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The American Craftsman Podcast Ep. 27 | Let's Talk Proportion
45 Plays4 years ago
On Episode 27 of The American Craftsman Podcast, hosted by Greene Street Joinery, we give you some tips on incorporating pleasing proportions into your work.
Beer of the Week (Jersey Girl Mo Pils & Sun-Kissed Citra ): https://jerseygirlbrewing.com/beers
Tool of the Week: (Pica Colored Leads) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NDJ0B2M/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=greenestreetj-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B00NDJ0B2M&linkId=dd0da09a36e0dcac052a293620db5616
Greene Street Joinery is a custom design & build shop located in Monmouth County, New Jersey. We build multigenerational furniture with an eco-friendly and sustainable mindset.
Inspired and guided by the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, we believe in the use of traditional craftsmanship and simple, well-proportioned forms; sustainability and ethical practices; and importantly, taking pleasure in our work as craftsmen to create quality pieces of enduring value.
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Transcript
Podcast Milestones & Clubhouse Live Stream
00:00:17
Speaker
Ain't no shame but there's been a chain And we're live.
00:00:25
Speaker
Episode 27 of the American Craftsman Podcast. Yeah. We're over six months in now. I think this marks six months. Unbelievable. Yeah. Time has flown. Absolutely flown. And it's almost like spring today. Yeah. Yeah, we got the window open. We didn't eat outside today, but... We could have. Yeah, we could have. It would have been a little chilly, but just some just sharks leaves. Yeah.
00:00:51
Speaker
Hello to everybody out there on Clubhouse. We're live on Clubhouse as well. Something we've been doing for, uh, I think it's been a month now, which I find that hard to believe. I think this is the fourth, the fourth one. Cause we did, uh,
00:01:09
Speaker
Was with John on the first one? That was 24. I think it was. 24, 25, 26, 27. Yeah, it's the fourth week. Holy cow. Yeah. So hi, everybody down there. We'll open up the room to discussion here shortly. We still don't have a real concrete format as to how we're doing this, but...
Beer of the Week & Branded Merchandise
00:01:29
Speaker
No. Surprise. Surprise.
00:01:34
Speaker
So, Beer of the Week this week, we have some, let me put the glass out here so you guys can see, yeah, see it's pour. If you don't know, we have our own beer glasses now over on the website, greenstreetjoinery.com. You can get your own American Craftsman podcast glass and drink along with us. I see Andy down there. Andy's probably at work, so he's not having a beer, but maybe later.
00:02:00
Speaker
So we have some some leftover beer from last week with Tim. Yeah, was that last week? Yeah, it was So we're gonna try two different beers today. Mm-hmm They're both from Jersey girl brewing born and brewed in New Jersey established 2014 They're up in Hackettstown. So about an hour north of us. This is Mo pills
00:02:26
Speaker
Pilsner. Yeah, I was going to guess that's a Pilsner. A nod to our hometown of Mount Olive, Mo Pils is a golden, light bodied and slightly sweet lager that finishes with a spicy hop aroma and flavor. Enjoy fresh drink now. Jerseygirlbrewing.com. I like the artwork behind the logo there. Yeah. Little hot flowers, boyly.
00:02:48
Speaker
almost a tattoo-ish, you know, without the... Yeah, actually I have a... a big hot flower and some barley on my leg. Yeah. Gotta get the... I'm gonna get the sound poured into the glass. Like a Duff beer commercial on The Simpsons. Duff man. Ooh yeah. It's... It's literally not making a sound.
00:03:19
Speaker
I'm gonna tip that glass so you don't get all foam. There you go. That's some sound. Oh, yeah. Nice and chilly. Yeah. Cheers. Cheers indeed. Here's to all you out there. Yeah. That's good.
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think as it warms up outside, these get better and better. Yeah. Like a Pilsner is always an overlooked style for me. Like, uh, you know, it gets a bad rap because most of these, like American mackerel kind of beers are, are based off of Pilsner's. Um, but yeah, this is good. We had the Grosch. That was a good Pilsner. We won't talk too much about it, but it's, uh,
00:04:17
Speaker
It's like a good version of a standard beer. Yeah. That's so much crap. I got to find a spot to put my beer. Well, let's not waste any time. What do you got for a tool of the week this week?
Marking Tools for Woodworking
00:04:32
Speaker
Tool of the week. You know, it's not like we get new tools every week. Not every week.
00:04:40
Speaker
I don't know. The shots pretty tight, but can you see the stack of wood behind us? Yeah. So this week we started cutting up and milling some walnut for a job that's coming. It's going to start, you know, getting to the fabrication stages in the next day or two. And.
00:04:59
Speaker
The yellow pencil really comes in handy. So today's tool for the week is the humble yellow leaded pencil. And I also have the lumber crayon here. This is part of the pica set that Rich sent us. And it came with all sorts of colored leads.
00:05:22
Speaker
And the yellow lead just stands out on the wall that it really, really helps. Yeah, if you're watching on YouTube, you may be able to see some of the labeling here in the ends of the wall. It's not really in focus, but... Yeah, because what we do, how Jeff and I typically start a job is we have the drawings and then we lay out all the boards across the table saws and they're rough. So we're kind of using an educated guess on what they're going to look like. But we get their sizes.
00:05:50
Speaker
And I'll go through with the lumber crayon and and walk off and put a little designation on. Usually we go through the alphabet A through Z. Jeff Silver at the chop saw chopping them up and with a yellow pencil marking on the ends. So through each stage, we're transferring that that designation. So when it comes time to put these things together, we know where they go.
Shaper Usage & Tooling Advice
00:06:16
Speaker
I'm actually seeing two there that don't have a mark.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah, probably on the other end. That's why. Those are the ones that got ripped. Yeah, yeah, so the mark will be on the other end of it. But for anybody who hasn't tried different colored LEDs when you're marking out lumber, I would say, you know, give it a shot. It really makes life easier. You can't see a pencil mark on walnut to save your life. No, especially not on the end. You could write real big on the face, but when it's rough sawing, that's not going to be any good anyway.
00:06:46
Speaker
That's it. It's the humble pencil in yellow today. Yeah, that yellow lead worked nice on the ends there. And the peak is pretty good for writing on lumber because, you know, it's like a thick to a millimeter lead, right? And then there's the crayon, which works good on the super rough stuff.
