'clock whistle or 4.30 whistle or whatever time you quit,
01:25:25
Speaker
And as long as you're, you know, not driving under the influence and all that other stuff. Yeah. And I'd even say when you're out of if you're working in somebody's house, when you're not at their house. Right. I mean, you always want to present the best face possible. We clean up after ourselves. You want to leave the place so that the client can can go right into if we're working in somebody's home, in a room, in their bedroom, we set down
01:25:53
Speaker
floor protection and vacuum and all that other stuff. You always want to be as professional as possible. Leave it cleaner than you found it. Yeah. It's that whole walking softly in the wilderness. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to say really, it's never OK to drink on the job. There you go. I mean, we've for work or at lunch. No, no. I mean,
01:26:19
Speaker
I'll be candid. We've all had those situations where you might have a beer at the end of the day with a client or with the guys from the, you know, that are working on the job or something like that. But if you're like actually drinking on it, like you're in the middle of the workday having drinks, like
01:26:43
Speaker
If you show up to work with beer or something in your cooler, you got a problem. Wow, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I told Tim like that the first time that I saw that I would be throwing fucking tools into the street and there's no chance that you would ever be showing up on my job again. Yeah.
01:27:00
Speaker
I would say the only time I think it would be cool would be is at the end of a pretty long job or a pretty long day. The client comes out, you're in sitting in the yard putting your tools away and the client comes out with a couple of beers in his hand and says, come here guys, let's sit down and have a beer. And you have one, so you're still, you know, capable.
01:27:28
Speaker
And that's it, that would be the time I suppose. Yeah, this isn't party time, this is time to work. I mean, we don't even work after this having one beer. No, we don't. And it's one thing like, you know, if you have a shop at your house and you go out on Sunday at night after dinner or whatever, whenever the hell you want, and you want to have a couple beers while you
01:27:50
Speaker
make something in the shop that's on you but you don't do this in somebody's house no or a job site some if it's a commercial job site uh some site somewhere like that's ridiculous i mean imagine if like somebody came here to like do so even if something like put up the fence let's i was gonna say i was gonna give that same analogy like any other put this on any other
01:28:13
Speaker
Right. The fence crew comes. They're putting up the fence. The next thing at lunch, they sit down and they're all eating lunch and drinking beer. I mean, I hope the fence goes up straight. Yeah. Because the first thing I'm going to do is be making a phone call and say, hey, Joe, you know, the crew you left here to put the fence up.
01:28:34
Speaker
I was telling you this, I don't know, maybe a week or two ago, used to work, when I was working for this builder, we had an electrician, this guy, Yang, and he was like, he would drink Beck's all day. So you'd look in the dumpster, you know, because electricians are weird, like, they always show up after hours and like work like late into the night, because they always got so much going on, like a lot of these guys that work by themselves. So you show up the next morning, the dumpster has like eight empty Beck's bottles in it. Oh, God.
01:29:03
Speaker
And it's unfortunate there are a lot of people out there who quote-unquote need Yeah, they're they're alcohol that they're sort of functioning closeted semi-alcoholics, you know Yeah, you spot them because when you go out to lunch and you're all having a beer you're sucked down
01:29:26
Speaker
You're still drinking your first beer and they got the third one coming from the waitress. Yeah, I'm like, I don't even want to go to work after three beers. I don't want to go to work after one. You know, I could drive home. That's nothing. You know, I got to go six or seven before I'm impaired. Or 12.
01:29:47
Speaker
So yeah, if you try and quit drinking and you fail every time then you should probably go get some help Yeah, there you go. So we don't encourage drinking on the job. No, we don't encourage drinking off the job if you have to travel No, I mean I'll say this without a shadow of a doubt if we were running a job and I caught anybody drinking they'd be fucking going immediately Immediately and it's a liability and it's just wrong. It's wrong for the client. Yeah. Yeah our Bureau of the Week is is that's
01:30:18
Speaker
That's all we can handle. That's right.
