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The American Craftsman Podcast Ep. 36 | Stay Motivated
39 Plays4 years ago
On Episode 36 of The American Craftsman Podcast, hosted by Greene Street Joinery, we discuss ways to remain motivated when you lose your drive.
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Beer of the Week (Kitsune Brewing Co. DDH Spring Showers): https://untappd.com/b/kitsune-brewing-company-ddh-spring-showers/4286438/photos
Tool of the Week: (Makita 18v Brushless Compact Router) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074BYS49M/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=greenestreetj-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B074BYS49M&linkId=fb13354fad86e500bd10191010c24bf8
Greene Street Joinery is a custom design & build shop located in Monmouth County, New Jersey. We build multigenerational furniture with an eco-friendly and sustainable mindset.
Inspired and guided by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, we believe in the use of traditional craftsmanship and simple, well-proportioned forms; sustainability and ethical practices; and importantly, taking pleasure in our work as craftsmen to create quality pieces of enduring value.
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Transcript
Montana Brand Tools Sponsorship
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Speaker
Ain't no shame, but there's been a change
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Speaker
The American Craftsman Podcast is proud to partner with Montana Brand Tools. The West was built by people with strength and great pride in their workmanship. It was a necessity that early settlers of Montana have a strong will, a resilient character, and great determination to tame the rugged landscape while adapting to its dramatic climate. That spirit made in the USA pride and craftsmanship is alive today, both in how Montana Brand Tools are manufactured and how they perform.
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Speaker
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Episode Number Debate
00:01:21
Speaker
Here we go. After deleting 120 megabytes of footage, we're back in action. There we go. Ain't technology wonderful? Yeah. Episode 35. Is it 35? Of the American Craftsman podcast. Yeah. Sure it's not 36? Could be.
00:01:41
Speaker
We're supposed to be good with numbers.
Camping Trip Storytime
00:01:44
Speaker
I think it might be 36. You know, it's, it's integral to episode 36 of the American craftsmen podcast. It's integral to our wellbeing. Yeah. We remember the numbers that matter. You know what happened the last time we let somebody run numbers that didn't know what they were doing. Oh, I remember vividly.
00:02:09
Speaker
I think he went on a camping trip. We haven't seen him since. That great, that great campground in the sky. No, no, I won't say that, but somewhere. Yeah. Close. Yeah.
Kitsune Brewing Beer Tasting
00:02:24
Speaker
I need this beer right now. So let's just get into the beer. Let's bust it open. So we've got this. It's way too hard to pour the beers over there. So we'll just move these glasses now.
00:02:39
Speaker
I'm still figuring out the logistics of our. Yeah, you give my hand to us. We got another beer from from our buddy at Kitsune this week. Kitsune Brewing out in Arizona. The Valley Road. Thank you. Almost hit the camera.
00:03:06
Speaker
So this week we have the DDH Spring Showers. It stands for Double Dry Hopped. And I pulled a little blurb off of their Instagram here. This double dry hop mosaic explosion is bursting with citrus and fruity flavors that will beg the question, why aren't I drinking another one? From Consune Brewing.
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah, it smells good Another super hazy beer. I was about to say that has a similar appearance the last weeks So that's a good sign hmm
00:03:56
Speaker
Yeah, last week we had the mosey, the mosey. Yeah, something Goliath something.
Tool of the Week: Dubuque Clamps?
00:04:03
Speaker
Yeah, toppling Goliath brewery. Yeah, topping Goliath out of was that the beer at Iowa? Yeah. Yeah. Last week was Iowa all day.
00:04:16
Speaker
Right. Is that where WIS was made to? Yeah. Yeah. And, um, we, uh, we're talking about those Dubuque clamps. Yeah. That was almost going to be my tool of the week, but haven't really gotten, um, enough time on them.
00:04:36
Speaker
Excuse the long pours, you know, these things. Yeah. They had to travel from the shop and back of my truck and then into my house and into the fridge and then down here. Then from here to there to there, back over here. Yeah. People think we're just flying by the seat of our pants. And we are. These things are orchestrated. Well, I'm going to have to drink some of this. All right. Cheers. Cheers to you, my friend. Cheers to all you out there.
00:05:16
Speaker
Mmm. What's that flavor I taste? Is that more citrus? Definitely citrusy. Yeah. Got some juicy kind of sweetness to it.
00:05:36
Speaker
And like an orange. Sweet orange. They know what they're doing over there. Kitsuni. Yeah. Is it Kitsuni or Kitsune? I think it's Kitsune. It's Japanese. I don't know. We take a stab at it, but I get it wrong. Hey, like it's pronounced like the like the capital A or not capital, but the long A here. Mm hmm. That's like an Italian.
00:06:04
Speaker
That's like we're going to angle angle to size it like I did my own name. Yeah. Spring showers were wrong. Right. Because you sound you sound kind of pretentious if you say it the way it's supposed to be said. Yeah. D.D.H. any I.P.A. double dry hop north east I.P.A. one point seven point six percent alcohol by volume drink fresh and wide mouth glass and store cold.
00:06:34
Speaker
Will do. At Kitsune Brewing Co. on Instagram. K-I-T-S-U-N-E. It's spelled brewing in case you don't know how to spell that. B-R-E-W-I-N-G-C-O. I wonder if they've had any inquiries. It's quite possible.
00:06:55
Speaker
I'd like to hear from them if they did. That would be pretty cool. Yeah. That's good. I've been happy with all the beers that we've had from them so far. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we got the beer. What comes next? You know that. I have the pleasure this week and having a broad in the horizons.
00:07:23
Speaker
Yeah, this is a good one. So here we got the Makita 18 volt brushless router. Yeah. Yeah. Um, shop favorite. Yeah. So I've had this for about a year now. And, um, we got this locked. Yeah, it's locked.
00:07:51
Speaker
Been nothing but happy with it. So this has a plunge base on it now. It comes with a fixed base and you can buy this plunge base. I've been nothing but happy with it. Got the bits and bits, quarter inch compression flush trim on there right now, which is basically what stays in this.
00:08:08
Speaker
So this is, we use it for all different stuff in the shop, mostly flush trimming. I'll put a quarter inch spiral bit in there for doing, you know, hogging out for hinges, stuff like that. It's just convenient because there's no cords. And when you have the vacuum, people always say, we have the vacuum, what's the cord? Well, it's just another thing to get hung up on something. So, you know, we have festool stuff, we have
00:08:34
Speaker
that we hooked the vacuum up to, Makita stuff, so like, we can't just leave the plug-it cord on there, it doesn't work with, we have one Festool router, but, you know, it's nice to have no cord. Cool thing about this, let me see, I'll turn it on, hopefully it's not too loud.
00:08:54
Speaker
That's what I was going to say. It's got a brake, so it stops in like about three seconds, five seconds. And it's really quiet for a router. Yeah. You know, it's weighted nice. A lot of battery routers I feel like are super top heavy. This is definitely top heavy with a five amp battery, which is what I keep on it. But it still feels stable, not tippy.
00:09:23
Speaker
You know, it has good dust collection. Better dust collection with a fixed base because it's basically fully enclosed. With this, it has this sort of little shoot similar to the Festool. So this comes down, tapers down into like a ring that goes around the bit. And it gives good dust collection. It has like a chip deflector here on this side. Yeah, I mean, I've been nothing but happy. They're pretty cheap. I think about $129.
00:09:51
Speaker
for the bare tool. You know, the first time I used it, I remember thinking, wow, not having a cord makes such a difference. I mean, you really, especially if you're not using dust collection, it's a huge, huge difference. Yeah, if we're just doing some little stuff, we don't really have it hooked up to the vac. But it's an amazing little tool.