00:07:05
Speaker
Yeah. I, uh, I'm not a fan of the Pico for like everyday use, but with the yellow lead for this, like it worked really well. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna, I mean, it came with some pretty soft lead and I've been using it, but, uh, I've been, you know, rounding over the tips so quickly. I might try it with a little bit of a harder lead. Um, and, uh, cause it's got a handy sharpener in the point, but, uh,
00:07:28
Speaker
There you go. Check it out. I put a link down in the description to, I guess, the Pika yellow lead. Yeah. Yeah. Like a lot of guys out there. I know Matt's down there in Clubhouse. He's got a Pika. Whatever you're running as far as pencil, I'm sure you could find some yellow lead for it. Yeah. Yeah. I have like point nine millimeter white lead.
00:07:50
Speaker
Yeah, but it's extremely soft. So it's you know, it's not really good for this stage. It's good for more in the finish stage, which by that point, not doing a lot of marking anyway. It's mostly pretty much set up with stop blocks and stuff.
00:08:08
Speaker
But the marking is critical for us. I mean, because there's, you know, there's 100 parts is other two thirds of it's over there. So we got to keep track of them all. So they all go back to the right spot because we're matching grain and color and all these other things. And so it's important.
Weather Talk & Mood Boost
00:08:30
Speaker
Matt's got his hand up. Let's let's bring him up. Maybe he's got a comment about the the Pika and the yellow lead.
00:08:42
Speaker
Welcome. Hey guys, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Giant Pica fan here. Hey Rob, so I know exactly what you're talking about because I actually got that kit almost the same time you guys did. I burned through that entire lead that it came with and I switched. Listen, you have in your possession the hard black lead. So go into that little, you know, that little black box that it came in.
00:09:14
Speaker
the
00:09:32
Speaker
There you go. The two color system is amazing. I can't advocate for it enough.
COVID-19 Vaccine Experience
00:09:40
Speaker
All right. I didn't even think of the red. That red could be good for definitely like when we, you know, we write on clipboards and stuff. So it'd be good to have things stand out, you know, very specific things. I like the red when we make edits on the drawings.
00:09:42
Speaker
fifth
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah, which inevitably happened. For sure. It's just my two cents. I'm glad you guys are enjoying the pencils because they are a treat. Yeah, man. Thank you. Thanks for the... I hit Matt up earlier. So we set up the Shaper. We didn't set it up. We went to use the Shaper for the first time today just to try it out.
00:10:24
Speaker
because we're getting ready to buy the tooling for the Dutch door that we're going to be building. Once this walnut job is done, we'll be jumping into that barn door. So we need to figure out where we're going to get the cutters from. So we're between Freeborn and Royce.
00:10:42
Speaker
Still trying to decide we've been talking directly with Royce about maybe trying to work out a little bit of a discount to try it out. It's an investment. Yeah, they were talking $1,800, which is like half the price of the Shaper.
00:11:03
Speaker
So, yeah, we're still trying to decide. So we just we put in a bit there today just to because we're like we're going to spend eighteen hundred bucks. We haven't even tried to see. So Matt is our resident shaper expert. Yeah, we we and Craig's down there. Craig's our steam bending guru. Matt's our shaper guru. They are Yoda's. Yeah. So I sent him a couple of videos asked about, you know, running the bit in reverse. So, I mean, for our first go, I've never run a spindle shaper before.
00:11:33
Speaker
I've run router tables and stuff, but I mean a nice cut, beautiful, glassy, single pass, full half inch by, I mean, what do you say, inch and a half? Yeah, yeah, easy.
00:11:47
Speaker
So we used a panel raising bit because that's all we really have right now. We have a one shaker coping stick set, which is a three-quarter spindle, but we have just this panel raising bit for the inch and a quarter spindle. Worked out great. Yeah, started up sounding like a jet plane. Yeah, I wasn't nervous until I turned the machine on and then, ooh.
Excitement for Post-Pandemic Meetups
00:12:11
Speaker
It's loud. I mean, that thing displaces a lot of air. Yeah, that's a six inch six inch diameter by, you know, three quarter inch thick chunk of steel flying around. But yeah, I'm looking forward to using the Shaper. Yeah, hopefully getting a power feeder.
00:12:32
Speaker
You know, the gripe of the week, I'm not sure if I should be talking about the gripe of the week. We should keep it under wraps and move on. Is it that over there? Yeah.
00:12:43
Speaker
Yeah, probably our best interest to not. We do have a gripe. Yeah, we got a big gripe, but in the interest of, I don't know what we call it. Yeah, just remaining civil. Yes, we will. We will move on to and revisit maybe the un-gripe of the week, which is this beautiful weather we're having today. Yeah. You know, it's hard to gripe every week.
00:13:11
Speaker
I saw a meme it's like what did it say it was like yeah seasonal depressive seasonal effective disorder is fake until it's like 60 degrees in March and I feel like I popped a Molly
00:13:30
Speaker
That's right. Like, guarantee my wife's going to be in the best mode today. You have to watch. Oh boy, I feel alive. Oh, Jack made it in. What's up, Jack? Jack Thornton? Yeah, it's like, it's like four or five a.m. in Australia right now.
00:13:46
Speaker
Come on in, Jack. Jack's up to work out. Good for him. Yeah. Thanks, Jack. That's awesome. Of course, somebody's calling me from Keyport. God knows who it is. Yeah. So we're having like the second day in a row of like real spring like weather, which is... Yeah.
00:14:06
Speaker
It's nice. I mean, if you live in the Northeast, when you get a few early spring days, you just soak it in. Yeah, I went outside yesterday for lunch. Rob was actually he was getting his first COVID vaccine shot. I'm one shot in on the Pfizer and I'm feeling alive. Yeah, I'm due for my second two weeks from tomorrow.
00:14:31
Speaker
But yeah, so I went outside and I ate my lunch and I just sat there and got a little sunlight on the eyelids, get some vitamin D. And it was nice, felt good. Definitely had more energy at the end of the day.
00:14:45
Speaker
This is going to come at a good time. The weather is going to break and we'll both be in it, you know, another month now or so. We'll be able to open the gates up for all our guests to come back. Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully we can do a little bit of a meetup. Yeah. Yeah. We've I mean, we've been talking about it for like a year now.
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, everybody's probably chomping at the bit. Yeah, getting together with, you know, everybody from the podcast and Instagram and now Clubhouse, you know, anybody that'd be close enough or willing to, you know, travel to. Yeah. We were talking about maybe using somewhere around Willie's location, weren't we? Was that close when we were talking to somebody from up north?
00:15:29
Speaker
I don't remember. There was somebody that was maybe more centrally located, the Northerners and the Southerners. But anyway, that's cool. Oh man, that phone call I was getting was about my warranty that's going to expire. Not your auto warranty. Oh geez. I'm going to have to stop the podcast. They'll call back.
