Transcript
Speaker: damn Hello and welcome to DigiFabricators, the show where we learn how makers and artists use their computer-driven tools for fun, art, and profit.
Speaker: I'm your host, Jeff Stein, a.k.a. a weird guy, and with me is my talented but humble co-host, Al Schultz of New York Woodworks. How's it going, Al? It's going well. How are you tonight, sir?
Speaker: Oh, not too bad. Weather's getting better. Life's not awful. We're going to take that as a win. There you go. so All right, let's throw in the disclaimer here that even though we pretend to be experts on the Internet, I would like to point out that neither of us have any actual training and our guys just winging it in our shops and learning as we go.
Speaker: All advice provided is based on our personal experience and possibly inaccurate assumptions and is worth exactly what you pay for it. If listening to this show causes you to take out a loan to buy new and expensive digital tools, you may tell your spouse that it was our fault, but do so at your own risk.
Speaker: So tonight, our guest had to cancel on us to go help out in Rwanda. He said they had open missionary positions, but I'm not sure he understood what they meant.
Speaker: So this episode will be just us. But I think we've got a couple fun things to talk about. um We've both been doing some fun stuff. um What have you been working on?
Speaker: I have been ah working on a... I built a couple of cooler boxes, like cedar plank cooler boxes. They were like a big DIY thing back in the...
Speaker: early 2000s, mid 2000s, you know, look at the lid and they're just made out of cedar fence planks. And then you put a Coleman cooler inside and okay you take the hinges off and attach that the top of the cooler to the top of the wooden box. So when you open it, it opens.
Speaker: So it uses the wooden hinges, not the, the wooden box hinges, not the cooler hinges. Right. Yeah. You take the handles off, you you pipe the the drain out the side of the box and put a little faucet on there so you can drain it and you can leave it, you know, standing on the deck.
Speaker: Uh, With the laser engraver, I'm able to, you know, personalize them, put a, ah like a ah family crest or monogram or your favorite team or whatever.
Speaker: So that's been going on. I've been working on... ah I have a friend who's a luthier. So we are working on building, this is my first prototype of a Telecaster I'm holding up that nobody but you can see.
Speaker: It's made out of MDF and we might, I'm, my It's been a dream to build instruments, you know something that can be played, something that is like part of the arts, if you will.
Speaker: And I've always been a Telecaster fan, you know blues, Muddy Waters, you know that kind of thing And having a friend who's a luthier doesn't hurt, so he we might we might knock out some, you know I don't know, one, two, three, five custom guitars a year, maybe. you know see what See what happens there. That'd be cool. like ah Like a passion project, but still digital fabrication. you know ah yeah Yeah, well, I mean...
Speaker: Cranking out guitar bodies with all the holes and spots for all the pickups and and all the strings to connect to and all that fancy shit. that's That's definitely best done by CNC.
Speaker: and yeah yeah i there's There's people that have done that shit by hand, but God, why would you want to? Sounds like a fantastic CNC project.
Speaker: Yeah, he does build them by hand and he doesn't build them because it's just such tedious work. And it's not that they're not worth money, but like if it takes you 500 hours to do it by hand, you know, you can't charge, you know, $5,000 for a $1,500 guitar, know? Right.
Speaker: But, you know, unless you're like a famous person, you know, like. Right. Then you can, you know, when you start making signature series for our, for big brand names, then you can, then you can charge those numbers.
Speaker: Right. otherwise way In which case you're making one by hand and then the company's going to make clones of that one and yeah and and and kick you back five bucks for each one they sell.
Speaker: Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah. And I like to, I like the finishing process. So um if you've ever just Google Muddy Waters Telecaster,
Speaker: um it's just, it looks like it's been used to paddle boats. It looks like it's chopped wood. It's just been beat. It's like Willie Nelson's, you know, guitar. Like it's just whooped.
Speaker: So I've learned or I'm learning in the process, you know, how to fracture paint finishes. So they look like they're 75 years old. so it's going to be, ah it's an interesting art project, you know, that's fun completely functional, you know.
Speaker: But ah it'll have new and dependable electrics, you know. Right. You know, that's kind of what. Grant was talking about last episode was that weathering the stuff was.
Speaker: it It looks complicated and it looks really amazing, but apparently you can just you know, when you're weathering shit, you can just slap shit on there and freaking knock it around and beat the shit out of it. And it just looks better after you've done that.
Speaker: Yeah. it It just looks like it's hard and complicated to me because i don't because I've never done it. yeah Last week i posted ah I did a relief carving a clock with a bunch of skulls on it.
Speaker: yeah it look I think it looks really badass. kind of dark It's very dark. But I did some burning on that. um But I literally spray painted it.
Speaker: yeah You distress the the paint with with sponges and sanding discs and stuff like that. And then I spray painted like a maroon and a red, like two or three shades of red.
Speaker: And before the paint dries, you just wipe it off and the paint stays in like all the nooks and crannies of the skulls and the numbers. And it just naturally created shadow.
Speaker: And you saw the pictures. If you go on my Instagram, you can see the pictures. I think it looks pretty good. ah That's literally spray paint and rags to finish that. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker: Yep. Yeah, I was going to ask about the reliefs. How um much fun are you doing with the reliefs? is that Is that a lot of fun for you? It is a lot of fun. I love their long. They're long carves. you know Welcome to the world paths, man. you've been doing 95% of your yeah i mean you've you've been doing ninety five percent of your life You've been running paths.
Speaker: yeah you yeah you're doing two and a half d but it's all doing one layer at a time yeah And you just keep going around in circles and it goes super fast. But suddenly once you get a 3D path that adds the Z axis moving around constantly, Jesus Christ, it takes six times as late. It's like, i remember the first time I did a relief and it was instead of being a five or 10 minute job, it was a two and a half hour job. And it just blew my mind like,
Speaker: Is the machine going to be able to run that long in one time? And obviously it does. But I mean, yeah you know four years ago, I fucking didn't know. yeah Yeah, exactly. I actually have a file. It's hanging on the ceiling up here. it's ah It's like a group of Mustang horses running like with a mountain scene behind it and I carved posted that yeah I carved that in foam so I could run like stupid fast stupid fast it was still that was three hours I did I did one in wood and it was like 14 hours right because you had slow it way down you can't run right you you can't blast through wood as fast as you can blast through foam usually yeah yeah yeah but I do I do love it a hell of a router
Speaker: yeah Yeah, I got six horsepower and you can't. It'll just deface the wood. I'm not worried about the router. I'm worried about ripping the wood apart. you've got up there, you can do whatever you want. yeah Yeah, yeah. Picture a V8 and fourth gear freaking running the router.
Speaker: Yeah. So, yeah, the 3D carving is it's very satisfying because it's like... I mean, I know you could touch a 2D carving, but like, it's like you can touch this. You can feel the, you know, it's, it's the curves of the surface, right? Light starts playing a part in the presentation because you get shadow and stuff like that.
Speaker: so it's, right yeah, it's really cool stuff. Yeah. I love 3D so much. And but that's why I'm happy to see you starting to lean into some of the reliefs and to do the 3D work and the 3D paths, because that's, that's, that's just what makes me so happy with my CNC. Yeah. yeah I mean, and I do very little 2D shit anymore. It's just not as much fun. Right, right. Exactly. And it's really something to see a finished product that, or a finished piece even I say product, cause always trying to find some kind of income stream.
Speaker: But some things are just pieces, you know. Right. But it's pretty cool to look at a finished piece and go, i literally grew up and went to high school in this town. And here I am creating this in this town.
Speaker: You know what mean? like Like, I'm just a I don't say this lightly or or anything, but like, I'm, I'm literally just a dirt farmer. You know, I grew up on a dairy farm and here I have a, you know, a four by eight CNC in my garage, you know, make turning out, you know, 3d carvings. And it's like, what?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, they' they're pretty cool. um What's the what's the user experience like on the Vectrex for the is I've I've I mean, I've seen Vectrex.
Speaker: I've even played with a couple of their demos. ah demos Yeah, the you can download the demo for free, you can install the software, you can play with the software, you just can't create a path with the software.
Speaker: Right, right. So but I mean, I, that's, you know, I'm vaguely familiar with what it does, but I haven't actually used it. How's that?
Speaker: I don't have a lot of comparison experience. You know, a lot of people are like, well, so what what kind of CNC did you start with? and what kind of software did you start with? This one?
Speaker: Exactly. You know, so i I've been delving a little bit into Fusion and Not in any way, shape, or form saying one is better than the other.
Speaker: I will say Vectric, or I use Aspire, which is their 2.5D expanded. It's got like four more buttons than VCarve Pro. but ah And costs twice as much.
Speaker: Four times. Yeah. Aspire is... ah aspire is
Speaker: A simplified version of Fusion, i would say. like it's It's got a tenth of the buttons, if you will. right ah you know it's It's powerful and you can create in it. like You're not going to spin cylinders and turn things. You can import those from a Fusion program and and and ma and run your tool pathing in it.
Speaker: I do like that. You can design and toolpath in the same suite. You know what mean? Like it's start to finish. When I'm done in Aspire, I've got a thumb drive with G-code on it.
Speaker: You know, I don't have and don't have to go from this program to this program to this program. So I do ah do you appreciate the all-in-oneness of it. right And it's powerful enough to do what I need and simple enough I can still do it.
Speaker: Does that make sense? Yeah. My well, my view on it is that it's it's kind of the iPhone version where it's very well, I mean, it's made specifically for woodworking, whereas fusion is made to do.
Speaker: Anything. Industries, yeah. Anything. I mean, because, I mean, yeah it's it's got the 2D graphics, it's got the 3D CAD, and then it's got the ability to...
Speaker: export stuff to a laser. You've got stuff to export stuff to the CNC. You've got stuff to export straight to. i mean, I make stuff in fusion and I push a couple of buttons and it exports straight into the bamboo studio and opens the program with the model. I don't have to save the model and then import. I can just export it straight to bamboo now.
Speaker: Yeah. um And it's also made for people who are have like you know a full mill i mean um like a tormach something like that yeah like a tormach or something like that now i mean the silly thing is is that most of the people that can afford a tormach can probably afford better fucking software than fusion That's fair. So I don't know who would own Haas or a Tarmac and still want to use fusion.