00:10:18
Speaker
I mean, you don't feel any weakness in the mode or anything like that. It does. No, it's, it's strong. Everything that a router that size is supposed to do. Yeah. Brushless stuff is, is pretty, pretty hardy. It's funny. You can see. Since we have these lights, we have these professional lights focused right on us. The, uh, the poor little row there is not getting any love. Yeah. It's kind of in a shadow.
00:10:40
Speaker
You get the picture. We'll have a link down in the description as always. So you can see what we're talking about if you're not watching. Yeah, I'm guessing that most people are just listening anyway. Yeah, yep.
00:10:57
Speaker
We're getting pretty close to our 4,000 hour mark on YouTube, which will allow us to monetize the YouTube videos, which don't sound alarm because YouTube is already putting ads on our shit. They're just not paying us for it, which is crazy. Who told us about that? Well, I looked it up because I went to watch one of our videos for something. I wanted to look back at something.
00:11:23
Speaker
And then there's an ad on it. I'm like, what the hell? I'm like, we're not. The channel's not monetized. So when I look it up, you know, YouTube back in 2018 or 2019 or something passed a new terms of service that said, you know, YouTube has the right to monetize any video that they want.
00:11:40
Speaker
So they could deny you monetization because, let's say we were talking about some crazy conspiracy theories or something on here. They could say, we're not monetizing you guys because, you know, you're spreading false information or something like that. And then they could go and put an ad on it and make money if it was a popular video. So some of our videos right now have ads on them, but the money goes to YouTube and not us. Right, right. We have to reach these benchmarks.
00:12:06
Speaker
right which one is four thousand watch hours so if you guys want to help us out help out the channel the the podcast watch it yeah watch it on youtube yeah um because that'll help us reach that that four thousand hour goal um and we'll see you know we're not we're not going to get rich
00:12:25
Speaker
We're not going to be able to retire or even break even probably. Or even make a day's pay. Yeah, no. So forget about that notion. But yeah, it's just a nice goal to finally hit.
00:12:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one day we might be able to pay ourselves like what we don't get for producing. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's our first goal, really. Yeah. I mean, we've said it a thousand times and I don't say it to make anybody know we're not looking for anybody's pity, but, you know, this is a half a day. That's a full man day every week that, you know, yeah, where we're not producing any
00:13:07
Speaker
work. Right. Any work that we can bring in. You're taking food out of my child's mouth. No, we're pulling it out and throwing it. So, yeah, check out the YouTube channel. Yeah. Get to look at our silly mugs. Yeah, we're not putting out much more content other than the the podcast, because, you know, again, we just don't have the time to really know.
00:13:38
Speaker
We're looking for a volunteer videographer, if anyone's interested. Just come to the shop, hang out, take some videos of us, and then give us those videos, and you won't get paid, but...
00:13:53
Speaker
build a you'll at least get to hang out with us. Yeah. What do you call it? And what do you call an artist portfolio or folio? Yeah. And it's like it's like a student thing. It's like being an intern. You know, nobody that's really any good professional or qualified. That's not really a gig for them. But if
00:14:12
Speaker
Somebody's a student. It's like, you know, we have kids that would come by and clean the shop and we pay them because that's Yeah, that's the least we can do. There's no there's no future in pushing a you want to be an indentured servant to the shop And take video let us know. Yeah, but no weirdos. No good music Snacks sometimes occasionally. Yeah We could pay in snacks. Yeah
00:14:42
Speaker
but not money. Not yet. That's a short supply. Maybe one day. Yeah. Anyway, before we started selling crazy people, let's get into these questions. All right. So this one came in from Eric.
00:14:57
Speaker
And it came in last, last Wednesday. Um, so we're, we're recording the podcast now on Tuesdays and still releasing same time. I was trying to shoot like B roll of the tool and stuff, but then, I don't know. I shot in landscape on my phone and then it was important. So I don't know what the hell, unless we have another camera, we're not doing that. Um, but yeah, it just, it takes the pressure off of me to try and like crank this thing out.
00:15:26
Speaker
between 4.30 and 6 o'clock this way I have you know in case I have a problem with uploading it or something like that it takes a long time for these the YouTube videos specifically to upload it takes like an hour an hour and a half sometimes sometimes more so this came in last week we're just gonna get into it now because we we shot last Tuesday
00:15:46
Speaker
Hey guys, been feeling really discouraged with my woodworking. I've been woodworking for about two years and this shelf build I'm doing is kicking my butt. After three attempts, it's still coming out wrong. It's making me question my skills. I'm just a hobbyist, but I have dreams of doing this for a living. How did you guys keep yourselves motivated to keep at it? I currently have no one to work with and everything I know I learned from books and YouTube, etc. You guys have any motivational words? That's from Eric M. Wow.
00:16:15
Speaker
Well, the start, I would say, don't give up for one. And two, you're in the same boat we were all in at one point, unless you were fortunate enough to have some sort of mentor. Yeah. And you know, we're in this boat all the time as it is. That's right.
00:16:36
Speaker
We're still in that same boat. I mean, we might be riding, you know, on a higher deck after all these years, but we're still in that boat, making mistakes, doing stupid things, chasing our tail. Right. I mean, we just went through it with those cheese lounges. Yeah.
00:16:55
Speaker
So if you can find a little solace in the fact that it's never going to stop, maybe that will help you because you're not alone, first of all, because everybody is going through this.
00:17:12
Speaker
You know, we talked about this before where like if you're not pushing yourself, you're kind of just stuck in like a rut. Yeah. And some guys, some guys want to do that. Some guys want to just build boxes and do things that they can do fast and easy and everything is just easy and it flies off the door. But.
00:17:29
Speaker
That's not what we want to do. We want to do things that are unique and new to us and learn how to do different things. So what comes along with that is being in this position where you're screwing up and you're not getting it right and you're having to figure it out and there's pressure because there's a timeline and a budget and you only got paid X amount and you have to pay yourself. So you have to get it done in a certain amount of time.
00:17:56
Speaker
Yeah. And if you're using things like Instagram or the DIY TV shows as some sort of, you know, bar to measure yourself against that stuff's more or less an illusion. Yeah. Even somebody as skilled as like Norm Abrams. He when he did the new Yankee workshop, he made three pieces.
00:18:25
Speaker
by that time. So he made one to figure it out. He made another one. And then they made the, you know, the shell piece. So, and this guy, he knows everything basically. Yeah.
00:18:41
Speaker
Um, so three times is really not that much. Um, not having somebody hands on that you could ask questions. I mean, that certainly speeds up the learning process, but that's what networking's for, right? I mean, we reach out to guys when we don't know things.
00:19:02
Speaker
all week. Yeah, I've been reaching out about finish and about the weather stripping on the door. And that's the real power of social media. It's not putting putting your pictures out there to get likes. It's about who you can meet and share ideas with and ask questions, bounce, you know, bounce ideas off of
00:19:20
Speaker
Right. So it's so easy with your phone. You could walk around and talk and shoot with your phone and say, this is the spot right here that I just can't figure out. Send it off to people like us. Maybe we can have an answer. Maybe we don't. Then maybe we can reach out to somebody. So you start that ball rolling.
00:19:40
Speaker
And I've done that before, I think, maybe someone down here that asked a question this week, they reached out to me about, you know, an E-pay deck that their friend had, and I didn't know the answer, so I reached out to people that I knew, and then I got the answer from them, and I relayed it back to... So, Eric, I mean, of course, reach out to us if there's anything that we can help with, and even if we can't, you know, we may be able to find the person that can.