00:15:50
Speaker
I can talk to a live specialist now. Or be placed on our do not call list. Yeah, I've tried that. I've tried that. Yeah, that's just that's just a way to get you on the phone. Yeah. Well, got a decent amount of questions this week. Yeah, better get into it. Yeah.
Woodworking Adaptations for Disabilities
00:16:08
Speaker
You want to take this first one? This from Ira Jan. Ira Jan.
00:16:14
Speaker
I don't even remember what Ira Jant's real name is. Is it? El Rajan. Yeah. But I destroyed his name so much that he's given in to Ira Jant. He's asking what adaptations? Man, it's only half a beer. For woodworkers, what disabilities have you encountered? So, personally, I've not encountered any adaptations. I've seen
00:16:40
Speaker
amazing, amazing stuff. You know, blind woodworkers, folks, you know, in chairs and things like that with limited mobility. It's, it's amazing what the human spirit and will can overcome.
00:17:00
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think we've all seen like the videos of like a grifter with no arms playing guitar. I mean, that's insane. And playing well. Just with their feet. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't either seen anything specific.
00:17:23
Speaker
And the spam is like it just comes flowing in as soon as the podcast starts. I mean, my computer. Yeah, I haven't seen anything in person. And Ira Jan was telling me, you know, like I have back problems. So that's why he was curious. Yeah, things like, you know, changing the work surface height. Right. If you're in a wheelchair, obviously you can't work at a bench that's 30, 33 inches tall.
00:17:50
Speaker
Right. Or you might need, you know, a different leg set up so you can roll up under it. Yeah. Similar to like the ADA stuff that we encounter when we're doing bathrooms, especially. Yep. Um, yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of.
00:18:07
Speaker
crazy fixtures and stuff that people use. What about that sauce? Lock set. The ultra latch. Yeah. Yeah. So we did that little thing with sauce and John Peters and they sent us a couple of their ultra latch, which is a it's a really cool doorknob in that you can either push it or pull it and it opens. So it's like a it's almost like a Hearst style shifter is like. Right. Right. That's what a nice big. Yeah. That's like what they designed.
00:18:36
Speaker
Um, so it's like super, super ADA compliant. Anybody could open that door. Even if you have no hand, you can bump it with a hip. Yeah. Um, and actually now the weather's nice enough where you could probably put it on. Yeah. Yeah. We'll have to get a deadbolt. That's it.
00:18:55
Speaker
So we haven't encountered anything woodworking wise, but as far as like work services and things like that, we've done a bunch of stuff in homes and especially in commercial applications where ADA compliance, it's sort of a bleed over.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, I've had to go in and alter things that other companies have built that weren't ADA compliant and bring them into compliance. Yeah, yeah. I remember in the restaurant business in New York, in the 80s, you know, because frequently put small restaurants and pubs in these
00:19:35
Speaker
spaces that didn't either have a restaurant in it beforehand. And then you had to bring all these little tiny bathrooms up to code, which is not just the 36 inch doorway, but a wheelchair has to be able to spin around on the inside. Yeah, the heights of all the different things. Yeah, so that was a big deal in the 80s as this boom was happening.
00:20:01
Speaker
And I think those laws were just going into effect, too, and being sort of adhered to pretty strictly. Yeah, if you guys have anything specific, maybe head over to the YouTube channel and leave a comment.
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah, it might be like Braille measuring devices, a ruler or I don't know, Braille tape. I haven't ever seen one, but that would be interesting. Yeah. I actually saw a thing like in Japan, cans have Braille on the top so that blind people don't mistake like alcohol for non-alcoholic beverages.
00:20:38
Speaker
When I was an RA, in the summer session, I had a blind student. And you always had to know if you had somebody on the floor, because they'd have the fire drills and the alphabet, something happened, you gotta go down and make sure that everything was cool.
00:20:57
Speaker
And it was, I mean, I was blown away all the time at how much this kid could accomplish. Yeah. Makes you feel a little bit humbled and guilty forever complaining. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, yeah, we take it for granted. That's right. All right. So let's move on. Let's go down south.
Furniture Style Trends
00:21:18
Speaker
Yeah. Mississippi folk want nothing but cheap farmhouse furniture. How do I get away from it?
00:21:25
Speaker
That's from Luke Brown's custom craft on Instagram. That's easy, Luke. Just move. We feel your pain, Luke, but, you know, in a sideways kind of way, because up here for the longest time, it was white painted shaker. It still is. Yeah. And before that, there was the distressed oak with that kind of
00:21:49
Speaker
white, washy. Yeah, that's the ways, you know, people see these things on Instagram and Pinterest or these home reno shows and they they want it because it's easier than thinking outside the box.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You know, this is the day and age of images and keeping up with the Jones. Well, I mean, it's always been keeping up with the Joneses, but now it's very easy to see an exact thing that you want to copy. So, yeah, that's a roost oak and that and, you know, white shaker with gray walls that's headed your way, Luke. So just
00:22:35
Speaker
That'll be the upscale look for the, you know, as the Mississippians move up away from the.
00:22:43
Speaker
That's what happens in the Northeast and in, you know, the West Coast, like things happen. And then they spread, you know, as farmhouse furniture was declining here, was getting popular in Mississippi. And as the shaker, white shaker and Syroost white oak becomes less popular, it's going to move its way out from here. And I don't know what is going to be the next thing here, but yeah, farmhouse chic. So, you know, maybe it might be cool to start
00:23:11
Speaker
pushing the stuff that's, you know, kind of fading and losing steam here, down there, get ahead of the curve down there on on the Saroo's. Yeah, the white painted shaker. Yeah, with the Internet now, I'm sure it's it's it's not as slow of a transition as it used to be. Because I mean, I see that stuff everywhere now, I guess, but yeah.
00:23:35
Speaker
But I mean, we run into the same problem just as people want a different style. Yeah. And I mean, we just keep hammering away at what we think is good design and what we think is quality and timeless and all these other things.
00:23:53
Speaker
Sometimes, you know, we have to make compromises and, you know, blend styles and things like that, which isn't, you know, it is what it is. Yeah. But just keep at it, you know, keep pushing in the direction that you'd like to go. And eventually you'll get a few takers.
00:24:13
Speaker
Yeah. And I when I was writing this up this morning, what I thought is, you know, like leverage the Internet. And and like I know guys like while Willie really started out selling on Etsy. So you can get some furniture up there like stuff that you like to build. That's not farmhouse furniture. You know, you might get some traction there.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Maybe even include some photos from the net that are sort of emblematic of what you want to build and say, look, this stuff is really happening in these other areas. I'm not trying to sell you a bill of goods. But stick to your guns, man.