Speaker: It's a very underpowered software, but I mean, it could do right up to that point. yeah You can do any of that shit. um It's got more dimensions than I've had on any of my machines. It's got all you can do at least six axis yeah that I'm aware of.
Speaker: So I mean, it's it's not specifically made for woodworking. It's it's got the ability to do the things that woodworkers want to do, right?
Speaker: Which is It can make your model. You can create tool paths or 3D tool paths and export that straight to a file that you can feed your ah CNC software.
Speaker: it's ah It's a perfect software, Aspire or Vectric, is a perfect software even if you want to 3D-ish on a 2D plane, if that makes sense.
Speaker: It's great for sign sign carving. It's a great for detail that you can right that you could touch. you know they They seem to have the stuff that...
Speaker: does what woodworkers need very specifically. Yeah. yeah I mean, it's got, which is why I use it. It's, it's, it's got the V carve paths and it's got the, the, the V carve inlays.
Speaker: that are really kind of supposed to be super simple to do that you just, you know, feed it a vector and you tell it you want to do an inlay and it'll automatically carve you, you know, and it'll set you up for yeah the the pocket and the plug. Yeah.
Speaker: with offsets and depths and different paths. We even use it in signs. Tom was our guest a few weeks ago. We use the inlay outlay.
Speaker: ah you know, or the inlay program, you know, to make like a push through sign, like cut out, cut out the aluminum face. And then you cut out a 3d, if you will, acrylic letter that pushes through the socket that you just carved in the aluminum.
Speaker: And then he backlights it and the light and the letters glow. It's amazing. the whole process. That's inlay. Yeah. Yeah. And hear that inlay. So we do like an offset, you know, so we get enough space because Tom has to deal with, know,
Speaker: weather you know right his creations have to live in the ice and the snow and the heat and the sun you know so they're not to mention there has to be clearance to get the part inside the park right right right but all that is so yes vectric is very good at that uh i don't know how much longer i'm gonna really dive into fusion i'm actually getting ready to probably tomorrow actually uh from this recording uh we're going to be investing into mosaic which is a big powerful cabinets software okay 2d but um it's you know our business is going towards cabinetry type stuff
Speaker: okay So it's a it's everything is subscription now. It's a ridiculous subscription, but it's a very powerful, like from design to printable certification of certifiable blueprint right you know for architects and stuff like that.
Speaker: So that's, I'm going to need a lot of bandwidth to do that. So I don't know how much I'm going to concentrate on fusion right now. The good thing about the, about, um, uh, I like to make stuff, uh, fusion program is it doesn't expire.
Speaker: So I can always, I can always, I've bought it. So now I can just go back and, and experiment with it when I have time, say this fall, if it's things are slow or whatever, you know, I can jump into it for a week or two and learn fusion still.
Speaker: We can hope that Bob will have actually updated the course by then. By then. Yeah. i've I've been kind of putting it up for that too. he's Well, I mean, he's been, he's been teasing us on his podcast with about making updates on that, but I mean, it's a really big project and he's trying to overhaul the thing from the beginning to the, he's not just trying to change one page at a time. trying overhaul the entire program. Yeah.
Speaker: And then he's going to wipe the old one and put the new one up and tell everybody to come have a look. But yeah, that should be out by then. And yeah you know he you've not gotten a he's not a worse teacher than he was four or five years ago when he made that the first time.
Speaker: So I expect it to be an improvement. i'm i've I've been using Fusion for four years since I took his class the first time. yeah And I plan on going back through the course just to see what I've missed because there's, there, there's so many buttons. There's so many right clicks. There's so many menus. There's so many things. There's so many tips. There's so many tricks.
Speaker: I'm sure Bob is going to tell me something I've never fucking heard before. Right. And back to, back to your original question. I think you could take,
Speaker: I'm not going to say you couldn't do a project like your group in aspire only, but, but. Cause I know somebody out here is going, no, you could do it. You know? And I'm not, I'm not saying you can't, I'm saying I wouldn't ever, right but you could. So that's where a suite like fusion do your 3d design in a program that's designed to handle 3d constantly.
Speaker: And then import it and Aspire or V-Carve, whatever you want to call it, is Vectric is way totally capable of handling any kind of tool pathing scenario that Fusion could throw at it.
Speaker: Pretty much, yeah. you know so And a few that I haven't got. Fusion not know what a V-Carve bit ah fusion does not know what a vcarve bit is Right, because it's not a sign program. It doesn't know how to do a re-carve path. Actually, it does know what the bit is. it's It's aware of all sorts of what it refers to as pattern bits, I believe.
Speaker: yeah So it it is aware of the shaped bits, but... You cannot, yeah there there may be some fancy workarounds, tricks, and to do this, that, and to combine three different paths together to get the same effect.
Speaker: But the the the way the V-carve bit, the the the way the V-carve path would normally work in a woodworking software is it goes deeper every time the path needs to get wider.
Speaker: And that's not something fusion has any is never heard of. It's right. That's a woodworking trick. That's not a machining trick. you would Right. Fusion works at the tip of the tool.
Speaker: Whereas whereas your right metric knows the whole whatever depth you tell it to dive in. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, you can get a bevel by saying I want to go this deep.
Speaker: with my V-bit. and yeah and You just got to do the math instead of the program. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, the the whole normal... ah whole normal you know v carving path is is a thing where the if if the if the the gap gets very narrow it goes up so it's just using the very tip and then as the path widens out it digs down in a little bit deeper right to get a wider path but that's that's not something that fusion's never gonna do right right
Speaker: You should be able to create a pocket the way you want with beveled edges that would basically seem to be about the same thing.
Speaker: And inlays are a whole nother world because basically, i think there might be a way to do the same thing. i mean, you you could probably create a path and then create a bevel on it.
Speaker: to do a beveled inlay the way that Vectrix does it. But you would have to manually figure that shit out. And I've personally just found it easier to do straight end mail inlays.
Speaker: Although easier is a completely different viewpoint because it's, it's, it's not easier. and It's not easier at all. Well, I mean, it can be.
Speaker: If you've got a big design where all the spars all the spots of the design are actually larger than the bit you need to use and all of your design is nicely well-rounded corners everywhere.
Speaker: i mean, if if your inlay is a bunch of circles, it'll knock that shit out in seconds. That's not a problem. the The real joy for me is when you import something like an X-wing.
Speaker: I mean, one of the worst things I've ever done is an X-wing inlay cutting board. And you're talking about the Star Wars X-wing. I am talking about the Star Wars X-wing ship and with the wings open and I had to manually round off every corner in the design.
Speaker: Yeah. Basically you have to to, you just create a circle. That's just a hair bigger than the size of your bit. And you drag that circle around. And if that circle doesn't fit somewhere, you have to trim off the somewhere it can't fit or you need to widen it up. So it can, and there's actually a tool for that in, in V carve.
Speaker: Like it's a, Well, first of all, it does it, it figures it out. But if you if you want to do it, it's a fillet tool. And you literally just tell it, I'm using, well, you'd say, im you you I want a quarter inch fillet.
Speaker: Because you your quarter inch bit. Or you would do an eighth inch or a half inch or whatever. And then you literally just take the tool and you click on every corner. And if a quarter inch radius won't fit in there, it rounds it off to a quarter inch for you.
Speaker: that's beautiful yeah yeah i mean i i probably spent like four nights i can imagine where where It literally we're looking at maybe eight hours of work to turn that design into something where I was certain that the bit could fit on both sides of every line in that design.
Speaker: It probably took me eight hours to get that. And now now keep in mind that. You can't even tell that my corners have freaking round edges because I'm I'm finishing my corners with a one thirty second inch end mill.
Speaker: So that takes a 1 64th inch round over to fit into that. Yeah. yeah You can't fucking even tell there's a round over there. That's called wood grain.
Speaker: Exactly. You can't even tell that the corners are rounded over when you're looking at it. But you can tell when you have to manually round every one of those corners. 620 corners off or take all those little narrow places and just redraw them so they're a little bit wider so that the bit can fit through there that that's the part that's a bear once you've got a design but i mean if you start with a design where you want to do a bunch of
Speaker: two inch circles and inlay those things. I mean, you're, you're, you've skipped that problem by picking a design that was going to be easy. In which case you just simply, you know, you tell it to cut inside the line on the pocket half of the part and you tell it to cut outside the line on the plug part of the pocket and you give it just a couple of thou of, uh,
Speaker: gap between the two. so what you either make the pocket a couple of thou bigger or the plug a couple of thou smaller and curious. And, you know, this is a weird one because I've never really quite understood why this works. I don't know if it's the same way with the other software or if it's just fusion. And it's I've tested this with a handful of different bits and it's not my Chinese bits that are causing the problem.
Speaker: um If I do a normal inlay with, you know, say a quarter inch end mill or an eighth inch end mill, I'm absolutely going to have to take a couple of thou extra off one side or the other to get those pieces to mate up properly.
Speaker: But if I do a contour and say, say I carve the pocket with an eighth inch bed, and then I do a contour pass around the edge with the one 16th or the one 32nd, it actually takes an extra thou off. I don't know why.
Speaker: if i'm I can run around the contour with an eighth inch bit and I can feed it the same contour with the one 32nd inch bit and you can see it's shaving an extra couple of thou off and I don't have to program in an offset.
Speaker: If I'm using a small enough bit it doesn't need an offset because it takes off. I don't know why the smaller bit seems to be taking off a little bit that the larger bit is leaving because I'm not telling it to leave any.
Speaker: And it doesn't seem to make any damn sense, but it's going to the outside of your eighth inch toolpath because it fits inside the toolpath. So it's going to do the outside of the toolpath first.
Speaker: But I mean, if the contour runs around the inside, say you carve a pocket first and then you tell it to do a contour around the inside edge of that pocket.
Speaker: do you have the a Do you have the option to do inside, on or outside line? yeah Inside or outside. you cannot sure I'm sure. um yeah I'm sure there's an on the line somewhere. It's not one I use, but.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, yeah, you can tell it to cut outside the line or inside the line, but you tell it if you've carved a pocket and then tell it to run an eighth inch bit contour inside the line, it will clean up the edges all the way around the edge of that pocket.