Ross Brewing and Goza Style Ale Discussion
01:30:22
Speaker
If you're watching, you'll see we're drinking seltzer now. And we don't even have to work or do anything. And I live here. I live two miles up the road.
01:30:37
Speaker
Oh, man. Well, that's all we got for questions. Yeah. Yeah. What did you think of the beer? I loved it. In fact, this was this is one of my favorite in memory. Yeah. And when I was looking at it, I'm saying myself, hmm, fruity beer. I don't think I'm going to like that.
01:30:57
Speaker
Excuse me. And the how do you say that ghost or go say goes a goes a goes a style sour ale. Like I'm saying that doesn't sound like something I'm going to like. I loved it. It was good. I loved it. Yeah.
01:31:15
Speaker
Well, there you go. Yeah, these guys at Ross are kicking ass. I don't I mean, it had the the vibrant sort of brightness of a fruit. But not very sweet. Right. Not super sweet. And as we discussed at the beginning, it still tasted like a beer in the after part. Yeah, the Gozas are like they're like a little bit funky. Like you get that.
01:31:44
Speaker
It's hard, like I don't want to say skunked, but like if you've ever had like a cheap beer that was skunked, like it has it has that little bit of like funkiness. Yeah. You get that kind of same thing from a Goza. It's from, you know, the yeast and stuff, I guess. But I really, really like this beer. And this is I mean, it's dead winter for us, but couldn't you see enjoying that ice cold on a nice warm day?
01:32:08
Speaker
Yeah, like one of my favorite summertime beers is that dogfish head sea quench because it's it's easily available. Everybody freaking sells it now. But it's a it's a I think it's goes a style. It's got sea salt like this. It's got some kind of limes, black limes or something. And
01:32:33
Speaker
something else. But it's a very similar style to this. And you know, I drink Guinness. Like if I was going to drink a beer, I usually have a Guinness and I would walk right past this without even slowing down. If I saw it in the cooler, like it just.
01:32:51
Speaker
But now, I mean, you really open my eyes. Yeah, I saw they posted it on Instagram a couple weeks ago. I was like, hmm. I was like, that looks pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. So there's lesson learned. Yeah. Hey, if you find Ross out near you, I don't know how far from here or there. I mean, this is literally a block. This was a block north.
01:33:11
Speaker
And how far is it to the water? Five blocks? They're six blocks away. Drink local. Yeah. But if you listen to this and you find that somewhere, like outside of this immediate area, let us know. I don't know how far they're distributing right now. They must have some kind of website. Yeah. Yeah. Probably Rossbrewing.com. You see anything there? No. Ross Beer Co. Esq. The Ordinary.
01:33:43
Speaker
Well, as always, we'll have the tool of the week in the description and I'll put the book of the week or month or whatever in the description as well. Yeah, that's a good read. Yeah.
01:33:56
Speaker
I like the pictures because it reminds me of like an Audubon style book. Are you familiar with those little Audubon? Yeah, birds. Yeah, I have one actually for trees. It shows you the picture, the silhouette. I love that stuff. Yeah, Lost Art Press. I mean, every book they put out is a home run. I got a bunch of them now.
01:34:16
Speaker
If you'd like to support the podcast, check us out on Patreon. We will, as we do every week, sit down here and do another like we've been going like 50 minutes every week, almost a full hour of a bonus show where we talk about all kinds of good stuff. This is the time where we thank our gold tier patrons. We got David Murphy, Manny Sirianni, Dustin Fair, Adam Pothast and David Schumacher or Schumacher. I still haven't gotten confirmation on that. Yeah, I'm going to say Schumacher. Yeah.
01:34:48
Speaker
My, uh, I had ancestors that were shoemakers. Oh, yeah. Yeah. On the Italian side. Yeah. Also known as a cobbler. That's right. Cobblers. They were cobblers. So I want to tell everybody to be well, treat each other with some kindness out there. Get your dogs and cats spayed and neutered. Oh, thank you. Thank you for tuning in. Yeah. We'll see you guys next week. All right. Ciao.
01:35:30
Speaker
Ain't no shame, but there's been a chain