00:24:55
Speaker
What's next? All right. Parallelogram. How come I'm getting all the hard words?
Jointer Comparisons: Parallelogram vs. Traditional
00:25:01
Speaker
Parallelogram jointer verse traditional jointer and spiral head verse helical head. That's from Windswell Woodworks on Instagram. What do you think Jeffrey?
00:25:15
Speaker
Well, I mean the first one's easy. Yeah, so basically he's asking the advantages or disadvantages. The advantage of a parallelogram joiner is it's much easier to adjust.
00:25:31
Speaker
Excuse me. The old dovetailed or wedge, I guess, joiners, they call them, you know, you have to shim them. Yeah. Which is not easy. You know, you're dealing with heavy cast iron parts that are, you know, made it together very precisely. But those are bulletproof. Yeah. Set it and forget it. That's what we have.
00:25:54
Speaker
Yeah, well, yeah, I'm saying the traditional. Parallelogram joiners, if it's a cheaper one, may not be as reliable in the long term just because it's not as robust of a setup. It's easy to adjust, but it's not quite as solid.
00:26:10
Speaker
In terms of Spyro versus Helical, I don't have any experience with Helical, just Spyro, so I can't speak to the advantages or disadvantages of that. Yeah, you know, now what's the Shelix? What is that? Is that some kind of... That's a Spyro. Yeah.
00:26:28
Speaker
I think that there anytime you're going to those that little four square cutter It's such an improvement from the straight knife that I don't think you can go wrong there. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I shouldn't say that all she looks are spiral. I don't know if they may make helical ours is a spiral. Mm-hmm
00:26:50
Speaker
So yeah, I guess the difference is a helical, it's one continuous line that goes all the way around. Our spiral is on the joiner. I think it's like four rows that span 45 degrees of the circle. So they start at one point and they spiral around 45 degrees before another row starts.
00:27:17
Speaker
Yeah, if anybody out there knows has experience with a helical and a spiral, I'd love to know. Yeah, I'm curious if there's an advantage. I've not even seen one up close.
00:27:29
Speaker
the helical yeah I don't think so I've seen like helical straight I don't know how you like those flush cutters uh yeah like they make like planer cutters that are like that where it's a single edge but it's helical oh yeah like for like a power planer like the old Porter cable
00:27:53
Speaker
What the hell's it called? If you hang a lot of doors, you know what I'm talking about? It's a big long power planer with a fence on it that you can put your bevels on doors and it has like a helical head on it. Anybody out there in the clubhouse have anything to say on this? I mean, that's a pretty big community. Somebody might know. Yeah. If you do, raise your hand. We'll move on to the next question. All right. This one comes in from YouTube.
Supply Mishaps in the Workshop
00:28:20
Speaker
Hal Den on YouTube.
00:28:23
Speaker
What's something that you usually run out of when you need it the most in the shop? I mean, glue, sanding discs, etc. Also, has a tool ever died on you when you needed it most? Well, we're usually pretty well stocked up in all of the accessories, like screws, glue, sandpaper, wheat. I can't remember running out of anything like that, but
00:28:48
Speaker
We were just, I needed to make 15 cuts to resaw some oak. And I used to have a whole series of bandsaw blades hanging up. And I neglected to look to see if I had extra blades for resawing. And about three quarters of the way through the very first cut, the blade snapped.
00:29:14
Speaker
Yep, and I went on Amazon actually because, you know, we needed something quick. There's nowhere local that we can get a bandsaw blade. And we got screwed on the delivery. So we kind of were down about almost four days. Yeah.
00:29:32
Speaker
One thing I do remember is when so we have the the saw stop right here next to me and then caddy cornered to that is the the Unisaw. We used to have that Unisaw where this is and a five horsepower Unisaw there with the dado dado blade on it. Oh, that's right. I was in the middle of making. I forget, was it the was it the cherry barn door? I don't know.
00:30:01
Speaker
I was running, yeah, it was a bar, it was one of the barn doors. Yeah. I'm running dados in a barn door parts and the phase converter. Right that started to die. It would, it would shut the saw off. I'd have to wait like a minute and then I could get it back running and then it would shut off again. That had a three phase motor on it. And we had one of those, not like one of those really big phase converters, but one of the small little boxes. Yeah.
00:30:26
Speaker
Yeah, not like a big rotary phase converter. I don't know what they call those. I don't know either. Came with the saw. We bought it used. Yeah, I remember that. That thing that was down for quite a while. Yeah. Yeah. And then we bought the saw stuff. Yeah. So it seems our our cutting devices have been. Yeah. No problem. Letting us down.
00:30:55
Speaker
Did we talk about that on the Patreon? I think so. We got a lot of venting to do. Yeah, we got secrets to spill over on Patreon. Here's one from Chris.
Lumber Selection Criteria
00:31:08
Speaker
What do you look for when picking out lumber, tight grain, or anything like that? That's C. Dubrisky on Instagram.
00:31:15
Speaker
That's a good question. Well, when we get the lumber in, we order FAS. And if it's walnut, we have to order black walnut because I don't know when this began, but walnuts got its own separate little grading categories.
00:31:35
Speaker
So you have to really get black walnut, which has a premium price attached to it. Yeah, that's just the name that O'Shea is using. Right, right. I don't think it's technically different. It's all, yeah, it's all black walnut is just what our supplier calls their extra premium walnut. To get walnut that looks like walnut instead of. Yeah. Instead of like butternut. Yeah.
00:32:03
Speaker
So we order the highest grade that they have and it comes in rough. We bring it in. And as we were speaking of at the top of the podcast, we go through the rough lumber and we kind of have an idea what it's going to look like even while it's rough. So we have to use the size and we look for defects like knots and we chalk it out, so to speak.
00:32:32
Speaker
And if it's something that we're going to be doing where lots of parts are going to be next to each other and we want them to mate up, that's where the labeling comes in. We'll try and get those out of the same boards or fold back. There's all kinds of ways to match within a board. You have something to add there? Yeah, like you said, we're not necessarily going and picking out lumber from a lumber yard. We're just getting it delivered.
00:33:05
Speaker
Parting it out, whatever you would say. When we're selecting what boards are going to become what parts, we're looking for certain things. For door parts, we're looking for straight grain. If it's something that has a curve in it, you want some grain that has some curve in it so that it's following the shapes that you're putting into it. Door panels, that's a chance to use some more of the distinctive pieces.
00:33:22
Speaker
When we're selecting lumber for parts, when we're
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah, you're not going to take a board that, you know, you can tell when a board has some curl in it, you're not going to take a curly board and cut it into door parts. No, because you're going to be interrupting all this green. Yeah, all that figure runs off the the outer edges of it doesn't really look that good. Yep. So yeah, that's what we look for very part specific grain selection.