Speaker: You know, just tell to do a full depth, just go around and clean up the edges for me. And then if you tell it to do the same exact path with the one 16th or one 32, it'll take off an extra couple of thou that the bigger bit left behind.
Speaker: i don't know maybe it's interesting maybe all my bits came from freaking china and maybe these well i see there's this thing that they'll sell you bits that are technically metric but they'll sell them to you as standards because they're so damn close but i mean i've measured my bits with a micrometer and i don't understand why it seems to make a difference but If I do a finish contour with a really tiny bit, I don't have to program an extra offset and my inlay still knocks in.
Speaker: Yeah, that's interesting. I'm um i'm trying i'm looking at a a carve I just did. Okay. Trying to figure out what that would be called in this.
Speaker: It just, I just have a corner sharpen. No, no. Yeah. The car. fish I don't know. All right.
Speaker: Offset climb ramp plunge.
Speaker: Great content. Yeah, really. Sorry. Sorry about that. Sorry. so um um I'm just trying to figure out how that applies. It's because yeah, it it doesn't matter. No, I don't know.
Speaker: And you know, the other thing, see, ventric does all that. So I don't have to worry about the inlay. No, I have to have my offset. It leaves a freaking pocket at the bottom of the thing for glue. Yeah, it's tapered.
Speaker: Yeah, it's tapered. So if you're cutting, yeah, if you, yeah, if you cut a quarter inch deep on an inlay, you're only going to get you know, 730 seconds. Yeah, 316th in, you know.
Speaker: yeah three sixteenth in you know Yeah. and And they automatically nest in nicely because they're beveled, you know, and it goes in and it goes to the right depth and it stops where it should stop.
Speaker: and As long as you use the right bit. Right. As long as you do it correctly and follow the right. But I mean, that's that's the thing with Vectrex is it just does all that shit for you. Yeah. Like I said, it yeah the thing I don't like about there's there's one thing I really don't like about the V-carve inlay.
Speaker: It's only accurate at the proper fucking height. Now, if OK, if you put the inlay in and then surface it down a little bit. Oh, your geometry fucking changes because as you go down, it narrows or widen the the pockets widen.
Speaker: Yeah. Or narrow. Yeah, narrow. Sorry. Yeah, the pocket's narrow the further you go down. So, I mean, if you need to smooth it off and run it through the planer a couple times or just run a surfacing bit across it, if you do more than a couple of thou, you're starting to adjust your actual, you know, the...
Speaker: yeah the outlines of the design your letterss are goingnna get skinny freak to go versus a straight end mill pocket inlay. yeah I mean, I could, cer I mean, I usually do my inlays are, I create a hole that's 0.1 inch deep.
Speaker: And then I create the plugs that are 0.15 and I pound them until they, hit bottom and then I surface the rest of it off.
Speaker: Yeah. You know, whether it's bandsaw or, our more often than not, I just, I just throw a surfacing bit in and I just carve the shit off. It's easier. Yeah. But, uh, that's, that's the one thing I like is I, I can, I can surface down,
Speaker: you know, ah sixteenth of an inch without even thinking about this ever being a problem. So, I mean, that's something I do like. ah There's one catch that's a good tip for anybody that's trying to do straight end mill inlays is even if you've got a couple of thou of offset, getting a perfectly flat edged, non beveled,
Speaker: plug to fall into the hole perfectly all the way across the board is an absolute you've got to be right on when you start knocking it in otherwise you're gonna break things you're gonna fuck things up it's like piston it's piston fit literally there is there there is a workaround for this and i don't freaking play games like that anymore i did in the early days and then i had problems and i figured out a workaround where I tell it to wear with the plug side.
Speaker: i mean, I carve the pockets normally and then I carve the plug side. And after I have it do a contour path around the edge to clean up the edges of the plug parts, then i tell it to do another contour pass around all the edges.
Speaker: And I tell it that I'm going to use a one eighth inch end mill. and Except what I actually do is I feed it a V-Bid and I tell it to go down a, you know, a certain amount of distance and then do a contour around. And it basically bevels the very top edge of all the plug areas so that when you go around, when you flip it over and you try to push it into the pocket,
Speaker: it it it kind of go you know it settles in nicely. yeah yeah Actually, there's there's a bevel there is actually a bevel path.
Speaker: infusion there is actually a bevel path i found but you have to set your mills up you have to set the bits up right there's there's a couple of ways you can define a v bit and i don't remember one of the ways it won't let you if you like set it up as a pattern bit or something it won't let you do the bevel path with it but if you car if you set it up as Shit, I wish didn't remember what it was. But just judge just in case anybody wants to know, you have to define V-bit as maybe a bevel or bevel tool or some shit like that. And then it'll work in the bevel path and you can just tell it how much you want to take off the corners.
Speaker: And then that thing will drop right into the fucking hole. Yeah, i do I do the same thing in a spire, not for inlays. But you could do the same thing for inlays. I do it on like, excuse me, if I'm cutting pieces out and I want to chamfer, I do a cutout.
Speaker: Actually, or I'll do it in reverse. I'll do on the line. I'll take a 60 degree V bit and I'll say do one eighth inch depth. on the line and it does this little v bit you know v carve all the way around to everything i'm doing and then i'll put a quarter inch end mill or a three eighths end mill whatever i'm cutting out with um and you cut on the outside of the line and then when it cuts it leaves half of your bevel that you just cut it leaves half of it there so now you have a chamfered edge all the way around your piece nice
Speaker: Yeah, which is basically you could do the same thing in ah in a piston fit or ah so or ah an end mill cut plug. You would go back and just cut ah sixteenth inch down on the line all the way around every piece. And now you got this little... right Arrowhead that you're sticking into your socket.
Speaker: ah Instead of cutting right on the line, i would rather, i mean, what I've got it doing is I've had it getting it cut just inside the line and then going down a little bit so that the, ah you basically, I pick the height to get how much of the bevel I want to cut off.
Speaker: Right. But I mean, if you if you and you can set your offset on that simply by telling it what bit you pretending it is you know yeah you tell it it's an eighth inch bit it's going to offset the tip by a sixteenth of an inch so that you're not like right on the edge with the tip you're you're you're hitting it with the edge not with the tip right right right yep yeah no it's and i've even got uh it's a
Speaker: 30 49 30 seconds uh taper uh it's a it's a it's an insert tool it's got one blade you know but it's a it's a very slight taper oh And that's really nice for plug fitting and and and things like that because it leaves such a, it's not it's not straight, which is nice, and it's not so beveled that you can right narrow out when you, I mean, you're still going to narrow as you cut down.
Speaker: but right But it's a very slight bevel. It's very slight. it's almost like using a tapered ball nose that comes to a tip but instead of a ball. It's just such such a slight angle.
Speaker: Sounds like a perfect thing to sharpen a pencil with. Yeah, actually. Yeah, yeah. No, no. 100%. And actually this...
Speaker: okay This angle, I know you can't see it, but these angles right here, these are not straight up and down. Okay. But they're just cut with a tapered ball nose, so I just have the taper angle. I didn't have to figure it out. Five degree taper on a ball nose.
Speaker: Yeah, buts on a two inch. Two and a half inch degree yeah taper on the part. Right, right. So, yeah. So basically what you're talking about is hacking a system. It's a good that's a good way of you know getting things done. like you don't have to Just because you don't have the toolpath doesn't mean you can't do it.
Speaker: you You just got to figure out what tool does what I want it to do. If it won't make the toolpath for me, how can I figure out how to make the toolpath myself what it does have? Right.
Speaker: And a lot of times it involves lying to my robot. That's right. Man, do I lie to my robot all the time. Yeah, we're still we can still do that as of right now. But I think in another year or so robots are going to be like, hey, don't lie to me.
Speaker: but Yeah, well, once they put a fucking camera on it, they can see know what i said I was going to do. yeah That's not it. Yeah. Yeah. i hear you anyway let's see um what else have we been oh well the other thing would've been doing was i i did those i did a couple of resin boards i i finally got some uh total boat yeah high performance resin i did a couple projects with that and that was a lot of fun the
Speaker: the The one thing that was really fun that ah here's here's one I learned from ah ah Derek, ah Derek from Alden. I saw him do this a few years ago was that you don't have to carve one pocket path on a CNC and then take it over to your workbench and pour your resin into it.
Speaker: Um, what he did was the first time I'd ever seen it done was he put the project on the CNC and he carved a pocket and he left it where it was, didn't touch a zero, didn't move his part.
Speaker: And he poured some resin into it. And then he came back in 24 hours and then he cut another pocket into it and then poured a different color into that area.
Speaker: So in effect, he was able to put a resin pocket inside of a bigger resin pocket to add details. And that was something that stuck with me. it's been on my to-do list ever since when I finally got myself some TotalBoat this winter, I decided that I was going to do that. And i got...
Speaker: that Nintendo cartridge. And I did another board that was kind of silly about hitting a horse with a truck. But, you know, to be fair, that was an homage to a and that was for someone. Yeah, you right. yeah So somebody made a parody song about hitting a horse with a truck.
Speaker: And this was an homage to that parody. Yes. And it probably doesn't mean anything to him anybody but him. But yeah, I hope he enjoys it. But yeah, It was a cool project. I must say they're both cool projects. And the, the, the takeaway that I really, really think that people should notice is the fact that you can carve.
Speaker: I mean, i think I did like seven different fucking colors. on the Nintendo cartridge label. And it just, just the label was like seven colors. I think I did seven different resin pours on there.
Speaker: And basically I just took a piece of MDF and fixed it to my CNC, picked a random spot on there that looked like zero carved a pocket that was a little bit bigger than the label I wanted.
Speaker: Covered the bottom of it in... packing tape, poured some resin into it, come back a day later, carved some stuff into it, filled those holes with resin, came back the next day.
Speaker: and I mean, you don't have to surface the shit off every day, but I mean, it looks cool. So I mean, if you're creating content, that's a good step to do that.
Speaker: You know, if you come back when the resins dry, you can surface it off. So it's nice and flat before you start your next pocket. Do you have to re zero every time you restart or like like my machine when I when I started it zeros to the last place it was used? Right. is it my measure My machine remembers where the zero was.