00:20:05
Speaker
I'll add one more thing. When we were working over in Long Branch, now I'd probably been working on my own for about 15 years, had my own business, was successful. When I left my business because of injury,
00:20:23
Speaker
I had a waiting list that was over a year and a half long. I stopped taking jobs for a year and a half by the time I left it. So although I'm self-taught and I don't know nearly everything at all, I would never even broach that subject. I do a few things well.
00:20:44
Speaker
Working in that place made me question whether or not I knew what I was doing and whether or not I could still be a woodworker because every time I turned around something wasn't working and there were things that I'd done a hundred or a thousand times before and now all of a sudden I couldn't do them and it really made me question whether or not I could do this. So I can empathize
00:21:12
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it could be the set of circumstances in the setting and, you know, all those things contribute to your ability to do anything. So, you know, think about those as well, Eric.
00:21:24
Speaker
Right, and then once I got back into the comfy confines, I'm Wilson Avenue. My skills magically returned. The yawning starts about, we're 20 minutes in, I start yawning. It's these comfy chairs. It's the chair and the beer, these lights. We got to go back to the hard chairs. I'm going to sit on the floor.
00:21:50
Speaker
I won't be able to work on Wednesday. I was looking for a way to recall earlier before we got the camera rolling. I was looking for a way to squeeze my my legs up in front of the table because you know these chairs recline. Yeah. I mean I would sit like this but then the whole foreground of the shot is just the bottom of my shoes. Yeah. It's the camera angle is it's not that flattering. Here's my problem is I wear a backwards hat and it hits the back of the chair. Oh yeah. There you go. I mean I need like a coofy.
00:22:18
Speaker
Well, yeah, I got one of those. I know I got it for you. I'd wear it, but you know, somebody would think I was trying to create some sort of cultural appropriation. Well, that's part of your culture anyway. That is part of my culture. Motivational words. Do we have anything that's concise? Keep at it. Yeah. Nike, just do it.
00:22:44
Speaker
Yeah, don't be don't be afraid of the mistakes. You know, it's all those corny and sort of Eastern philosophical statements about falling. It's not about the falling. I know somebody that's got those. Yeah.
00:23:00
Speaker
Um, so as silly and corny as it is, and we don't really believe in these sayings much, but you know, you can just get up, just get up, just yourself off and go to it. Take a little break if you need to. Oh yeah. Clear your head and just get back at it. There were days where I would make like the same mistake two or three times.
00:23:23
Speaker
It didn't matter what time it was like take the, take the tools off, put it down, go in the house, you know, do whatever you have to do to get away from it.
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah, do the easy stuff that you know that that you won't have a problem with first. Yeah. All right. You want to read this next one? Sure. I mean, let me get this in front. We kind of had we had a similar question to this before. Oh, all right. It's from Browns Custom Craft on Instagram. It's Luke. And he asks us, you can pick one woodwork, one woodworker to hang out with for the weekend to learn new skills. Who and why? He doesn't specify live or dead.
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think yeah, we should all be encompassing. All right. I mean, I knew this guy and he had this real passion for woodworking. It was. It was his passion. Yeah. But he said learn so he could tape two pieces of melamine together like nobody's business. That's a tough one.
00:24:31
Speaker
I'm wondering if you're going to pick the same that you picked last time. That's not a woodworker though. I wasn't going to pick the same one then. Was that maybe designers or something? I forget. We had a similar question, but you picked Frank Lloyd Wright. I picked George Nakashima.
00:24:55
Speaker
I think I might go with Nakashima again. Yeah. He just seems like a very intriguing guy. You know, he lived in the Pacific Northwest and in New Hope and in Japan and India. And he lived in a lot of different places. And he has a very just a very interesting point of view and philosophy about the whole thing. So I think I think I'd probably hang out with him.
00:25:19
Speaker
Yeah. Now, I would probably pick Norm Abrams. I did have a chance to meet Norm, and I mean, really hang out with him for a bit, but not under woodworking circumstances. So that's what I would look forward to.
00:25:41
Speaker
A long time ago I was doing this volunteer job for the Sierra Club and Norm and the producer of the show came out to film and they were out there camping with us for about three days. So we got to hang out.
00:25:58
Speaker
at the campfire and things like that. And Norm was nicer than you could imagine and more skilled than he even looks on TV. And that's why I would really just look forward to spending a weekend with him or imagining all I could pick up.
00:26:19
Speaker
It's funny like I guess with the the advent of social media and stuff and the world getting so much smaller like I don't know Norm just seems so pedestrian. I know he does. He's just like regular like yeah, it's just some guy in his garage could make these but you know what in person because we were there doing this. We were restoring this log cabin. What was the name of it? It was a guy. He was from New Jersey.
00:26:43
Speaker
A.A. Anderson. Yeah. I remember because we read a bunch. Yeah. Yeah. He was a friend to Teddy Roosevelt's and apparently to get away from his wife.
00:26:54
Speaker
This is what we should talk about on the Patreon. You can give a rundown, but we should talk about that whole thing because I don't think we've covered that yet. Yeah, so it was a historic cabin. It was like a national landmark. And with the Sierra Club, I volunteered and it's up at about a 9,000 foot elevation in Wyoming. So it's all this protected land and you had to work with only hand tools. So the far service would pick out trees.
00:27:23
Speaker
it fell the trees and so norm comes out and we're not using power tools or anything like that and the people who are the experts show norm like in three or four minutes how to do something and he picks up this tool like it's an extension of his body now is this new yankee workshop or was it this old house i think it was
00:27:45
Speaker
this old house where they did like a little breakaway. Yeah, it was a breakaway. I tried to find it. If any of you out there can find it, please send it to us. If you even if you could just find the the episode, the season and the episode, I want to try and find it.
00:27:59
Speaker
Yeah. The year would have been around between 91 and 93. I can't remember exactly when it was. Because I looked and I looked for a while. I couldn't find. I couldn't. I think I found like something talking about it, but I couldn't find that episode. Yeah.
00:28:21
Speaker
Um, but yeah, norm does seem like rather old hat nowadays, but he probably has every trick in the book. Yeah. Well, and just like super well-rounded. Yeah. You know what I mean? And the other thing, other reason I pick him is because of his personality. I think I could really get a lot from him.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah, this conversation could devolve. I'm just thinking of all kinds of snarky things to say. Yeah. Not about norm, of course, but like, I mean, I'd be super interested in Kranov.
00:29:01
Speaker
Yeah, but I don't I don't know anything about him. And so maybe on a on a like in a perfect setting. I might pick him because he's got that really interesting flair and a whole different way of approaching things. He's more to me like Nakashima where there are originals in thought. Yeah, first. Yeah, my process has come.
00:29:27
Speaker
I really liked the first Kranov book and I actually stopped reading when I got halfway through the second Kranov book because it just became too much. It's like when you go to a bar and you end up talking to this drunk guy and he just goes on and on and on about
00:29:44
Speaker
some sort of existential bullshit. That's what the second book was like. It's like, all right, listen, I get it. I feel the same way about woodwork and the passion. But like, all right, let's move on to like the real world application of these things. Exactly. Because this is also a business. So I need to apply these things to make money. Right. That's the other thing in Norm's corner. I mean, this is his foundation, is as a carpenter and as a businessman.
00:30:14
Speaker
Although the shows have completely gone away from it in the last few decades, it used to be about, you know, finances of the regular person. Yeah, now it's, you know, a banker wants an old house.
00:30:27
Speaker
Yeah. Budget's no limit. Yeah. Yeah. So. Nakashima and Abrams. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Got one here from a patron Adam built by AT on Instagram. Have you ever tried to price something out as a go away price? We call that an FU price. But then they said yes. Just happened to me. Next time it will be a flat out no. I
00:30:55
Speaker
I priced it high due to the distance.