00:33:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question because I think it's oftentimes overlooked when you're starting out. Like that's something you come to recognize as you've made a few pieces and you say, oh, you know, wouldn't this look better if, you know, the grain was running in the direction of the pot? Yeah.
00:34:11
Speaker
For example, like we have the that cherry piece is still here. Luke is working on taking out residents. He's working on the hinges for us. It has these Gothic arch panels and we tried to get Cathedral in the center of those panels so that it followed the Gothic arch of the of the panel. Right. So you might want to trim off both edges of a board, maybe a little bit more off one side than the other.
00:34:38
Speaker
So that, you know, the the woods natural design is is where you want it. Yep. Yeah. Good question.
Safety Debate: Gloves and Machinery
00:34:45
Speaker
See Debrisky on Instagram. Oh, this is Andy's question. Andy's there listening live. Andy C. Andy C. Makes on Instagram. Is this going to be juicy? No, no, no. OK. Because I see a coworker. I didn't. All right. Your secretary.
00:35:04
Speaker
A coworker and I were having a debate about wearing gloves when operating machines. The argument's about the fear of the glove sucking your digits into the machine. That sounds grisly. I get that point and I'm not sure if the SawStop works if you have gloves on. I don't want to find out. I like wearing those tighter neoprene gloves because I find pushing or gripping the materials better. What do you think?
00:35:30
Speaker
Jeff, you're a glove wearer. Yeah, I like to wear those same sort of gloves, like a knit glove with a neoprene or nitrile, whatever. I stopped wearing them on the jointer because I feel like that's probably the highest risk operation for wearing a glove.
00:35:50
Speaker
A table saw, I don't think there's any risk. Things don't really get sucked into table saws. If you've ever seen Matthias Wandel on YouTube, like he tried to, he rigged up a thing trying to get a shirt sleeve to get sucked into the saw and he couldn't do it. Not saying that that proves it's not possible, but I have my doubts about the table saw.
00:36:13
Speaker
The like the planer and the bandsaw pretty low risk if you yeah, if you stick your hand into the planer you're screwed no matter what
00:36:21
Speaker
The glove is... You gotta put your hand way into the player. You have other problems if you're doing that. Yeah. And the bandsaw, no risk with the glove. I will say with the saw stop, some gloves do, like if on the saw stop, if you touch the blade, there's a status light down here. If you're watching, you can see where I'm pointing. You can see a green light. Let me move this mic a little bit. You can see the green light. Now watch when I touch the blade.
00:36:53
Speaker
There's a red light blinking. That says that it's detected a completed circuit. Or something to that effect. It's detecting a conductive substance touching the blade. So if you were wearing gloves, what I meant to say, some gloves, if you touch it, it'll go off. But like we tried it with the rubber gloves the other day and it didn't. But the thing is,
00:37:18
Speaker
So you're wearing rubber gloves and you put your hand into the blade, it's gonna cut through the glove, and the second it touches your skin, it's gonna go off. It's the same exact protection. Right. It just detects a conductive surface, so when it goes through whatever that non-conductive surface is, it's gonna then, as soon as it touches your skin, realize that the brake is gonna engage. Yeah, so there's no additional risk
00:37:48
Speaker
Um, if you feel safer because of your grip, I would say that's, that's the route to go. Yeah. Yeah. I like wearing gloves. I feel like I get better grip and, um, you know, it just saves you from those little dings and dents and splinters. You see my hands, you'll know I'm a non-glove. Rob spends a lot of tweezer time. Then band aids. There's always blood around the shop.
00:38:14
Speaker
Yeah, I smashed my elbow on a corner of a walnut board this morning. Those little, those little cuts that are all over. You know what I've taken to and I might bring it out as tool of the week. One, one day is my little liquid bandage. Oh yeah. The brain. Oh, Jack's not in here anymore. He probably, we were born him to death. He went back to sleep.
00:38:45
Speaker
Oh, do you guys have a vacuum press? Jack wants to know. We do not. I would I would love to have one. But we haven't haven't had a commission yet that really called for it. So until that day comes, that's typically how we operate on on big things that, you know, maybe won't get used every day. Yeah.
00:39:07
Speaker
Yeah, like the Dutch door, for example, you know, we sell like a $7,500 door and then we buy a $4,000 shaper and a $2,000 worth of tooling and a $1,000 worth of oak. That's why your son's going to have to forge a bed for himself. Yeah. Oh, my God.
00:39:30
Speaker
We're not saving anything for Paul Hunter. Not yet. Not yet. But we're working on it. It's a good one for Matt.
Travel Willingness for Work
00:39:39
Speaker
He's out in England.
00:39:42
Speaker
Matt says, how far from home do you guys generally work? My furthest so far has been a 700 mile round trip to fit a set of wardrobes we made for a local client with a holiday apartment in St. Ives in the UK. Set off at 4am and got home around 11pm. I try to stay within an hour's travel if it's more than a day of fitting, but Facebook and Instagram are bringing in inquiries from much further afield. Matt Richardson, Architectural Woodwork on Instagram.
00:40:12
Speaker
That's a good question. Yeah. We'll go as far as anybody's willing to, you know, pay us. I'll say it sounds a little bit crude to put it that way. But typically for us, because we want to be paid for our time, it's going to price us out of the job because, yeah, if if somebody wants us to
00:40:34
Speaker
spend two days traveling, we're going to have to put that into the job. And then we're gonna have to sleep somewhere, etc, etc. So it's gonna add a burden of cost that a local guy is just not going to have. Yeah, like we, we bid those doors up in Nantucket. It was like the doors were like 10k and the install was like 4000 because we have to take
00:40:57
Speaker
We got to drive eight hours and then get on a ferry and then do the install. And then, you know, that's going to take so that's a whole day. It's just getting there. Then we have to do the install. Well, then it's too late to go home. I'm sorry. I mean, I'm not going to learn to all for that. I'm going to put all night or for you for free. No. OK, we're going to stay over and then we got to drive home the next day. So it's three days plus, you know, travel expenses, gas, all that stuff.
00:41:23
Speaker
I'd say most of our work is within a half hour of here and then we go maybe an hour and a half. But yeah, like you said, we'll go as far as you want. You want us to come to California, then we'll come. I've worked in Princeton and in Jersey City and Hoboken and those.