Speaker: OK. that That means I'm I'm constantly resetting the zero for the Z as I switch back and forth from larger to smaller bits. But I'm I'm good with reading a piece of paper underneath there to set a zero height. And for the most part, it didn't fucking matter, really, um as I mean, I'm carving pockets point one inch deep.
Speaker: And when I come back to surface it off, I can be down a thou or two and surface it super smooth and clean. I could do that seven times and I'm nowhere near the bottom of that fucking pocket. You know, I still get plenty of plenty of, you know, color and inlay to work with. And because the pockets are all straight vertical, they don't adjust like a beveled inlay would.
Speaker: So the you just come back 24 hours later, turn on the machine, tell it to home back to zero and you're right back to where you were before. And then you can tell it to surface that off if you want to.
Speaker: The only reason I surfaced it every day was because it looked cool because it's like. I was doing not to see it. as I was doing a reel every day where it's like I'd come in, I'd surface off whatever I did yesterday.
Speaker: I'd carve a new pocket and I'd pour shit into it. And then I'd come back the next day and I start by surfacing that off clean so you can see the clean lines where everything is in the design.
Speaker: but technically you could just pour resin, let it overflow a little bit and don't worry about it. You could just jump in and carve the next pocket the next day. You would have to set your starting heights a little bit high because the resin you poured in is going to be higher than the original stock material at that point, but you could do it.
Speaker: I mean, if you didn't want to, but the concept of doing multiple carves, on the same project in different days, especially with ah i mean, I've done that with normal inlays in the past where I carved a big pocket.
Speaker: Actually, i did that with that X wing because I carved out the X wing and I inlaid a pocket for the entire X wing and I surfaced that off and then I cut some smaller pockets for like the little colored weird rectangle patches up the fuselage.
Speaker: And then so basically I was cutting pockets into the first stage of inlay and then putting a different pocket in there. So it was an inlay inside of an inlay.
Speaker: And that's basically what I was doing with the resin was, you know, you pour the resin in there and then you carve some of it back out so you can pour a different color into certain areas.
Speaker: Okay, um um let me interrupt here. so um um I'm looking at you, and I'm struggling to follow this. like not not not not not Not necessarily the the process, but we were you were talking to something off we were you were saying something off camera about...
Speaker: generating the ability like i'm listening to this and i do this not this particular project but i do this and i'm like i don't know if i can do this i don't know if i can figure out how to do this and you were you had something interesting you you've been thinking about kicking around um about how to generate skill Right.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, and there's, there's a lot of people that can really get a grasp of visualizing the project that they want to make before they start making it.
Speaker: And then there's a lot of people that struggle with that. um There's apparently some people that can't see things in their head at all. And that, baffles me. I don't understand.
Speaker: i mean, there's that there's people who apparently can think without forming words and sentences in their head, and they can think about doing something without being able to see in their mind what it is they want to do, but I don't know how they get out of bed in the morning. I don't understand that sluggest.
Speaker: But thankfully, I'm not one of those people. I do happen to have rather good visualization skills, and i'm I'm proud of those. And I think they really do help with the ability to design a project is if you can.
Speaker: OK, you can design a project on paper, but you're going to sketch it out on paper and that's going to be as good as your paper sketching abilities are, or you can just make it rough and hope they give you the vague idea ah what you're doing with that.
Speaker: But I mean, if you don't like what you're doing, you have to like erase stuff and move lines around. And then you have to deal with the fact that your skill with a pencil may or may not be.
Speaker: I mean, yeah you might be a CNC person. That doesn't mean you're a sketch artist. Exactly. yeah Or you might be a woodworker. That doesn't mean that you can, you know, draw like a talented artist.
Speaker: But so, I mean, you can sketch things out, but if you want to change it or you don't like the way you're drawing it, you got to erase it and go back. And I mean, you're you're spending hours trying to design this. And see so you could go the next available we method, which is trying to open some CAD software.
Speaker: I mean, you you could maybe open Illustrator and try to draw something or you could pop open SketchUp or Fusion and try to model the project that you're thinking you want to make.
Speaker: But I mean, then you've got to spend like hours trying to get the model to do what you freaking want it to do. You know, you want it to do this edge, but you just can't figure out how to make the software, put the edge on there. And then if you haven't got all your parametric shit right, if you want to change something,
Speaker: It's it's like when you move a picture in Microsoft Word, you move one thing and everything just all over the place and and your model is completely screwed and you're like, so I mean, that's not ideal either.
Speaker: and The thing I really like about being able to visualize the project I want to make is that if you can think of the project in your head and you can say, well, I think I want it to be about this big and I think I want it to have these angles. And if you kind of can pull that up in your head and kind of see it You can kind of get an idea if you like it and you're like, that's kind of cool, but I think it needs to be narrower. And as fast as you can think it needs to be narrower, you can see it narrower.
Speaker: You don't have to fight with the paper. You don't have to fight with the software. If you're just seeing it in your head, you can just think, what about this way? And snap, you're seeing it that way. And that's,
Speaker: ah something that a lot of people feel is a talent that that people think this is a, you got it or you don't, that you're born with. And I, I am well, I don't know what to say about the people who can't see anything in their head, except I feel sorry for you.
Speaker: But for anybody that can actually see anything in their head, the fact that they can't see things in their head very well is a difference of how much you practice that this is a actual skill that you can do this is something you can learn and just just to give you an idea on visualizing things um one of the projects that i made i it was a rather complicated project and ah i made what i ended up calling a clamposaurus
Speaker: yeah I used, I believe, 13 C-clamps that were two, three, and four inch clamps.
Speaker: And I hacked pieces off of them, hacked them into different pieces, welded them back together poorly. and created a and then welding is not one of my practice skill sets.
Speaker: I can do it, but it ain't pretty, especially with a $200 Harbor Freight Flux Core that I'm working with, plus lack of skill and practice as it was not great. But all the same,
Speaker: I sat in bed one night for an hour or two not being able to go to sleep. And I thought about, okay, well, I want to make a cool project that's, you know, kind of a dragon dinosaur-ish kind of thing. And I wanted to use C-clamps because...
Speaker: I was supposed to use clamps. It was a clamp challenge. And ah it turns out the C-clamps are really the only clamps that are weldable. And I was in the mood to do a metal welding project.
Speaker: So I started to think about C-clamps and I started to think about, well, What parts have I got and what can i use to make the different shapes for what I want to do?
Speaker: So I started thinking about the C clamp. So I started thinking about the C clamp and visualizing the C clamp and everybody's seen a C clamp. This is what everybody's greatg great, great grandfather has been using to do woodworking and metalworking. And for the last 200 years.
Speaker: You know, it's it's a cast iron C-shaped chunk of metal where it's shaped like a, you know, a sort of a squared up C shape.
Speaker: And then it's got a line across the inner edge that goes the other way to give it a little bit of support. And then at the bottom of the C clamp, it widens out to be like a little round pad to press against at the bottom.
Speaker: And up at the top of the C, it widens out into a threaded hole. And through the threaded hole, you've got a steel threaded rod that goes through that hole.
Speaker: And then at the bottom of the threaded rod is that little cone shaped circle that will put and indent circle of shame in any piece of wood or metal. You have the freaking lack of sense to push it into. Uh-huh.
Speaker: And at the top of the threaded rod is a crossbar that slides back and forth through the hole. It helps you put pressure on that. It lets you swirl the thing around in circles.
Speaker: Now, hopefully, i was descriptive enough that most of you could see that in your fucking head while I talked about it. Because, I mean, everybody knows what that C-clamp looks like.
Speaker: And when you talk about it in a very descriptive way, most people... should actually be able to see that and picture the different pieces of that in their head as I was describing it. Now, in my head, i pictured that.
Speaker: And then I said, OK, well, what have I got for pieces? Well, I can cut the little pad off at the bottom and I've got little round pads. I've got the C shapes, which I can cut off in different angles to make different angled pieces.
Speaker: I've got the threaded rods. I've got the threaded holes. I've got the crossbars. I've got all the little little cone shapes. And i started taking these things apart and putting them together in my head and said, okay, so if I take a couple of four-inch C's and I cut off about a third of it, then I can take two of those and put them together, and it would be about the right shape for a jawline.
Speaker: And if I do that twice, I can have an upper jaw and a bottom jaw. And then if I cut another piece, I can put it across the top and it'll make like a nose ridge. And then I think, well, if I take pieces of the threaded rod, I can cut those off and sharpen them and make them into teeth.
Speaker: And I sat there for a while and i I, you know, I took it apart and I put them together. And in my head, I designed clampus RS. And then the next night I went downstairs and I, I made the cuts and I made the welds. And ah few days later, he looked on my workbench about 95% exactly the way I'd pictured him the week before.
Speaker: Now, that's not beginner level visualization, but I've been practicing this shit for years. So um the key is, is that you can learn to do this better. It is a skill you can practice.
Speaker: And it's really not hard to do. You can literally do it, well, I'd like to say anywhere and anytime, but that's not true. You cannot do this while operating a motor vehicle because it includes closing your eyes.
Speaker: that This practice includes opening and closing your eyes repeatedly. So you can literally do this any place, anywhere that you've got 30 seconds to spare, provided you're not driving.
Speaker: Unless you have Tesla. and Well, to be fair, I don't fucking trust those things. well i wouldn't have been invite either i've I've seen enough of those things drive into shit. I've seen Mark Rober.
Speaker: He's been going through a wall. It didn't stop. Yeah. I don't remember the circumstances, but all the same. Anyway, my but I shouldn't have I shouldn't have said that. That's OK.
Speaker: Yeah. Don't operate a vehicle no matter what its capabilities are. And close your eyes. but Right. So any place in any time other than that, any place that it's safe to close your eyes for a few minutes, at a few seconds at a time, at least.
Speaker: Say so say say you're in the dining room or the kitchen and you're you're at the kitchen table and in front of you is a basket of fruit or a bowl of fruit. And so you could sit there. I mean, you could do this in a doctor's office waiting room and just look at the shit on the end table.
Speaker: Anywhere is fine. But just say you're at the kitchen table with a bowl of fruit. Now, you've got a bowl of fruit in front you. So you can just sit down. You can look at the bowl of fruit and say, okay, there's the bowl of fruit. It looks like a bowl of fruit. And then you close your eyes and try to picture the fact that there's a bowl there.