00:31:03
Speaker
I've definitely given very high prices on certain jobs. I don't know if I call it an FU price, more of like that inconvenience price where it's like, you know, this job is just going to kind of be a pain in the dick. That rollout job I did right before we kind of started Green Street was one. I forget what I got for that. That was very lucrative. Yeah. I went over there, me and Manny were there for like
00:31:31
Speaker
Three hours or something on a Saturday knocked it out and you know walked away with I think I paid Manny like 500 bucks I walked away like a thousand bucks in three hours I Mean it was it was easy. So and that's a small, you know, that's a small job, but I don't really have anything that sticks out in my mind as like a real F you and then they they went for it
00:31:55
Speaker
Yeah. With me, it was it was one of the jobs nearing the end of my time as a solo worker.
00:32:07
Speaker
And they kept coming back to me with, like the job was, okay, we're going to hire you. Come over. We're going to give you a check. All right. I'll come by on Tuesday. I'll nail down all the measurements. But between that time and that Tuesday, there were emails like, oh, change this and that. And I just got, you know, agitated.
00:32:31
Speaker
Well, you know, so they started adding things and each time they would add something, there was this feeling of like, it wasn't like a pleasant thing. You know how some people are like, they're trying to take advantage. Yeah. So I started adding cost to the job, which I, we usually don't really do that excessively. Now, you know, we're pretty fair about that. Yeah.
00:32:54
Speaker
Yeah, even unfair to ourselves to a point until finally I had the. You know, that day had come and I had to make the decision and I did just say no, I just can't do it. And I told them it was because, you know, my schedule wouldn't allow it. But they were they were annoyed. They think I've heard about these people. Yeah, they stalked me for a little while.
00:33:26
Speaker
All it did was confirm that my gut feelings were right. Yes, that's the FU price in this neck of the woods. What do you mean you won't work for me? Yeah. What, my money's no good? You know, yeah, sometimes it's just not worth it, is it? Yeah, some people are whacked. Yeah.
00:33:52
Speaker
Yeah, our normal prices go away price for most people, unfortunately. We give them the price and then they go away. Not on purpose.
00:34:04
Speaker
You want me to read this? Yeah, it's a good one. Yeah. Like a mechanic whose car is always broken. Do you have time to put into your own homes? Brian, great point. Woodworks on Instagram. That's so appropriate, isn't it? Yeah. Um, we have no choice but to put time into our own homes because you know, we both live in, in older homes. Your, your house probably 50 years
00:34:29
Speaker
Well, maybe a little bit less. We'll say worst case scenario. We're maximum amount 50 years older than my house. My house is from 1923 and yours is from, you know, maybe 1880, 1890. And in the Northeast, these things, they're just
00:34:46
Speaker
Constantly in need of repair. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we don't really have a choice but to, and granted I've only lived here for a couple months, but we have no choice but to put time into our homes. We definitely can't put the time we put into jobs into our homes because, you know, what we do takes so much time that it would be a whole nother full-time job to build things like we build for clients, for ourselves.
00:35:14
Speaker
Right. Cause we're talking about your kitchen coming up and we're planning how we're going to do it and you know how to, you know, squeak it in there and hopefully we're not that busy and we can bust out some things in spurts.
00:35:27
Speaker
Yeah, I've been even thinking about doing a frameless kitchen as blasphemous as that sounds. Just to save some time. You know, we'll get it done. You're young and you're a worker, so you'll be hitting all those weekends and nights and everything. And I'll be pushing as hard as I can, because that's the way it is. That's what you do. Because it's a one-time thing. It's not forever.
00:35:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think also you might think we have houses filled with nice furniture.
00:36:06
Speaker
It's so far from the truth. Yeah. You know, my house is filled with when I started out, like really started out, I had to learn everything. And most of the things in my house are the mistakes that I made, like trying to figure something out. Yeah.
00:36:24
Speaker
Um, so it's like, man, I got to figure out how to make dovetail drawers. So let me do this. Or I mean, how does a breadboard end work? You know, what are the proportions? What's going to last? And it's really been instructive because I have some pieces that are like 20 years old and there are some failure points you can go back to in reference. And then there's some other point where it's like, wow, I did this 18 years ago and didn't touch it. It's still standing.
00:36:53
Speaker
So that part works. But that's what I have, like the House of Misfit toys. Yeah, and you know, we do make things for our house, but they're like real abbreviated versions of stuff.
00:37:07
Speaker
You made a little thing to slip off of the end of your couch. Even like these tables in here, we wouldn't make these for a client. It's just not our style. These are bogus. It's just like a glue up with some big chamfers and hairpin legs. It's not our thing. And I wouldn't feel comfortable really selling that as a Green Street piece of furniture. But we needed a table. So that's quick and easy. That's what we did. Yeah, we have a bunch of cherry. Cherry's really inexpensive.
00:37:36
Speaker
took a wide board, one. It's just, you know, it's two pieces together. And these two little the dimensions of these three tables were what we got out of those boards. They were. Excuse me, but the awning, they were boards that we were playing with the Oliver. We were trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with it. Right. Right. So they were just it was leaning up against the wall in the shop.
00:38:08
Speaker
Tommy G. Yeah. That's the guy who was doing the glass on the Dutch door.
00:38:19
Speaker
Yeah, let me just shoot him a text. So what do I have in my house? I mean, the kitchen was the first thing I did. Those were really the first professional style cabinets I tried to make. And I did a little bit at a time. And there's a lot of stuff. Like if I built them today, I do it.
00:38:45
Speaker
I wouldn't say completely differently but about I could see good eighty ninety percent would be different. What else? I have one kind of wonky chest of drawers that I made and I have one that's actually much better. I have two little ones. One I built
00:39:07
Speaker
When there was a gallery, there was like a furniture gallery and I was going to build a piece. I arranged to build this little bedside table and I would bring it there. And by the time I finished it, they were out of business. Then your wife just asked you to build her a dress.
00:39:27
Speaker
She must think we're doing real good. My wife, my wife said to me, you think, you know, the draw sheet, what we have in our bedroom, we have these two, we have the one like a eight drawer dresser, like in the Stickley style that I built like from like a popular mechanics kind of plan thing where I kind of learned some skills.
00:39:49
Speaker
And then we have these two all dressers that are like out of, you know, any apartment in the 1970s that my wife brought with her when we got married. And I mean, these are hideously ugly and notoriously, you know, crappy. This is what it is. So she goes to me, you think you could, uh, the drawers sticking. You think you can make me a dresser?
00:40:13
Speaker
I'm just carved two weeks out of my schedule. I said no. If you need a new dress, I mean IKEA is the place. There's a target up the road.
00:40:29
Speaker
Yeah. So we are a bit like the shoemakers kids with, you know, running with the holes in their shoes and bare feet. Um, so it's a mixture. We certainly don't have all the stuff that we, you know, make for clients. There's just, there's not enough time in the day. Um,
00:40:49
Speaker
So it's like when we see these guys, you know, again, going back to Eric's question, you see all this stuff going on on YouTube and Instagram and on TV. That's all an illusion. All these things like people who do things like we do for a living.
00:41:11
Speaker
They can't possibly have this stuff in their house that they made. No, no. Not if they're doing it the way we do. If they're making a living from it, there's no time for that. Maybe if you own Thomas Mozer. You're Thomas Mozer. If you have a factory of people making things, then maybe. But no, if you're an owner operator. Right. If you're getting dirty.
00:41:32
Speaker
The odds are, you know, slim to none that you're able to afford your own work. Right. Right. Right. Unless you're building shit and then, you know, then anybody can afford. Yeah. That's a good point. I mean, there are people with, you know, do like factory style stuff. Yeah. You know, the semi custom. Mm hmm. You know, those guys base a team, but it's got a 20 inch face frame on it.