00:41:44
Speaker
Um, Princeton's a little bit closer, um, time wise, but to get up into Hoboken and Jersey City, you're talking about an hour and a half drive. And then there's the difficulty in parking. There's no place to park trucks and things like that. So it's a huge, huge, um, liability. Like the, the jobs I did up in those areas,
00:42:11
Speaker
You'll have to schedule when you can get into the loading dock, schedule elevator time, then you unload your truck. Then there's no place to put your truck. You gotta go find a place and a lot of the lots won't take a big truck.
00:42:28
Speaker
It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big headache. Yeah. I mean, that's why, you know, when Tim was here last week and he was talking about the first time he worked in Brooklyn and the builder came to him and said, yeah, you know, I got this thing for you in Brooklyn. He's like, no, I'm not going. Yeah, it's a. Yeah, it's just a big headache. Right. So I'd like to pull up to the house, pull into the driveway and then walk in the door.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah. And, um, you know, we, as you see, we don't, we're not looking to get rich. So I mean, it'd be nice, but not going to happen. But, but we, we put a few things ahead of that. So like, you know, we want to start at a reasonable time. We don't want to disrupt.
00:43:11
Speaker
lives in a crazy way just Yeah, I mean every now and then is fine as long as as it's being worked into the job. Yes You know, I'm certainly not gonna leave the shop at 5 a.m And only start paying myself at 8 and just it doesn't work that way We can't afford to do that because we could take a job where we'll get paid, right? I
00:43:33
Speaker
You know for all our time. That's that's really the bottom line if if we had no work at all and somebody offered us this job We would do it. We do it, but it doesn't make any sense to to give somebody a discount for us to travel Yeah, yeah, I mean there's plenty of guys out there working. You know 80-hour weeks. We know one of them
00:43:56
Speaker
And it's not helping everyone else because you're still basing it on a week, but you're working 80 hours. So everybody else's prices, your personal life suffers, your relationship stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 40 hours is, is funny. Yeah. So that's it. That's a, another interesting topic of discussion. I mean, how people schedule their, their jobs and their lives and where they find that balance. Yeah.
00:44:24
Speaker
Alright, you want to move on to Jerry? Yeah, how you doing on the beer? You want to try the next one? Yeah, let's start pouring that second beer out. Jerry's question, I'll grab it. Jerry's one of our patrons. Thank you, Jerry. He's GA Woodshop on Instagram. When you rough cut the stock before milling, how much extra are you adding to account for snipe?
Managing Snipe in Stock Cutting
00:44:44
Speaker
Well, Jerry, we don't really we try not to produce tonight. And part of that is getting the machines tuned up and and we it's it's amazing how you'll hear about it, Jerry. You will hear about it. Topical. These questions can be.
00:45:05
Speaker
So we're really looking like if I'm marking out the lumber and there's a 27 and a half inch part, I'm going to at most give Jeff a 30 inch cut.
00:45:21
Speaker
So really not much at all. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm marking the lumber where I feel like we're going to miss knots and any kind of defect. And I'm, I'm picking out where I want the grain to, you know, begin and end. So I'm, I'm really figuring on not a lot.
00:45:40
Speaker
Yeah, for me it depends. It depends on what the size of the board is and what the size of the parts are. That's another thing, yeah. If there's gonna be six inches of waste and it's two parts, I'm gonna add three inches to both of those parts. And it also depends on what the part is gonna be. If it's gonna be a countertop, I'm gonna be more inclined to leave some extra for snipe because
00:46:07
Speaker
You know, you don't want to have snipe running across this whole thing and it's just going to get sanded. Like if it's a door, it's not a big deal because the door is going to get assembled and then sanded. Like the whole thing is going to get sanded. The joints are going to get sanded flush if they're not perfect, which they never are.
Design Proportions & Techniques
00:46:25
Speaker
So, yeah, it depends a lot on the size of the board and the part. That's that's true. That's a critical thing. Like, I'll usually come in about two inches off the end if if the end looks, quote unquote, perfect, like no checks. And then I'll start measuring and walking on. There's like you say, six inches left. Well, then you can kind of stretch everything out a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm a little more generous than you are. You know, no fault.
00:46:55
Speaker
Yeah, we go in the the next yeah, we got a Jersey Jersey girl son kissed Citra India pale ale Smells nice
00:47:08
Speaker
uh what's our next question here it's from another patron miles miles thompson out in australia as well with uh with jack i'm not sure not sure what uh area miles is in i think i think jack's near perth i don't know if they're close to one another but the furthest city away from uh us yeah um i struggle a bit with proportions for furniture i have some books that i use for reference that help a lot
00:47:34
Speaker
Do you like a more calculated approach like the golden ratio or is it by eye if it looks right? Sorry, or is or is by eye if it looks right. Good enough. Any tips for miles eat drink wine guy on Instagram. That's a that's a good question. The golden ratio is a really almost a fail safe and it doesn't have to be exact.
00:48:01
Speaker
but it's a great place to start. That's always my first place to start. And after all these years, you kind of know, like, oh, 49, all right, let's bring this in at 26 and see what... And if it looks right, it is right. And the Greeks proved that with the Parthenon. Right? If it looks straight, it is straight.
00:48:31
Speaker
experience is a great guide and that's what you know the golden ratio is some weird element in nature but it's also what's been used time and time again for
00:48:46
Speaker
Hundreds and hundreds of years. It just looks right and maybe part of that is because it's been used so often and we're used to it but I think It appears so much in nature and in a human body like a Vitruvian man proves that out as well The da Vinci's Vitruvian man, you know the guy in the circle in the human face The Nautilus it's it's just something that
00:49:13
Speaker
It's harmonious. Those proportions have balance and harmony. Yeah, there's something sort of mystical about it. Yeah, I mean, Rob is certainly, you know, more experienced in design than me. But one book I read, yeah, it's nice and cold. One book I read that was good, a good reference for proportion was by Hound and I.
00:49:41
Speaker
You may have heard of By Hand and I, which is a really famous book. By Hound and I is sort of like a comic strip take on it. And they talk about the different types of proportion and layout. I forget the names like where you have like a like a one three one and the different.
00:50:01
Speaker
What's the word I'm looking for? The different ratios? Yeah, like different ratios of design of, you know, there's different names for the different, you know, different ratios. Yeah, and you can use it in the inverse if you wanted something to stand out for a specific reason.
00:50:22
Speaker
So I would say practice. I'm not sure what you use, Miles, for your design work. If it's like when I started for years and years, I worked purely with pencil on a drafting board.
00:50:38
Speaker
But if you have the ability to start working with something like Fusion 360, a free version of SketchUp, any of those things will help you see in real life what you're designing. And it'll happen quickly, I think. Yeah.