Speaker: and that there's fruit in it. But I mean, let's just start with the basics of what's the bowl look like? Well, it's a white bowl and it's got a blue floral design on it. Okay, well close your eyes. Can you picture a white bowl with the blue floral design? Okay, that's not too complicated. So you open your eyes and say, what detail did I miss?
Speaker: Oh, well, it's got some little lacy things around the top edge of the bowl. Okay, well, I missed. Let's close my eyes. Let's add that detail to the picture in my head. So now I'm looking at.
Speaker: a white bowl with blue flo floral design and a little lacy edge around the top. Okay. Now open my eyes and say, okay, I got that. Now what fruit have I got?
Speaker: Okay. Well, I've got two oranges in the front. There's an apple back on the left and there's a banana sticking out on the right. Okay. Now close your eyes and try to picture that. Bring your bowl back up and say, okay, now let's add the two oranges and there's an apple here and there's a banana back here.
Speaker: And then once you think you've got that, you open your eyes and compare what you were thinking to what you're seeing.
Speaker: And then you go, okay, I think I've got that pretty solid. So then you go in and look for what are the details on the banana? Well, the banana is facing this way with the stem going that direction. And it's got like two brown spots on the front.
Speaker: Close your eyes and add that to the picture. And you can just keep digging and finding more and more detail and adding it to your mental image until you can visualize the bowl of fruit, full detail, in all its glory with your eyes closed.
Speaker: Now, if you do these types of exercises every once in a while, you will find out that you can visualize the level of detail it takes to take apart 13 C clamps in random pieces, rearrange those pieces in your mind and put them back together in a way that makes you happy.
Speaker: But that's not, you know, that, that wasn't, you know, the first thing I ever tried to visualize. That's, 25 years from when I learned how to visualize things well. You can visualize what what flowers are going to look like in a flower bed as you're designing it and planting it and making the shape of it. you know It doesn't have to be as complicated as a Clampasaurus to your point.
Speaker: no but yep Sorry. any... no it's alright yeah it could be used in any ah It's interesting. I've never done this particular exercise in the verbiage that you just explained it. But as you're now explaining it, I'm like, yeah, I ah kind of do that naturally.
Speaker: Like I just, I don't, I never identified it as doing that exercise, but I do look at things. What can I do to make that different or improve it or make it do what I need it to do? And I can start taking details off of it or adding details to it.
Speaker: And it's just something that I'm thinking about. It's nothing I'm even ever going to do. Right. You know. But, I mean, that's that's something you've recognized as, but well, a natural talent or something that you seem to have an affinity for it. And I've always had some ability to do this naturally as well. But...
Speaker: I just I think it's important for people to realize that it's not just something you're born with that is long. I mean, i don't know if we can take somebody with no visualization abilities and teach them to visualize things. i'm I'm not sure if we can do that. But I mean, as long as you can, as long as you can visualize anything in your head,
Speaker: you have the ability to practice this until you can see things more clearly with a much higher level of detail. And it's not just you're born with it and you're fantastic at it or you can barely do it a little bit. It's it's this is a skill. This is something that can be practiced. It can be learned and you can get better at it.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, and ah and the beauty of it is it it is is it's not ah ah you finally made it skill. You know what i mean? to the to the person To the person who designs flowerbeds, they need to be able to visualize the things that go into flowerbeds.
Speaker: you know Right. To the machinist with a Tormach, you know, five, six axes, Xyz? No idea.
Speaker: You know, they need to be able to visualize in a different toolbox, if you will. Right. You know, so it's not something like, oh, I wish I could be like the weird guy or I wish I could be like Jimmy Durasta.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: You know, or I need to be like the local gardener or is a I've got a really good friend who builds pools and man, talk about, I can't visualize anything.
Speaker: And it's literally a hole with water in it. And he'll tell me we're going to do this, this, this, and this. And I'm like, okay. And then three months later, he brings me by or brings me pictures. And I'm like, holy crap, that's amazing.
Speaker: You know, there's a grotto over here and everything. i I'm like, I didn't even see that. But that's not that's not my industry. Yeah. Right. but But he looked at that yard and he looked at the space and he's like, well, look at the layout of the yard. We want to put the pool over here because it's the low ground or it's the flat area.
Speaker: But there's this somewhat sheltered area over here where we could maybe work it into a hill that would be something to cover the grotto or something. You know, we can kind of dig into this hill over here to start putting the grotto in kind of half underground or something.
Speaker: ye But yeah, he, that's, that's his ability to visualize what parts of his project he wants to put where in the yard. Right. And he's good at that because he could see what would go well in each area. he, he he started by visualizing the he, he looked at the yard.
Speaker: He memorized the detail and he visualized what changes could I make to that and what would it look like if I did. Right. And if he could visualize the pool over here and the grotto over here, then he could see right away in his mind's eye that the grotto is not going to work there because of some weird fucking landscaping thing that would only make sense to him.
Speaker: And he better move the grotto over here a little ways because ah that'll avoid some other products, project problems that he could see coming up Pike. Right. Right. A hundred percent.
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's that's good. And that's ah ah that's an encouraging skill. like I'm going to jump on here and encourage people to to try this. you know ah Figure out what how it fits into your life. are you ah Are you a cricket digital fabrication type person? Are you a baker?
Speaker: bakers bakers know are Cake decorators. We've got a CIA graduate dessert chef in our family. And she, she can see things before she starts making yellow cake. You know, she's already got it decorated and airbrushed and chocolate, rain you know, all that. And I'm like, you know, and then she shows it to you. I made this and I'm like, yeah, I'm not eating that. That's, that's a piece of art, you know?
Speaker: And all of the people that seem to be applauded as the best artists, One thing you tend to hear from most of the extremely good artists is that they could see the art in their head.
Speaker: And when they're painting, they are just putting the lines on the paper that they can already see in their head. yeah Or ye they're carving the sculpture that they could see in that block of wood before they got started.
Speaker: And it turns out that most of the people we think are the best artists. all tend to say that I saw what I needed to do and I saw which parts of the wood needed to be removed to make the thing that I could see inside that block of wood, or I could see the painting and I just needed to put what was in my head on the paper or the canvas, you know? So it,
Speaker: Maybe working and improving on these skills would make people inherently better artists.
Speaker: Or, you know, I mean, it's it's it's something to practice in addition to your brushstrokes. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine, imagine the vision and the exercise Bobby Dukes do goes through.
Speaker: Jesus. You know, like just on a day without even thinking about it. he did know yeah He could take a, pee he could take a pebble and turn it into ah a dinosaur. yeah na see He sees that shit and in his head before he, yeah he looks at the pebble and he sees, I, I, there's something in that pebble I could bring out by taking out the stuff. That's not yeah the thing. Yeah.
Speaker: I just watched an 18 minute video of Bobby Duke making a coat rack, like a hall coat rack out a piece of a walnut board. And at the end of the video, I was like, no shit, you know?
Speaker: And he made a board that you hang coats on with, you know, i mean, obviously he put a Bobby Duke's art project into it, but, but it's like, I didn't know you could do that with wood.
Speaker: Yeah. or wooed as he says that that gives me such fucking cringes i'm gonna go on the record and say that i think that bobby duke is fucking amazing yeah i think that his art is absolutely mind-blowingly fantastic But his voiceovers?
Speaker: ah Just, you know, I just want to cringe right out of my skin and fucking leave. It's like, man, ah maybe I just need to start watching his videos on mute. yeah I know it's not Bobby. I know this is the persona that he's produced to be who he is, that he, you know, and that I understand that Bobby Duke, the person, is a very normal, yeah rational person who is capable of speaking English in normal ways.
Speaker: And that Bobby Duke arts on camera and on voiceover is his weird artist persona that he uses and four plus million people. I like, I like, and and everybody seems to love that shit, yeah but yeah I like Bobby Duke, the artist.
Speaker: Yeah. I do not care for Bobby Duke, the persona. Right. Which is fair, you know, yeah it's just yeah that, that woo wood shit and all these other words that he just,
Speaker: and i'm glad i don't I'm glad I don't do anything that anybody doesn't like. yeah And no matter what you do, somebody won't fucking like it. oh So there's no reason to not just be you and do whatever you want.
Speaker: I've done some ridiculous, stupid shit, and I'm sure there's a reasonable number of people who think it was absolutely stupid for me to do that and act like a freaking moron on the internet.
Speaker: But there's plenty of people that thought that shit was funny. Yeah. And the only person that really needed to think it was funny was me. Right. Because if I thought it was funny, I'm going to do it.
Speaker: And, you know, even if that means I need to make an ass of myself just a little bit, because I think it's funny because it's I think it's a valid joke. And I, you know, I just think it's entertaining.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll do that shit. Is it stupid? Probably. do some people hate it? Probably. probably Do I give a shit? No, because you can't make everybody happy every time. So you just have to do what you think is cool and what you think is funny or entertaining or of valid, useful content.
Speaker: to Whether a useful trick, a useful technique, or, you know, whether it's a useful tip a useful trick a useful technique or you know you think it's funny or you think it's entertaining or you just think it's great art. Whatever you want to do is whatever you want to do, but you just need to make whatever content you think.
Speaker: i mean, here's my key test. When I'm done creating content, I will watch that shit back. And if I don't like it,
Speaker: I'll keep editing or I'll scrap the whole fucking thing. Or do it again. Yeah. Do it again. Or I'll just scrap the whole idea. If it's not coming out and fuck it, I won't do it. It's just not working.
Speaker: I thought it'd be a good joke, but you know, I guess it's not going to land. So I'm just, I'm just going to skip it, you know, but the, the content I like the best,
Speaker: is when I've created a content and I play it back and when I get to the end of it, I'm smiling and or giggling. I'm absolutely going to post that shit. And I'm going to enjoy the fact that all 43 people actually freaking watched it. And three of them liked it.
Speaker: And I don't care because I thought that shit was fucking gold. And I don't give a fuck what the algorithm does. And yeah I don't care if I made it ah you know sometimes you make things that have got super viral you know i mean you try to do things to increase your chances of viral and sometimes you just do what you fucking want and you don't give a fuck if anybody likes it you make it for you and The people who really like you and the things you do will love it.