00:42:00
Speaker
Nothing a two-inch filler can solve. All right, you want to move on to the next question? Yeah, we got one here from our buddy Matt. He's another one of our patrons. Yeah. IKAGviz on Instagram. I know a guy. How are you going to cut the profile off on the Dutch door styles? Yeah, we talked about that yesterday or the day before.
00:42:23
Speaker
uh oh to matt no between you and i we discussed it yeah yeah so we're building this dutch door the bottom has a solid wood panel the top is getting stained glass that's original to the house so what we have to do is um
00:42:39
Speaker
So it's an exterior Dutch door, it's made with a door cutter. So the molding is built into the... Yeah, it's integral. Yeah, I'm having a hard time articulating this. So the sticking of the door has a profile to it. So one side we need to remove so that the glass can go in, the glass guy will come, the stained glass guy Tommy, who just called me, can put it in, then we'll have to make molding that he can put on top of it.
00:43:08
Speaker
So Matt's asking how are we going to take it off of the one side? So we'll glue the door up. My thought, and I think this is probably the easiest way, is to cut the bulk of it out with the track saw.
00:43:19
Speaker
you know, lay the track a sixteenth or an eighth inch away from the edge of the door, cut it off, and then use a little Makita there to flush trim it. Yeah, because we can make a shallow cut, a measured cut that doesn't go through the face of the sticking. You know, we just remove the interior portion. Yeah, I think that's the plan.
00:43:44
Speaker
That's about it. It should be pretty easy. Yeah, fingers crossed. I mean, you could use a big router, a big, we have that seven-eighths inch spiral bit. You could probably get in there and... You know why that scares me?
00:43:57
Speaker
That white oak, you know, like splinter and one cut and all our work is, uh, it may even be worth using that bit and leaving a 16th and using that bit. Um, just because that mass is, you know, it's good. That thing, I mean, it cuts nice, but big bit, bigger bit, always better. Bigger is better in that instance. Yeah.
00:44:25
Speaker
So that's it. I mean, maybe, maybe Matt had some ideas of his own. Yeah. I mean, we're open to anybody's thoughts because we're just fine by the seat of our pants here.
00:44:41
Speaker
Right. All right. What does this sound like? You or me? Do you overthink things when building? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? That's Justin De Palma. Justin De Palma on Instagram. Yeah, Justin De Palma. That's a typo. Oh, that's a typo. So it is Justin De Palma. Yep. Okay. I thought he was just, you know, sort of being a, you know, how everybody has like a clever kind of. That's true. Justin's an old Jersey guy.
00:45:10
Speaker
Cool I Mean I we definitely both overthink things I'd say I think I'm way more I probably way more overthink things You got more energy than me yeah, is it a good thing is it I mean, I think it's a good thing yeah myself, but Can it be bad of course?
00:45:35
Speaker
Yeah, you know why I think it's a good thing? Because it never paralyzes us. We don't get paralyzed by thinking too much. We just say, what could go wrong if we do it this way? What could go right? What tools do we have? What are our options?
00:45:58
Speaker
We do a lot of test cuts and samples and all that stuff. So I think that's part of the what you might call overthinking. But I like to think of it more as, you know, better safe than sorry. Yeah. You know, I hate like doing rework and backtracking and getting to a point saying, oh, we should have done this because or this happened, but we could have prevented it if we did this.
00:46:26
Speaker
I'd rather just think of it all beforehand and try and head everything off at the past then get to the point of having to backtrack or compromise for something that's not as good as it could be because we did something that we didn't do something that we could have done before.
00:46:43
Speaker
Right. And I think that because we do so many new things almost every job, it requires all this thought. And even then it's usually not enough. That's right. There are still mistakes.
00:47:00
Speaker
But, you know, to our credit, we do learn from our mistakes. And that's a positive. So, yeah, we do do quite a bit of thinking. We hardly ever rush headlong into anything.
00:47:20
Speaker
And there you have it. So yeah, we're a couple of overthinkers and we think it's good because we can we function productively with the overthinking. Yeah. Yeah. And any time spent, you know, thinking and confirming if your idea is going to work and stuff like that, it ends up saving you time in the back end. It does. It does.
00:47:43
Speaker
So I think maybe what some people might think is a bad thing is this this fallacy of lost time. I say fallacy because like what you said in the in the scheme of things it probably at the very minimum breaks even.
00:48:01
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, are there times where we over engineer or overthink and do? Yes. Yeah. But I mean, who really? So what? We made a little bit less money. Yeah. Yeah. Big fucking deal. The other thing is you can't divide the debt. We don't divide the day up into a quarter day. It's a day. And if we're working on a job, because we work on the one job at a time,
00:48:25
Speaker
Tuesday was already spent on that job. Yeah. So if we spend six hours or eight hours, it's still the same thing. Or, you know, we had 14 days or we had 20 man days and it takes 22 man days. Well, you know, it's not the end of the world. No. All right. Got one here from Joffit, one of our patrons, Joffit Hernandez on Instagram. What's the last thing you learned from Rob and vice versa?
00:48:54
Speaker
Well, I'll answer first since this is the way we usually do it. This door job I learned quite a bit. And that's what's wonderful about working with Jeff in particular and with somebody that you respect that has a different skill set in general. If you're, you know, receptive, you have to be receptive first, otherwise you don't learn anything.
00:49:19
Speaker
If you're the smartest guy in the room, we all have been there, right? We know people like that. But you've done a lot of door work. You've installed a lot of doors. You've been on a job with
00:49:38
Speaker
this kind of thing all the time. So I've been deferring to you on all these things and even asking maybe some silly questions, trying to build up my information base. And because I could have built the door without any of this information, but it would have taken me longer. I might not have done it the right way, the correct way, the standardized way. So to me, it's
00:50:06
Speaker
It's a win-win to have somebody that could lead the job. Yeah, I know this. I'm going to show you. Yeah, and even I'm reaching out to other people and confirming things. I'm getting secondhand door stuff. It goes back to overthinking because you start to question everything that you've done before.
00:50:28
Speaker
I can't think of anything specific right now at the top of my head as the what was the last thing but I mean it's constant because I mean you've done this for four times as long as I have so there's you've done that you know thousands upon thousands of hours more woodworking than I've done and even like some things that are super simple like I just haven't done before
00:50:50
Speaker
I'm always running into things that are even pretty basic in terms of woodworking that I haven't done before. So I'm constantly finding things out from you. Well, thank you. Sometimes I take for granted because you're so good that you know all this stuff already. Sometimes you'll say, how would you do this? It almost catches me off guard.
00:51:15
Speaker
I picked things up quick, but you do just some things I just haven't done. Yeah. You really, really fast doing it and super inquisitive. You know, like you spend a lot of time out of the shop learning new skills. So you're always bringing new skills into the workplace.
00:51:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's always been that fear of being found out that I don't know what I'm doing. You know, it's too late for that. Yeah. Meaning that you know what you're doing. Well, yeah. Yeah. Until I don't. Right. But you got to, you know, we have a solid base, so there's no shame in not knowing something now.
00:51:52
Speaker
Yeah. And there shouldn't be anyway. Yeah. Unless you're trying to pretend. Right. Yeah. I'm not pretending like I know everything. That's the smartest guy in the room thing again. Yeah. Yeah. I know where I was going with that. But you know, I've always just wanted to do a good job. So it's like I want to know as much as I can and figure out how to I got thrown into doing like high end custom finish work.
00:52:22
Speaker
I had never done that before. I wasn't like didn't fix stuff as a kid. I never had shop class. I picked up part-time work and then ended up getting hired by a custom builder.