00:50:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's all trial and error. If you're just getting started, just draw something and digest it for a little bit, take a look at it and then make a tweak. Does it look better? Does it look worse? And then you'll get a feel for
00:51:15
Speaker
an uncalculated feel for these proportions. We don't even have to talk about measuring anything, just draw it. And then if it looks good, you can go back and find out what those ratios are. Yeah, and sometimes what I was going to say, I completely flew out of my head.
00:51:38
Speaker
Shocker. I have no idea what I was going to say. Have you seen that can? I won't get it. There have been times where
00:51:55
Speaker
like in a large kitchen where there are like let's say two walls of cabinets that join in a corner as the as the width of the doors themselves changes whether they diminish or expand I will adjust the size of the styles ever so slightly and that's what I was going to say that sometimes a small dimension like a quarter of an inch
00:52:26
Speaker
can make a huge difference like let's say you're going with three and a half inch styles but as you get towards this corner cupboard where the door might only be let's say 13 and a half inches or something if you bring those styles down to three and a quarter it helps the panel appear bigger and you don't notice it
00:52:45
Speaker
And it just it looks right. It looks better. Yeah, it looks squashed otherwise. Right. Right. Because the proportion of the width of the cabinet to the style is also that's, you know, something to consider. Right. Like you don't make a cabinet that's 48 inches wide with one door. It looks silly. As much as you may have a designer or a cabinet maker present you with a drawing with this or or a 70 inch tall door. It'll be cheaper that way, right? Yeah.
00:53:17
Speaker
And I guess maybe some people think it looks okay, but yeah, we got just we got two doors there 60 inches by 14 inches And we've we've yeah, we've been presented these drawings from people like Designers not just people these are people with the you know credentials after their name supposed credentials
00:53:42
Speaker
So practice, Miles. And you know what? Study the experts. We didn't invent any of this stuff. We read books and we learned from the masters who came before us. And that's what you do. You're gonna learn less from Instagram and Pinterest and more from checking out a few books out of the library on what the masters did because they stood on the shoulders of the people before them too.
00:54:12
Speaker
Yeah, and if you draw something, shoot it over an email, you got an email. Yeah, that'd be cool. Let's take a look.
00:54:18
Speaker
It comes another question from Luke.
Bandsaw Setup for Resawing
00:54:22
Speaker
He's a Cal builds on Instagram. He's up in Brooklyn and he's on Clubhouse as well. Yeah, not on right now, but he said tell me about the bandsaw set up. What's the deal with the blue extrusion? So that's he's referencing a story put up a story we put up. Rob was resawing some white oak.
00:54:42
Speaker
Yeah, that that blue extrusion is what we use to resaw. What it is, it's like it's a curved surface and that's what I use as the guide. I set the thickness to the, you know, the middle of the bandsaw blade to the high point in the curve of that piece and then push it through by hand, you know, carefully guiding. It's not because there's so much drift in a bandsaw. Yeah.
00:55:13
Speaker
We don't have anything set up where it's like totally perfect for resawing with a like a wide blade where we set the fence, we got this tall fence. Yeah, it's like a steering wheel for a for a bandsaw that isn't set up to like cut veneer. Right, right. You know, yeah, like a lot of guys that make shop veneers, they have that big tall eight inch or 10 inch
00:55:37
Speaker
fence, which you better have that thing set up, otherwise it's going to drift all over the place. This lets you steer a little bit. It's a pivot point. That's exactly it. It's a pivot point and it takes a little bit of skill, which isn't a lot. I would say you just have to have the time behind the wheel on that thing because it's like driving a trail. It's like driving a trailer.
00:56:02
Speaker
A little over correction and you're in trouble. Yeah, like what you do now is gonna happen in 10 seconds. Right, so I picked that thing up for 20 bucks a long time ago. It's blue so you know it's from Rockler. So Rockler sells that as like a re-sawing thing? Yes, yes, and I put it on that block of wood so that it fits on my fence. I don't know how they figured you'd use it.
00:56:28
Speaker
And it works great, you know, because it's it's super fast and it doesn't tie up the saw for any other, you know, exclusive use. Yep. I have been seeing sawblades.com, which somebody was telling me.
00:56:47
Speaker
Forgot who it was. Somebody in Clubhouse, they just got a nice carbide blade from them and it was good. They sell a, like a bearing, what do they call it? Like a bandsaw rebuild kit, all made in the USA and it's supposed to make it cut real nice. Yeah. I mean, those guide bearings make a big difference. Yeah. Yeah. Setting up a bandsaw is an art. And if you don't, like we do,
00:57:13
Speaker
We don't do a lot of re-sawing. When we do re-sawing, we do a lot of it, but we don't always do it because most typically the doors are small enough where they don't need to be book matched, at least as of late. But... We had to do all that re-sawing for that... For the Yeti steam bent chase lounges. But yeah, Mag Switch also makes a similar thing that has bearings. I like the look of that. Plus it's taller. Yep.
00:57:42
Speaker
Um, the thing that, you know, like the way we have it set up, it really, we should have like a tall feather board, but I just have a feather board at the bottom that holds the base down. And then I just use my hand and I to keep the top straight. And it's, you know, it's passable. I could get away with, you know, a 16th of an inch extra to the plane off, but I'm not making veneers on that. No.
00:58:10
Speaker
But yeah, with a little time, it could be set up.
00:58:15
Speaker
So that's the low down on the blue extrusion. It's our resaw setup. And this is Andy C. This is like a two questions in one from two different people. Okay. So it's Andy C makes and be, how do you say that? Great. Yeah. Oh yeah. Be great. Yeah. G R E Y T on YouTube.
CNC Machines in Woodworking
00:58:37
Speaker
What are your thoughts on digital fabrication and what are your general thoughts on CNC?
00:58:44
Speaker
Well, we've talked about this at length. We don't have anything against CNC. No. I'd say for the most part, it's not for us. We certainly have things come up in jobs where CNC is the right way to go about it, like carvings in the jobs that we've done for churches.
00:59:07
Speaker
You know, these are expensive jobs as it is and you want to add in like $20,000 worth of carvings. It's going to become inaccessible. So the only way to do it is to, you know, cut the cost by 200% and go with a CNC cut card.
00:59:27
Speaker
You know, CNC is it's one of those things where you kind of have to be all in. Yes. It's a it's a big investment. It's a big time investment. And, oh, yeah, giant space investment. And in New Jersey, where real estate is at a premium, it's tough to justify the cost if you're not going to be using it on a regular basis. For example, this job with the walnut that we're going to start.