Speaker: Yeah, they're here for the ride anyway. they're they're They're here for I mean, your people are here for you because they like you and your personality and your style and your art. You know, they're you know, and well, then then you just got to cope with the problem that the algorithm doesn't actually show you things made by the people you followed because you wanted to see their shit.
Speaker: You gotta cope with that, but that's that that's just life. got anything else on your list? Yeah, I think the... This isn't too far off. This is actually a pretty good follow-up to the visualization talk because this kind of does use the visual visualization to some extent as well, but this is...
Speaker: i don't know. This is more of an interesting observation on my part than anything else is that I've watched a lot of makers over the years and they make a lot of things and in a lot of different ways.
Speaker: And it's. You know, the the the makers I really like are the ones that are presented presented with a problem and then they have to just figure out a solution to how they want to get to the end of the line.
Speaker: you you've You've got your you know Bobs and your Jimmy Durestas, and they're they're all, well, here's this problem I've got, and here's how I'm going to try to take this problem on.
Speaker: And my observation here is the way I think about... the maker process about how a maker comes to deciding how they're going to fix a problem and what they're going to do about it.
Speaker: And I think of this as a maker's toolbox. And It's funny that this is a visual in-your-head maker's toolbox, and that' that's funny because I've made two maker toolboxes that are physical products, one one of which looks like a toolbox, but it's not.
Speaker: You flip it upside down, and it's got a... a DIY, uh, uh, eight ball in the bottom. So, so you can ask it a question and then flip it. Oh, the magic eight ball. Yeah. Yeah. the magic toy yep yeah So, so one of my maker toolboxes is so is ah is a wooden fake toolbox. That's got a magic eight ball DIY into the bottom of it that you can ask questions of it.
Speaker: And it gives you answers to maker questions like, yes, you should buy a new tool. Always. but um Exactly. And then the second maker toolbox I made was I made a ah ah one of Jimmy's toolbox things. Oh, the carpet carpenter box.
Speaker: Yeah, the the carpenter carry box. And i used my CNC to cut the pieces out of the template sheet. and then inlay Duresta on both sides of it. So I've already made two physical toolboxes, but here's my visual mental toolbox. This is the way I think makers solve projects is I think of this toolbox in my head and I put into this toolbox, I start by putting in every material type of stuff I've got in my shop that I can work with.
Speaker: I've got plywood, I've got hardwood, I've got two by fours, four by fours, I've got metal sheets, I've got metal bars, I've got, I've got resin, I've got, you know, nails, screws, I've got things that I can use to make shit with.
Speaker: So every material that you have available to you, throw it into the toolbox. i Think of this as like a big, you know, like a big witch's pot. One of those big ass vats that you would, you know, but do a witch's brew in Huge one.
Speaker: You know, and throw in every material that you've got access buy or own. Next, throw in every tool you own. I don't care what it is. You throw in the CNC, you throw in the table saw, you throw in your battery tools, you throw in your hand tools, you throw in your planes and your chisels and your if you own it and it looks like a freaking tool, throw it in the fucking pot.
Speaker: OK. And the next thing you throw in is every tip, every technique, every trick, every method of joinery, every method that you can think of to make these things get put together in different ways.
Speaker: And you throw all that into this magic toolbox in your head. You've got all of your techniques and your ways to put things together and take things apart.
Speaker: You've got all your materials and you've got all your tools. Now, when you're presented with a problem, say the wife comes to you and says, Hey, I've got this problem. I've got nowhere to set my beer on the end of the fricking couch because there's not room for a coffee table there.
Speaker: then you go, okay, I need to create something that will hold her beer right next to the couch. And you take that problem, and you take that problem over to your magic toolbox in your head, and you go, what am I going to do to solve this problem?
Speaker: And then you start stirring the pot and you go, OK, well, I could use these sheets of plywood and I could use the wood glue and I could use some screws and I could put these things together and I could build something with wood and then I could sand it and then I could finish it and it would fit right up the edge and it would have a cup holder in it and that would work.
Speaker: Or i could use these steel bars over here and I could weld them together to make a frame that sticks up. And then i could 3d print something that goes on the top of those bars and that could work for a cup holder.
Speaker: Or i could do any one of about 746 other fucking possible solutions to solve this problem. But by having,
Speaker: the tools, the materials, and all the techniques in this pot, you just throw in a problem, you stir it up and you start pulling out possible solutions by combining the tools, the techniques, and the materials in different ways. You can think of all the different ways that you can solve this problem.
Speaker: Sometimes you come up with an idea and you go, that's great. Let's run off and do it. Sometimes you think of 12 different solutions and depends on how serious of the commitment you're talking about and and i i i like everything you've talked about tonight so far has had works on levels and works on applications again i' but i'm i'm gonna pull out to i don't john malecky okay you know he he's got a bunch of videos that are um We're going to make a one day cutting board, a five day cutting board and ah and a two week cutting board or a one day table, of a five day, a two day table and a one week table. Right. You know, and they all let's use the end tables, for example. They all hold up a beer at the end of the project. Right. But one one is made out of pine and and and sheetrock screws. And the next and that's the one day table because, you know, the scale of the time.
Speaker: Well, you didn't you only had wood screws and some pine and and and a little bit of skill you know because you're just starting or it's not your bailiwick or whatever. right the you know The next one is, hey, you got a hobby shop in the basement or a shed out back or whatever.
Speaker: you know i can I can spend two or three days, you know get some plywood, and you know maybe ah maybe I've got a small CNC or a laser I can cut joinery with you know finger joints on and stuff like that.
Speaker: Or I've been doing this 10 years now and my toolbox is big enough that I've got, you know, uh, that would whisper level hand planes and stuff like that. And I'm going to use burl, you know, maple and, you know, all this kind of stuff, you know, but at the end of the day, you still just need someplace to put your damn beer.
Speaker: and Right. But there's, but there's so many different possibilities of things that you could make to hold your beer. Right. And they have all different materials and,
Speaker: all different ways of putting them together i mean you've got all levels of skills yeah i mean i started doing metal working by taking pieces of metal and i would drill holes in them and i would use a ah a nut and a bolt to hold them together. Yeah. And they draw an erector set.
Speaker: Yeah. Basically, basically you just custom a erector set for the old people who remember what an erector set is. Um, But yeah, I mean, that's how I used to do things before I had ah a welder that I could do poorly. And other, you know, I mean, i didn't have good tools. I mean, sometimes you got to use a hacksaw.
Speaker: Sometimes you got to use a Dremel. Sometimes you got an angle grinder. Sometimes you got a metal band saw. Just what you got and what you got to work with to make it do what you need to do. And I do think having the ability to visualize things ah Whether you're natural at it or you have to exercise that muscle and get good at it or whatever, that is visualization is a very important tool in digital fabrication.
Speaker: Because while these these softwares are powerful and these tools are powerful... But they really are the dumbest tools in all of the skill stuff.
Speaker: You know what I mean? Because they can only do what you can tell it do. Right. They seem to be smart tools. But you have to come up with what you want those tools to do. they're yeah i mean, they're... they're They're a completely unprogrammed robot.
Speaker: You buy robot from the factory. It knows how to walk and talk. And Rosie knows how to vacuum your carpet and make your coffee for you.
Speaker: I mean, that the Jetsons have got that going for them. It came pre-programmed. But these robots are stupid. They only do what you tell them to do. yeah You can't tell them to do something unless you can think of a project that will fit that tool set.
Speaker: Yep. I've got a box in in my bit draw that probably has a couple of pounds by now, two or three pounds maybe, of high carbon tool steel in pieces.
Speaker: And I can promise you every single time my CNC, Mr. Hannibal over here, has messed up, it's because I told him to. Yeah. You know, because of my lack of vision at that point. My box is much lighter than yours.
Speaker: But it's not because i don't make mistakes. It's because if you've got a quarter-inch end mill,
Speaker: in a CNC that is being pushed by belts. You can't break the bit. If you could run it right into a fucking wall and you can stall the router, you can stall the CNC as the belt goes, click, click, click, click click as it slips.
Speaker: But I could not physically... break quarter inch end mill by running it into something no matter how hard i fucking tried because the belt won't push it into something hard enough to snap it yeah hannibal eats them like chips i don't think i've even broken i i don't think i've broken anything bigger than a 1 16th inch end mill wow i i think i've bent i think i've bent 1 8 yeah And I think I've and and i've broken a, you know, there's a reason that you get one 32nd inch end mills in 10 packs.
Speaker: yeah We're just going to say there's reason those things come in a 10. It's nice that you can get a 10 pack of those suckers for like 15 bucks. Well, at least pre-tariffs. I haven't looked race this year, but um at least last year you could get a 10 pack of...
Speaker: one 32nd inch end mills for like $15, at least last year. and that's a good thing because you're going to break four of them by the time you find your feeds and speeds. And I mean, I've had, I think the first project I did that needed those, I probably went through, i think I was on the 10th one when I finished the project.
Speaker: I, I missed the worst, the worst crash I had was a I shoved a half-inch compression bit through a two-inch walnut slab, through a three-quarter-inch spoil board, and probably an inch into the phenolic top of the CNC machine before it finally snapped the Z-inch.
Speaker: It didn't break the bit, but it snapped the the belt that drives that the stepper motor drives the Z height. Okay. It finally snapped that belt. and Oops.
Speaker: Yeah. And it took... it took two pair of channel locks and a couple of guys to back screw that half inch end mill out of the top of the CNC. That was threaded in there like a screw. Oh, it was.
Speaker: Yeah, it was bad. I can't. believe I can't believe it didn't throw the machine into chaos, but it just just re zero it and went back to work. You know, most of my crashes, I mean, I've i've done a couple things where I got the Z0 wrong, or i forgot that I did a bottom instead of a top this time. But I mean, that's not a usual problem for me because 90% of the time I'm already using a bottom Z. So therefore...
Speaker: if I fuck it the wrong way, I'm i'm dancing through the air. Versus if you do a top z if you're expecting a top Z and accidentally program a bottom, then you're plunging all the way through your shit.
Speaker: And yeah versus if you if you're expecting a bottom, but to accidentally do a top, you're just cutting air. So that's not too bad. But most of my actual crashes and worst problems have been because I was using an upcut bit and took too big of a bite because it'll pull it right out of the collet. Now keep in mind that I'm using a trim router. So it's got the the the four corners that squeeze in together. It's not one of those fancy ass.