00:52:37
Speaker
I just got thrown to the wolves. Was your first thing with sheetrock fixing stuff after Sandy? That was my first, yeah. So after Sandy, I got a job with a guy and we were just doing, yeah, like cutting sheetrock at two feet and patching it in and maybe a piece of casing or two.
00:52:55
Speaker
Insulation a little bit of framing just general more like. I wouldn't say handyman stuff it was bigger than that it was you know like construction. Then you know that work kind of dried up this guy.
00:53:10
Speaker
This is a long story with this guy. I won't even get into it, but we're kind of dried up with him. And then I got a job with this builder who I worked for up until I went and left to go to Tom's. And yeah, like I got thrown to the wolves, not in a negative way, but it's like.
00:53:30
Speaker
I had never done Finnish work before. The guy I worked with, you know, Felix is Dominican guy, barely spoke any English and was kind of just he was working too. So he didn't have time to teach me. So they would just give me something to do. And I was like, what the hell am I going to figure out how to do this? Because I don't want to be I don't want to a mess up and be like to do a bad job or were for them to anybody to be like, what the fuck is that? So I don't want to be that guy. Yeah. I've been running scared for, you know,
00:54:01
Speaker
Eight years now, just like, oh man, I better get better that way. Nobody says, what the hell did you do that for? But there's comfort at least in being your own boss and having your name on the door and all that stuff. No, I mean, it never bothered me. I mean, I like the challenge of having to figure out how to do something. I like the problem solving. Yeah.
00:54:23
Speaker
We have a fulfilling when you figure it out and then you do it and then say, wow, it worked. That's, that's, that feels good. We have a pretty supportive environment too, where we're, we're okay to try something and fail and then, you know, approach again.
00:54:41
Speaker
like that. We tried and failed a couple of times. And even after we built the chairs, we still kept trying other stuff. Yeah. Like for a couple of weeks after those chairs were built, we were still at it. That's the kind of
00:55:01
Speaker
obsessiveness. We could have some time or I'll say tenacious, yeah, kind of, you know, wanting to learn and explore. Um, we had some of those pieces of oak left over and we were just like, come on, let's see what will happen if we do this. Yeah, we're like, we'll put these in a form and see if this, you know, we can tell you, but we learned something every step of the way. Yeah. Yep.
00:55:27
Speaker
That's cool. All right. So what's your method for cleaning glue squeeze out on the inside of corners? That's from Vince. Rob Vincep on Instagram.
00:55:39
Speaker
I'm thinking now it's probably Rob Vince P. Rob Vince P. Is this more typo on your part? No. No. Well, originally I thought his name was Rob, but then I found out his name was Vince. Oh, so Rob Vince P. We can, we can maybe hear from Vince. He can correct this on us. Vince, I invited you to Clubhouse and I haven't seen you on there. Yeah. Just saying.
00:56:05
Speaker
So I think I know the answer to this, but how do you get squeezed out of that inside corners?
00:56:13
Speaker
I mean, I'm kind of like a chisel or a knife guy. Yeah, sharp knife. That's my deal. Depending on the wood. Yeah. Like if it's white oak and it's cross grain, the knife doesn't really work that well. So then I use a chisel and come in parallel with the grain. But if it's like, you know, cherry or something like that, let it gel up a little bit and just get in the corner of the knife.
00:56:39
Speaker
I have trouble with the patience aspect of the gelling, but that's my 100% preferred method to let that glue get to just the right consistency. Yeah, it can't just be skinned over because then it makes it worse.
00:56:55
Speaker
I honestly, I hardly ever like I'll leave it long enough. Yeah, I don't really got to be like 45 minutes or yeah, or I'll forget it. Yeah. And then you're, you know, got another problem, you know, not insurmountable, but it's, it's much harder to chip it out. Card scraper. I like to
00:57:17
Speaker
Yeah, anything that's got the right shape that you can clean as you go. Like a, you know, a metal blade of some sort is always good. I have a scraper that's like just for glue. Yeah. Just because it gets so kicked up, it's not really usable for. Do you remember my glue scraper? Yeah. Yeah. We have a couple of them now. We were talking about this. A straw is supposed to work really well. Yeah. Yeah. We got a drinking straw. We got to check that out. Yeah. We don't do a lot of
00:57:46
Speaker
inside corner glue ups, like dovetail boxes, you know, drawer boxes, but. You ever tried taping it? Yeah, so we did on the door. Yeah, it works. Works well. Just time consuming, but it is. I tried taping a drawer once. It took forever. Yeah. And you know, it's still it wasn't perfect. So I thought this is just not not for me. Yeah.
00:58:17
Speaker
Um, cause you still had to go back and, you know, touch it up. Once you get in there, touching it up, it's bottomless pit, isn't it? Next question.
00:58:31
Speaker
What do we got here? This is from John Trinity Tradesman on Instagram. Do you charge for design or just build it into the price of a job if the job is a go? Not nearly enough. It's part of the cost of doing business for us.
00:58:49
Speaker
I mean, we always throw four hours, six hours into it, but typically going back and forth with a client is an ongoing thing. And the way I always viewed it was in lieu of an advertising budget or anything like that. This is how we obtain our clients by creating this design because our price is higher just by the nature of what we do.
00:59:18
Speaker
We have to, in some way or another, give them something that they just can't go get somewhere else. The value is in our service, in our design, and then in the quality of the furniture. A lot of people don't understand the quality of the furniture until they get it in their house. But they understand those other elements of how we treat them and things like that up front.
00:59:46
Speaker
Yeah. And some we've worked on is like sort of vetting the client so that we don't get into investing all this design time. If we can see that it's not going to pan out. So it's almost if we're if we're investing real design time, it's almost guaranteed that it's going to be covered in the because we do put design time onto the onto the price might not be 100 percent of the time, but it's something. Yeah.
01:00:13
Speaker
We'll give the quick and dirty price to the clients who are kind of in that vetting stage. See if they pass out.
01:00:23
Speaker
Yeah. And it's not that the prices are so extraordinary. It's just that people come into this with this super low budget in mind. Like I saw this table at Target for $149. So I must be able to get a custom table for $249, 300 tops.
01:00:44
Speaker
And we're like, yeah, it's going to be like $17,000. And they're like, what? Yeah, they don't understand the economics of things in our line of work. So we wish we could get full price for everything, but we just can't.
01:01:03
Speaker
You know, we have to we have to meet the client usually midway, you know, close as close as we could get to our number. You know, the happier we are. Yeah. Um.
01:01:20
Speaker
Do I read this next one? Uh, yeah. All right. When building a solid wood door, what sort of precautions have you taken to ensure that the door stays flat in the future? Is there any place on a door build for planes on material? Or should everything be quartered or riffed? What type of finish will you be using? That's from one of our patrons, Alec, at Owlhead Woodco on Instagram.
01:01:48
Speaker
Um, is there a place for plain song? I'd say, uh, with plain song, you probably want to go to a stave core or a composite core and just have a veneer on there. You know, quarter and riffs on wood is very stable. It, it, it moves, you know, in a pretty predictable fashion. Um, and it doesn't tend to want to twist and everything as much as, as plain song would. So, um, for car, we haven't really,
01:02:19
Speaker
precautions, we haven't taken any precautions, I would say. Because it's the normal, we take a lot of those things for all of our builds. You know, we mill things slowly and watch them. And I mean, everything is still dead, dead flat.
01:02:35
Speaker
It is all quarters on. We acclimate the wood to the shop before we start milling it. We mill it. We rough mill it. We let it. We sticker it. We check it. Everything's cool. We bring it down to final dimensions and we cut the joinery.