Speaker: I don't remember what you call the fancy car, the ERs. <unk> It's not an yeah ah ER r anything. It's just, you know, the four corners that clamp in. So, I mean, they do pretty well for what they do, but they only grab so tight.
Speaker: And even with an ER collet, it can only hold on so tight. yeah And if you've got an up kit, if you've got an up cut and you plow in to the wood faster than it can chew through the wood It crams that into the side and it acts like a screw thread where it bites into the wood and keeps turning. And if it can't chew through it, then as it turns, it threads down into the board.
Speaker: the further you ever go through the path, the further that bit comes down out of the collet. And the next thing you know is you're carving through the bottom of your freaking board. Yeah. yeah put ah Put a heavy or an aggressive drill bit in a cordless drill and like drill into a two by four and try to stop halfway through. And that's what happens when it grabs and pulls away from you. It just pulls.
Speaker: It just does it at high speed with a router. Yeah. Yeah. and That's why I've tried my best to find all the down cut bits I can find.
Speaker: um Most of my stuff is not really through cut. And if I do... through cut all the way through around a contour or something, it's usually the back of something, you know, and if if I'm cutting a board out, you know, I do something fancy on the top of the board and then I do a contour to cut it out around the bottom.
Speaker: And at at that point, anything where the bit comes out the bottom is the back of my work piece. 95% of the times I don't give a shit. If the down cut makes the back edge a little bit funky. Yeah. That's why I'm a, I'm a, yeah, I'm a fan of compression. Cause you get that little eighth inch.
Speaker: When you're at the back, it's actually bought up pulling yeah up. It's only pulling up just a little bit at the bottom, but then the rest of the bit is pushing down. And those are nice, but I've never bought one and I've never used one because you have to be able to do a full depth cut.
Speaker: Otherwise, there's no point. i mean, I was to say there's no point you can, you can use them, but well you could use them. But I mean, to get value out of a compression bit, the point is, is that, that, that upcut on the bottom quarter inch of the bit needs to be slightly below the bottom edge of your work piece.
Speaker: Yeah. To get the best use out of it, you're doing a full depth cut pass. I mean, if you've got ah if you've got a half inch piece of plywood, you need to be ah half inch plus a 16th down and it'll cut up on the bottom edge and down on the rest of it.
Speaker: And it works beautifully. Yeah. like I use quarter inch compression on half and I use a three eighths compression full depth on three quarter ply. But because I've got a machine that's belt driven, i don't do a single, I don't do a single pass through anything.
Speaker: If I've got a piece of half inch plywood in there, I'm going to do it in three or four paths around. I'm going to do three or four step downs. And if you're using step downs, compression bits are an absolute waste of money. And it's a waste of a lot of money.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. They're not cheap. No. Yeah. but Yeah. So did you think about anything for, I mean, we've been a couple of weeks out here and I've got a couple other things to say afterward about our show here, but you got anything for a thing of the week?
Speaker: It's actually not even, I think I used my, I bought a new Kubota tractor and and some tooling and stuff like that to go with it. But whatever. whatever I want to say so not so much the actual piece of equipment, but the technology that goes into quick change buckets, you know like skid steer buckets. I can just pop the two levers. I got forks for it.
Speaker: like That's so... I grew up on a dairy farm. I've been around tractors all my life. I've never owned a tractor with quick attach, you know, and it's like, I can literally take the entire loader off of this tractor from the seat in about three, in about three minutes.
Speaker: So to switch it over to what I'm calling now my lawnmower, because I put a finished mower on the back. Right. Um, you know, you just drop the bucket and now I can get into tight places, but my last tractor didn't have a changeable bucket, didn't have the ability to, you know, handle a big finish you're out there with a sledgehammer for two and a half hours. Oh, it was ridiculous. And it's just like, i i dropped the bucket. i grabbed the forks. I got a hard plastic pallet. I use that for a work area, a work surface outside the shop. It's literally a tape, a table I could drive around the yard with, you know, right and it's just so convenient.
Speaker: The convenience of having good, like, I don't want want to say good quality tools, but accessories and accessor the ability to swap your accessories and not spend a half a day. you doing it I mean, I bought yeah i bought a new ah Suzuki four by four last summer yeah and I bought the Suzuki plow system to go for Wheeler.
Speaker: Four-wheeler. Yeah, the four-wheeler. I bought a four-wheeler from Suzuki, and I bought the plow system that comes with it. And it's an integrated plow. It's not the normal thing that hooks up underneath.
Speaker: it's It's got a couple of big... frankenstein out the neck looking pegs on the front edge of the frame and you just push the push the plow into it and you just goes click click and it's locked in all you gotta to do is hook the hook the winch onto it and you're away and gone and when you're done plowing if you want to drop that thing you you disconnect the winch you you lift a lever and pull the thing back to and about you don't have to drive yeah you don't have to drive around all winter because yeah i can't do it from sitting on there but i mean you get off and you just pull this lever back and give the give it a one inch yank and your plows off and i mean my last four-wheeler i i'd spend a half an hour in the fall putting it on and a half an hour in the spring taking it off yeah and now it's a two-second job and it's absolutely fabulous
Speaker: And you know what? Somebody got tired of putting it on and taking it off and they visualized a way to fix it. I bet they did. I bet they did. Them damned engineers, I bet they were just naturally talented at it. I'm sure didn't go to college or anything. No, exactly. Nor did they practice visualizing these kinds of projects. Yeah.
Speaker: All right. Well, I've got an artist that I'd like to shout out. And he's he he had like I mean, I've been following this guy for probably a year and a half. And when I found him, he was just kind of getting started. He had literally hundreds of followers.
Speaker: um You know, it was. under a thousand and maybe use three, 400 followers or something like, I don't know what he's up to. He's like a hundred thousand right now. Cause he is blown up.
Speaker: Uh, the account is called average designed wood. I believe it's all one word, average designed wood. The guy's name is Jack, Jake Wexler.
Speaker: And he started making, he he does wood turning on a lathe. And he does a lot of resin projects right now. And he started a thing where ah about a year and a half ago, he says, I'm going to make ah UFO.
Speaker: i'm going to turn a wooden UFO every day until i don't remember what he said he was going to until he was going to do it every day until Joe Rogan recognized it.
Speaker: And It took him ah about a year and he got a DM from the Rogan team that says, for real that's enough. We've seen it. Thank you.
Speaker: And then so he he started over with a new countdown for i'm going to make a new one every day until I can get SpaceX or somebody to send one of my UFOs into space.
Speaker: These are really good, too. I actually follow him. Oh, my God, is that that these are the most amazing little UFOs. And I mean, he's making these these resin beams of light.
Speaker: put on and and then he's putting a light bulb in the bottom and the UFO on the top yeah and he's encasing a cow in the resin so it looks like he's abducting a cow yeah he does you know Stonehenge and ah pyramids and he throws in freaking Bigfoot models and everything you know how cool is this like how many different ways can I do the same thing laughing For a year and a half. He's been doing one every fucking day for a year and a half. And I tell you, the ones he did a year and a half ago were relatively basic.
Speaker: yeah And the things he's doing now, he's getting, you know, three to five hundred dollars on some of the you should go look at his website and see what he's getting for these things in auctions.
Speaker: That's awesome. ah he He's got he you missed his numbers he by a little bit. He's got two hundred and fourteen thousand now. Well, I mean, I you know, I've been watching him for a year and a half. I don't think I've actually looked at his count for the last six months. It doesn't surprise me that it's doubled.
Speaker: Yeah, that's amazing. but way When you do something consistently every gosh darn day and it's the same kind of thing, then you really it really drives traffic. People yeah like what you're doing, especially when you do the same thing every day over and over and over again. You're likely to get much, much better at it.
Speaker: Yeah. Talk about your 10,000 hours. Yeah. he's He's got his hours in. And, you know, I don't. I mean, he's he's making a living off of this right now. because I mean, he he makes one every day and he's putting them on their website.
Speaker: These things are sold. He posts them. They're gone in like five minutes every fucking day. Every time you post one, it's gone instantly.
Speaker: Can you imagine when we were kids, if somebody said, what do you want to do for a living? I'm going to make UFOs. really And not even real ones. Stupid little wooden ones with resin windows on them.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. I'm going to make UFO ornaments. Yeah. And I'm going to kill it. Oh, but God, they're cool. Good for him, man. Yeah, i want one. but They are cool. Yeah, good luck.
Speaker: um Good luck getting one. You're better off finding somebody else that can make you a UFO because buying one from him is you've got to be one of those guys that sits there and refreshes the page and tells like getting a post getting a banksy.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's it's yeah, he's in demand. He's he's pretty popular. He does some pretty good stuff. He also had a vision. Yeah. Every day he has a vision for something new he can do with a UFO and finds a way to do that.
Speaker: and I, don like you know, about a year ago, I turned him on to some technology he hadn't heard on yet is that you can go on Amazon and buy those fucking levitating things.
Speaker: i so I saw that. scrolled down. Yeah. Now, you know, you know, the thing where you, I don't know that there's these weird desk things where you'll have like a moon and it's floating on a base kind of thing, but yeah it, it basically works on an electromagnet principle where the, the, the magnets repel each other the right distance, but you can buy these things as a little fucking kit.
Speaker: on amazon and they're not stupid expensive and i mean yeah if you're gonna sell an art piece that floats in the air for four hundred dollars you can absolutely afford the what sixty dollars for the floating kit uh yeah i pointed those out to him like a year ago and he's like you can do that and i'm like you sure can do that and now he's made a dozen of them so nice so um it's good to talk to people behind the scenes Yeah, man.
Speaker: so Speaking of behind the scenes, what do we got going Speaking behind the scenes, we've got some other, yeah, business to discuss related to the podcast here. um yeah this This has everything to do with our guest that had to run to Rwanda to find a missionary position, which may or may not have been horizontal.
Speaker: Yeah. And, guest doesn't really exist that way, but, um, we've had problems getting guests to say the least. It is springtime. Everybody that does digital fabrication is absolutely getting slammed for work right now for some reason.
Speaker: Which is amazing. Which is amazing. I got to love that. But I tell you, it's it's not good for finding people that have time to sit down for an hour or two and talk about their tools. They're too busy using their damn tools, making money and trying to pay the bills with it because the cost of eggs is going up and you're to sell more cutting boards to buy more eggs.
Speaker: So but let alone let's, let's, let's hope these router bits don't come from China. Cause they might, you might want to start being a little bit more careful about breaking. Vortex tool company.
Speaker: and They're local. They are American made. Thank God. Some of the tools are made here. That's right. Let's appreciate them. but ah But because of this, I mean, first We're more busy because things are getting, you know, I'm a little bit busier. i'm trying to print some stuff to take to a flea market.
Speaker: um You're more busy. You've got some contracts and some wood stuff to build and lots of stuff you can't necessarily talk about it because it's customer based and it's their business, not ours. Right. And.
Speaker: So that that that means that you're more busy and that I'm more busy and that everybody's more tired and that the guests are more busy. And there's just there's just no way that we can even guarantee to to maintain a two artists per, I mean, two fabricators per month. the dead I thought the biweekly would give us enough time to have some wiggle room.
Speaker: But I mean, I've had weeks ah straight here where Some of the people aren't getting my messages because, you know, if they don't follow you when you send them a message, it goes in their freaking spam box.
Speaker: And sometimes they see that shit come in on the notification screen and sometimes they don't. depending on how many messages they get from dumb shit, they might just never, ever see that message that went into the spam box. Other people are just responding and going, hey, that sounds like a great thing. I would love to do your podcast, but I'm busy as shit. Can you have a rain? Can you give me a rain check for two or three months?
Speaker: And then, i you know, it's like I've got I've got two months worth of order sitting here in front of me. I don't have time to take two hours out or everything's going to be late. um So I'm officially going to unschedule the podcast.
Speaker: Now, does that mean I'm canceling the show? No, it means that we are not going to run on any pretense of a schedule. We're going to make a podcast whenever possible.
Speaker: It seems convenient for all of us to make a damned podcast. um When I have time, Al has time, and I can actually, you know, one of us actually drags up a guest that has time.
Speaker: We will get together. We will record a podcast, and i will edit it and push that thing out. And it could be one a month. It could be one every two weeks. it could be one every six weeks. We will make them whenever we have the opportunity to make them. And we'll just kind of, there's not going to be a lot of momentum here over the course of the summer because everybody's just really busy.
Speaker: You know, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna switch the Patreon so that our member tier is charged $0 a month because we're not providing the two podcasts every month that we'd promised them when they signed up.
Speaker: So, i'm I'm not going to shut down Patreon. I'm not going to kick them out of it as members. I'm just going to stop charging them money. Right. Because it's like the best Patreon ever. Yeah. Yeah. Patreon exclusive content, which is barely anything. Most of these people are just supporting us because they like what we're doing anyway. We're not really providing a lot of extra things to them anyway.
Speaker: But all the same, um we're not providing our usual expected. So we're we're just going to let them ride across as, ah you know, I'm going to keep mentioning them as a patrons.
Speaker: as patrons who are supporting us even though they're not going to be paying us over the next couple months and if everybody starts you know freeing up and things go well towards you know late summer and we get back to a bi-weekly schedule we could probably kick that back into normal mode but we'll see how things go.
Speaker: You know, we're just going to play things by ear. We're going to do whatever feels right for us each particular day and each week. And I'm not going to live with the unceasing stress of where the hell can I find somebody interesting to talk to that's got time in the one or two times a week that,
Speaker: Al and I actually have time to talk to him. Right. So, I mean, that, that, that's asking a lot of everybody and everybody's schedules are rough. So we're, we're just going to do what we can do. Um, so I'm, we're, we're not canceling anything.
Speaker: I'm officially calling this unscheduling because we are no longer on a schedule. We're just going to do what we can do when we can do it. And, uh, when we show up in your feed, you can go, Hey, look, they actually did something.
Speaker: Fantastic. follow keep following us in your story in our stories we'll keep announcing well we'll keep our instagram page open for the podcast and we'll keep the feed active and we'll try to feed you a little content every once in a while but i i don't want to just go to a well let's just me and i'll talk every two weeks because that's Yeah. and That's not what I wanted to do. i want to talk to new people.
Speaker: And the other thing is, is that the, the, the two. That's not that interesting. Well, yeah that's the thing is even, even though, even though we do appear severely interesting on loan, that the severely interesting content is intermittent.
Speaker: Now, the the deal where the hosts can sit there and talk to each other about stuff every single week and still be interesting. First, it requires a third body um because, well, it doesn't require, but it's a lot easier with three people than it is with two.
Speaker: ah Most of the good content podcasts where they just talk to each other every week is usually three guys. Or three peoples. Three peoples. Some variety. i mean to Be careful. But the other thing is, is to to be successful at that, it's really good when you've got three people who are content creators because all three of them are trying to create a new YouTube video every single week.
Speaker: So they're doing a new project every week and they're making progress on different stuff every single week. And they've got new and interesting, exciting things to talk about every single week. And I'll push out the most amazing projects ever, but you're only going to see one pop every eight weeks. And there's only so much I can talk about. Well, you know, I did a,
Speaker: I did another, you know, eight hours of software fighting fusion to make it do something crazy and figure out how to do some, creative that's not super interesting content every week when I, I mean, sometimes I'll spend two or three weeks just playing with software, trying to figure out what I want to do and how I want it to work before I even start making noise and dust.
Speaker: So we're we're just not the kind of makers that can talk about ourselves every week consistently. So I don't want to become that kind of podcast. I want to become, I still want to be the let's interview cool and interesting people about their shit.
Speaker: yeah And if that means we only get to interview somebody about their cool and interesting shit once a month, then that's what it is. It is what it is. And when everybody's time frees up, we'll try to,
Speaker: push up the schedule a little bit better again. Maybe. but We'll get more episodes in the sos to can. yeah So that is the behind the scenes updates as to what we're doing. And in case anybody noticed, this is coming out a week after it normally would have. I mean, so we're normally bi-weekly, but last week we missed completely. And this is going to be week three where we come in with this one.
Speaker: But this will be the beginning of the random you'll get one when you get one system yeah which is going to have to work because it's either that or we just quit crash we don't we don't want to do that well we don't want to quit we don't want to stop doing it we just yeah yeah where we're having difficulties doing it at the pace we would prefer and we wanted and we want to do it right Yeah, I'd rather not just get, and you know, Joe Bob in here because he bought a CNC last week and talk about what he's done with it so far because that's, yeah you know, that's that's not, I mean, everybody's got something interesting to say, but it'd be a lot more of a learning experience for them than it would be an interesting experience to hear about them at this point, you know.
Speaker: You have to have, figured out how to make something cool and want to talk about that, at least to some extent. nothing So it is what it is. Um, you got anything else, Al, or we're about two hours in and we've had a really good conversation, but should we wrap this up or you got anything else we forgot about?
Speaker: I don't think we forgot anything. I think you covered it. You said it, you said it very eloquently to just kind of, go to a rando schedule. yeah I think that's good because, your point, we don't want to episodes there just to do but we don't want to throw...
Speaker: episodes out there just to do it but we don't want throw
Speaker: the the podcast away either because there's a lot of good i think we've had hella guests man i think everybody we've talked to has been amazing and and i and i think every everybody we're gonna talk to in the future is going to be amazing it's just not going to be as frequent right right and i mean and the the other thing that we've got going for us is we know that we've got rain checks i mean we do we do have I've got three.
Speaker: You've got three. I've got yeah probably three as well of people who are perfectly happy to talk to us yeah when they actually get caught up with their freaking lives and their time and actually have a chance to do it. So, so we've, we've probably got a solid six rain checks of people are really going to be interesting and fun to talk to yeah when we actually have the time to make that happen. But that's not this week or next week from the sound of it. So yeah,
Speaker: Right, right. I like the term unscheduled. It just means it happens when it happens. yeah Yeah. And you heard it here. Unscheduled podcasting is going to be the new podcasting style.
Speaker: Absolutely. And it's it's the absolute best to remain mediocre for as long as possible. That's right.
Speaker: ah But hey, you know, we told you in the disclaimer, we weren't as amazing as we look. We're just what we are. So it is what it is. so i only play a doctor on Instagram.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So I guess I need to thank Al for taking the time to hang out have his busy schedule. Absolutely. And I need to thank the listeners for taking their time to tuning in and keeping up with us.
Speaker: You know, with a couple hours every few weeks or every month, it shouldn't be too hard to keep up with us. But, you know, there's a lot of shit out there. So I appreciate they take any of their time. And spend it on any of our stuff.
Speaker: Absolutely. appreciate that. I appreciate all the listeners. And i got to have a huge thank you to our current patrons. And so many thanks to Adam from BKR Customs, Ed Swanson of Ed's Clocks and More, and Eric from Overall Makerworks.
Speaker: So ah if you like the show, share it with your friends, leave reviews, or you can join our Patreon. um Should be free by the time this comes out.
Speaker: um Or as close to free as Patreon will let me. We'll see how it goes. I haven't pushed these buttons yet. I hope they let me do free. um Otherwise, I'll do a dollar a month. If it's whatever they'll let me do, I'll do it.
Speaker: um So, you know, we do still have a Discord server. If you want to talk to us, we're on Discord. We're on Instagram. And direct links to our Discord server and Patreon page are in the DigiFabricators Instagram bio, which you should also be following, which is at digi-fabricators.com.
Speaker: So if you or someone you know does cool things with their tools, please contact us. We're out of guests. If you have somebody that you think would be fantastic to hear from,
Speaker: Tell us about them, would you? Especially if they're the kind of people that have time to deal with our kind of stuff right now. That'd be fantastic. So, hey, suggestions would be fantastic.
Speaker: I would love them. If you've got them, send them. i'mge I don't just say that because I want to say that. I want to say that because I don't have a guest. And if you have a guest for me, I'm interested in hearing about it.
Speaker: Amen. So I can be found most places as a weird guy. And Al can be found under New York Woodworks, which was N-Y Woodworks with an X. So thanks again to everyone.
Speaker: And we will catch you on the next episode whenever that may be. Thanks. Bye. Love you guys. Bye. Love you.
Speaker: Sweet. Nailed it.