01:02:55
Speaker
I will say with doors, we are extra precautious to bring the wood in early and to mill it slow and really watch it. Cabinet doors, exterior doors, whatever. Those are the things we're most concerned about with movement because
01:03:14
Speaker
You know, other like casework and stuff with joinery, the movement isn't as much of a concern because it's sort of all locked together. But a door does, you know, a door is very susceptible to twist. Oh, yeah. I have a door in my house upstairs that won't stay together.
01:03:30
Speaker
And it's on my bathroom. So this is a, you know, 120 year old door. I think it's far, which is, as we learned today, one of the most stable woods as far as movement goes.
01:03:47
Speaker
But it split apart. The joint failed. The top joint failed in the upper right hand corner. And so I brought a big clamp up there and re-glued it and everything. I was very proud of myself. Then about a month later,
01:04:07
Speaker
You know that strong modern glue yeah, it's split this this style so I just gave up and the door doesn't close all the way just clean it
01:04:23
Speaker
So those are our precautions and our methods. Finish will be Total Boat Gleam 2.0, which is a tongue oil based spar varnish. We put the first coat on the panel today because we're going to get a couple of coats on that before we put it in the door. And, you know, I put finish on the on the
01:04:48
Speaker
dado in the door, so that'll all be finished. I mean, I know it's going to be repetitive for people listening and know all this stuff, but we know we have listeners that are kind of hobbyist, advancing, explain why we want to finish the panels, not just in this door, but in all doors and things like that first.
01:05:12
Speaker
Well this application specifically is for water. We don't want anything unfinished on the door even on an interior door You know so this panel is it's 22 inches wide and it's 27 inches tall Well the height doesn't really matter but 22 inches wide we're gonna get you know probably
01:05:33
Speaker
five sixteenths of an inch of movement in this thing you know between the seasons yeah so let's say we put finish on now and it's humid in the winter time the panel is going to shrink well if you didn't finish it beforehand you're going to all of a sudden reveal sections of the panel that aren't finished so it's very important when you're building you know rail and style doors with panels that you finish the panels before you
01:05:56
Speaker
You know assemble the door even even plywood Yeah, because your styles can your styles are gonna shrink to right right granted very small amount especially if they're narrow like Most are these days, but I've seen those those cheap like MDF panel doors You see a yeah a line of brown right white door exactly because it is it's the styles that shrink the panel is stable sure but I mean if you're
01:06:24
Speaker
Really everything should be finished on a piece of furniture, a piece of cabinetry, even trim. You're not supposed to put raw trim up and then paint the face of it. Everything needs to be back primed. So at the very least, if you're painting like a white kitchen, you should prime your panels before you put them into the doors. Yeah. And this door being an exterior door,
01:06:49
Speaker
It's going to be a lot colder on the outside in the winter than it is on the inside. So it's just it's going to have like the hardest conditions possible put on it, probably. Yeah. So we want to make sure everything has its best chance to survive. Yep. Look at that. We're on a page. Page two.
01:07:18
Speaker
We got another one from a patron here, Colin. What's the biggest mistake you've made when you did not measure twice cut once? Oh, I was going to answer that. But then I saw it was about cutting. I was I had a good one for the biggest mistake I've made. I can't think of a specific one, but I mean, I've had times where it's like the last piece of trim and or, you know, pre-finished whatever and and, you know, you mess up and.
01:07:47
Speaker
Nothing sticks out in my mind specifically, but there's been a dozen or so instances. That's the thing. When material is limited or you're on a job site or it's a special molding. I remember one job I had
01:08:08
Speaker
It was this carved molding. I went to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to pick it up. And it was super expensive and hard to get. I was terrified to cut it. Yeah, and everything's got to line up. Yeah, exactly. I had to camp the sleeves, egg and dog. So you got to cut in the design so that on all the corners, everything matches up. And oh my god, because if you're making a mistake, you can't just
01:08:37
Speaker
trim it a little bit. You got to go to the next series. Oh man. Yeah. We've all, we've all come up and ensure more times than we could count. Um, uh, speaking of that, that first one, the thing that makes me laugh is
01:09:01
Speaker
We're doing Mendelssohn's kitchen and Rich was trying to put the island together. Thank God it wasn't there that day.
01:09:13
Speaker
I think I was helping Jamie. So, so Jeff had, he cut all the, you know, the cabinet parts, you know, the sides and the tops and bottoms and labels everything. And so rich was working on his own, trying to put the thing together.
01:09:36
Speaker
And then you tell me you left him unsupervised your fault. I hear a Carson over there. And then again, you know, so it's this repetitive thing was going on. And then the next thing you know, he's hauling out another sheet of plot.
01:09:54
Speaker
I'm going to recut all these parts. So Jeff, Jeff comes in the next day and all his parts on piled up next door is like, Oh no, they weren't square reset. So then this is the capper.
01:10:15
Speaker
It's hard to explain, you know, on, uh, on a radio or whatever, like this audio medium, but you know, typically you have the sides of the cabinet going all the way right from the top to the bottom and the bottom and the top of the cabinet captured in between the sides.
01:10:37
Speaker
The last cab was all railroaded altogether, which means one side was as it should as it should be. But then the top was on the top of the other side because the side was too short. Oh my God, I know what they said.
01:11:02
Speaker
And then remember when he was trying to put the styles in place, you know, for the trim around the backside. He was putting them all in the wrong space, so they wasn't dividing up the space evenly. Oh, yeah.
01:11:22
Speaker
We took care of that too. So we had to rebuild all those things. And it was because I didn't cut them square. Were we talking about mistakes before? Owning up to your mistakes?
01:11:38
Speaker
Apparently that was my fault. It started out as your fault. I compounded it by not keeping an eye on it. But it goes back to the very first, the original mistake. How'd you like to start a woodworking business? Let's move on. What finish would you use on a restaurant table? That's another one from Jaffa. He's a patron, Jaffa Hernandez on Instagram.
01:12:06
Speaker
That's a toughie. I mean, I think he's trying to ask what's the most durable finish. Yeah. Probably one of those like epoxy type finishes. Like those two potters or? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think they all kind of they all must be some sort of have some sort of activator hardener in there. But
01:12:28
Speaker
I remember finishing like a commercial bar way back before I was a real woodworker, so to speak, and that's what we used, one of those things. Yeah, real hard, thick kind of finish. I think even something like the spar varnish that we're using, you know, that's kind of like an outdoor finish, but something like that that has a high build and you put a lot of coats on.
01:12:55
Speaker
Something like that. I mean, I really would not use a pen to finish because no, it's got to sit on top. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of different from what we usually do. Yeah. Preferably something with a low sheen because people sliding glasses around and stuff is going to get ruined. So a low sheen is going to hide a lot of that that wear.
01:13:16
Speaker
Yeah. So in that regard, I'm not a big fan of like the really artistic wooden table top for restaurant use because you really have to conceal the wood in a sense. And most nice restaurants, you're going to have some kind of covering. Yeah. I mean, so it's.
01:13:35
Speaker
It's almost defeats the purpose Yeah, I think these more hip kind of restaurants are moving to more towards a more natural kind of like less of a tablecloth look and yeah Let that food get in the cracks and stuff. Yeah
01:13:53
Speaker
I'm picturing like a table made out of like rustic like two by eight. Yeah. So you make gaps so you can push the crumbs in the gap. There you go. They probably don't even use those little scrapers. Just space it like deck boards fall between. Yeah. Or you know like I guess epoxy tables. That's they found their home. No.
01:14:17
Speaker
landfill. That's where they'll be. Yeah. Yeah. With some, uh, you know, non biodegradable epoxy down the middle. Yeah. And all those little doodads that are inside coffee beans and yeah. Yeah. Clam shells. Uh, Oh man. Yeah. I mean, man. Yeah. All right. And last, no, next to last the penultimate question.
01:14:49
Speaker
After your discussion of acclimating wood last week, what are your suggestions for building in an unconditioned shop? I guess that would just be some general tips on how to build for wood movement. That's from Chris D.C. Dubrisky on Instagram. Yeah, well, I did that for a long time. Probably most shops are unconditioned, right?
01:15:18
Speaker
I mean, I don't know. That's hard to say. Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I took a quick look online to see what kind of charts were available because they have like really scientific to the thousandths of an inch charts for like wood movement and species and as a formula for a relative humidity.
01:15:45
Speaker
So fine woodworking has one that's free and pretty thorough. If you're interested after hearing this, you can look it up.
01:15:58
Speaker
But it has to do with the difference in the swing of humidity is one of the big factors. So if the wood comes into the shop at 6% and you got to figure out what's the worst case scenario and percentage in this article and find woodworking, they used about a 10% swing as their worst case scenario.
01:16:24
Speaker
Yeah I mean it even gets more specific than that. You can go by your region and find the real numbers. It's no sense in trying to do any of this if you don't have a moisture meter. That's number one. So if you're really interested in getting the specifics you got to get yourself a pinless because
01:16:44
Speaker
Oh, well, I mean, don't quote me on that. From what I understand, the pinless are much more accurate than the pins because of, you know, you're you're reading all the way through the wood rather than or to the center of the wood rather than just where those pins can reach on the surface.
01:17:01
Speaker
So, yeah, like that book I talked about, I don't know, it was like 10, 15 episodes ago, the how was that called? So it's a Lost Art Press book. They break it down by region and state where you are and what the relative humidities are in the spring, the summer, the fall, the winter. And, you know, you can't just assume what
01:17:27
Speaker
what relative humidity your wood's at. You know, we get our wood in at whatever, it's maybe 8% when it comes from the kiln, then it sits outside, so it's gonna reach equilibrium again, it's back up at 12. But we don't know that, it could be at 11 or 13 or 14 or 9, we don't know. We kind of just do it by feel and by visually, you know, watching what's going on with the wood. But there's definitely a very scientific approach to it.
01:17:57
Speaker
There is. Like in the example in fine woodworking's article they were talking about like a 10 inch drawer face and they were talking about like five sixteenths of movement. Wow.
01:18:15
Speaker
That seems like a lot does because we generally go with like I would say like an eighth of a minute eighth of an inch like a strong 16th when we're we're Doing our drawer faces and doors and things like that, you know, sometimes an eighth depending on on where it's headed And we don't really get any callbacks for
01:18:39
Speaker
No, I mean we haven't had any since Green Street started. The only time I ever did anything in that regard where I had to go back a couple of times, I already knew I would from the onset.
01:18:55
Speaker
It was for Michelle and Carlos. It was like about 25 or 26 drawers in a built-in in their bedroom and they were all on wooden slides. No metal slides. Oh yeah, I could do that.
01:19:19
Speaker
So, you know, I said I'm gonna put it in and I'm gonna come back in a week I'm gonna let see what's going on because my shop was totally Unconditioned at the time so I knew you know in there, you know conditioned home things would shrink so I made everything really tight in the shop knowing that they would shrink up in their house and I went back two or three times with my hand plane and touched up to finish and
01:19:47
Speaker
After that, it was good. It was good to this day. So. Yeah, I think it's probably more important in the construction aspect than the fitment aspect, because you can't fix those things after the fact. So don't don't jam parts in there in the winter. I expect your piece to explode in the summertime.
01:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, even things like a glass, you know, you could break the glass panel if it fits too tight or something like that.
01:20:24
Speaker
So yeah, so the tips learn what you can about the science of wood movement, have a moisture meter. And then the experience of if you have things that you've built, monitor them, you know, if you can. Yeah, if if you don't have anything that's conditioned, try and get the wood in and out as quick as you can, like
01:20:54
Speaker
Yeah, remember most homes are going to be conditioned nowadays. It's going to be pretty dry.
01:21:02
Speaker
And in the odd circumstance, you know, maybe somebody's putting this on in a three season room or something like that. Take that into consideration on the other end. Things will expand and contract even more so than usual. All right. You want me to read the last question then? What is the ratio of time spent designing, redesigning to actual shop install time? That's John, Trinity Tradesman on Instagram.
01:21:35
Speaker
So is he asking us how accurate our estimate is? No, I think he means like how much time are we spending designing and how much time we spend on building. Oh, yeah. It's got to be like 100 to 1. I don't know. Yeah. Maybe 200 to 1. Yeah. I mean, we're pretty good at designing things quickly too. Yeah.
01:22:01
Speaker
I would say if we spent 10 hours on a design, that's a lot. Yeah. You know, 10 hours screen time behind the computer. So. And that's just one person at any job, you know, it's going to take us two weeks.
01:22:25
Speaker
Yeah, so it's like 10. That's well, that's not 100 to one, but it seems like it doesn't it, though? It's like selling more like 48, 160, 10, 16 to one. Yeah, that's probably closer to 20 to one. I mean, because most jobs don't take 10 hours. Yeah, not a two week job. Yeah, closer to like two hours. Yeah, like 10 hours of design time is almost like a kitchen.
01:22:53
Speaker
Yeah, and that's the worst case scenario like like the mantles and things like that. We do those in an hour. Because that's all really takes. Yeah, I mean, it's simple. So yeah, I would say minimum 20 to one. Yeah. And as high as 50, probably.
01:23:18
Speaker
Um, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. We're not making money when we're designing the most part. So we got to try and nail it on that first shot too. I mean, that's the thing. Yeah. Not spending a lot of redesign time.
01:23:35
Speaker
No, like when I do things, if I feel like I have two or three good alternates that are close, I'll do those all at the same time, you know, and have it right. Either in my back pocket or present it all at once. I was going to say, send it off. We got these three. Yeah. Well, you like something there? Not to say we don't spend time with revision, but we've gotten better at charging people for that now.
01:24:05
Speaker
All right. So what are our thoughts on the beer of the week? Another good one from Kitsuna. Yeah. This reminds me quite a bit. I wish I could do a side by side from last week. I got them upstairs. You want to have another beer? I'm a lightweight. This is my one beer. It was good. It's definitely a little bit boozy. You know, you could taste the alcohol, but it has that sort of like orange juice, grapefruit, grapefruit feels like. Yeah.
01:24:36
Speaker
What's good? Yeah, I like it. This is a quality brewery. Yeah. That's the thing. We've had three beers now, or is this two? Three.
Postal Service Antics
01:24:46
Speaker
It's three, and they're all super. Yeah. Yeah, I think we have another one coming. I don't know. Maybe the postal service botched that one, too. They're drinking it down at the post office right now. Probably. Yeah, it's that lady. She's smoking cigarettes inside again. Maybelline and what's her name? I don't even know.
01:25:04
Speaker
We can't ever remember a name, but Brenda now you always go to Brenda. It's not branded something like that. It's not our in it's Maureen Same thing. Yeah, I'm Brenda Maureen Maureen and Brenda at the post office right now They put the cult they don't try to be here on ice and you're drinking this now I
01:25:30
Speaker
You're not allowed to say that word anymore.
Patron Shoutouts and Episode Wrap-Up
01:25:36
Speaker
I give a big shout out to our Gold Tier patrons, Jerry Green and David Murphy, Manny Sirianni, Dustin Fayer, Adam Pothast, David Shoemaker, and Colin Lai. Thanks a lot, guys. Really appreciate it.
01:25:47
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I got to go to the bathroom. All right. That's what that beer will do to you. I know. Jeez. Well, we'll see you guys next week. Episode 37 next week. Seven. Yeah. Wow. Thanks for tuning in.
01:26:19
Speaker
Ain't no shame, but there's been a chain.