00:59:52
Speaker
I could think of maybe one thing that we could do with the CNC and that would be the doors, like cutting the slats, cutting the grooves for the slats to sit in, but we don't have that much of a use for CNC. I bet we could do it twice as fast just doing it on the table saw. Yeah. So would it be nice to have a CNC and would we use it if we had it? Yes.
01:00:21
Speaker
But I could say that probably about any tool. We'd find a use for it. But we know there's CNC stuff. It's not magic. It's not like you just drop a board onto the machine and out comes a piece of furniture. Yeah, if you're cutting
01:00:43
Speaker
a thousand cabinet sides that are all drawer over door. OK, that makes sense. It's a thousand of the same part. We don't have a we don't have 10 of the same part most times. Yeah, there's I think that kind of stuff. There's 32 of one part in this job. Yeah, that's a lot. Right. And they're a little because that's because the the depth is.
01:01:08
Speaker
are sort of made up of these rails and styles without a panel inside so it's it's a like a almost a web frame design really open. Yeah and that doesn't happen a lot where you know on this this cherry piece that's over here there's maybe
01:01:27
Speaker
Four parts is the most of one thing. That's the styles on the doors or six on the bottom. There's three doors on the bottom. So six of the same part. There's not a lot of repeatability in custom designed furniture. We're not we're not building large volumes of things. If we're building we were to build a you know a conference table with chairs and we had to build 20 chairs. Well then maybe we could find a use for CNC. But
01:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, making individual parts on the CNC, I don't... If they were, you know, if they had a curve, you know, if they were like a curved crest rail or a... Exactly. A back leg that had a curve or something. But all the straight parts that we make, I can't see there being an advantage to it.
01:02:15
Speaker
And that's kind of how we roll. If there was an advantage to it, if we had the money, the space, the time, and we probably need an extra guy here just to do that to make that thing pay for itself. Yeah. Like that thing would have to be working on other stuff instead of just being a giant dust collector.
01:02:37
Speaker
over there for $25,000 and half of our shop space and a dedicated- That's not even for a great CNC. Dust collection. Yeah, I mean we knew a guy at the CNC. Yeah, that's like a high-end hobbyist machine. We knew a guy that had a CNC and all they did was stack parts on top of it.
01:02:59
Speaker
It never got used. For 20 years. I had never seen it turned on. It's really a time, hey, Jerry, we just answered your question. Big time investment. Yeah, that thing was so old that it became obsolete, like the operating system. And you know what? Now he just gave it away for free. Exactly.
01:03:18
Speaker
So it's a real commitment, I'd say. If you want to get into CNC work, if it's not just a small CNC for like engraving, you plan on trying to integrate a CNC into production work. Right. It's a big investment. Mass production. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And that's we're not mass production in any way, shape or form here.
01:03:40
Speaker
Yeah, so what are our thoughts? I have nothing against it. I think it's super cool. I love all the artistic type stuff that happens on a CNC. But it's just not something that really fits into what we're doing at the moment. We wish we knew somebody who was more of an, what would you say, a contact that we could that we could reach out to when we needed something because we're sort of
01:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, we've got Jason down in Manasquan and, you know, the guys up the road who didn't want nothing to do with us. They're just not willing to help us. Yeah. I don't know if that says more about us or them. Like, hey, I got all these jobs that need CNC. You want to help us out? We're a little busy. OK. Yeah, we didn't lose any sleep, but we did. We were a little bit taken aback.
01:04:33
Speaker
Oh, I'm reading this next question and I'm a little bit envious. Yeah, we're here to our last question. All right.
Value of Apprenticeship Programs
01:04:39
Speaker
And this is from Andrew, Andy YK on Instagram. In Canada, there's a very good apprentice program. What happened to the program in the USA? Will it ever come back?
01:04:53
Speaker
I didn't know we had one to begin with. Yeah, I don't know in what official capacity there was any type of apprenticeship program. I know in Canada, as a carpenter, you become a red seal carpenter. It's all unionized, I guess. To be a carpenter, you have to go through an apprenticeship program and become a red seal carpenter. Correct me if I'm wrong. It's just what I've assumed from what I've seen.
01:05:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you'd be hard pressed to even find anyone to teach anything here. Like as a.
01:05:30
Speaker
as a paid employee. The union trades, like electricians and such, have a real program. And that's something that, you know, then you serve your time, you get in the local and all that stuff. But for woodworkers, like people who do anything similar to what we do,
01:05:54
Speaker
That's that's a tough one. I I don't I mean they don't even have wood shop in school anymore Yeah, there's um, I know there's like mill work divisions of the carpenters unions, but it's it's not really Or even it's not even the same thing at all. It's no commercial work Yeah, like like building the stores at the mall kind of stuff. Yeah and restaurants It's not as nuanced as this
01:06:21
Speaker
No, most of that, because I did estimating for commercial GC. And the mill work trades are basically plastic laminate for offices. That's where all the real work in New York is. And that's something that they just, they estimate that by the linear foot. As you said, I'll use your word, there's no nuance to that stuff. It's just what color do you want?
01:06:49
Speaker
So, I mean, the truth is I wouldn't have had my act together at a young age to join the apprenticeship program because I wouldn't have known what I wanted to do. But at my age now, 58, going on 59, I think about how much fun that would have been if I would have done that. How further along I would have been at an earlier age.
01:07:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we had I guess right before I got into middle school, they had a shop class. And then by the time I got there, it was gone. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's due to the fact that the basic skills in math and English just kept falling. So some brainiac in the upstate programs where they
01:07:45
Speaker
you know, develop the curriculum, said, it must be because we're giving all these kids art and, and shop and home ec. Let's take those classes out and we'll just double down on, on all the math and science and English. That'll make them smarter. Um, uh, obviously we know that that, that didn't work out, but they never brought those programs back once. I know in New York, because I had hoped to teach some of those types of classes.
01:08:15
Speaker
Uh, once those teachers retired, they never replaced them. And then they would just shut that program down in that particular school. And so one by one, all those, um, courses were eliminated until, you know, today there's, there's nothing. Yeah. So we talked about this on clubhouse the other day in, uh, in the, in the shop room, I believe, um,
01:08:39
Speaker
Who was I talking to? Kyle, I think. And I was saying there has to still be some around here because O'Shea sells to schools. And on our truck a lot of times, they're going to schools to deliver material. I don't know what schools they are or what sort of size the shop class is, but they are.
01:09:03
Speaker
you know, selling local to us at least or in New Jersey to high schools. I do know that Middletown has like a stagecraft section of the theater department. That's like cobbled together BS though. It is. Like Christopher, he used to come tell me stories laughing about how they didn't know which end of the hammer to hold.
01:09:25
Speaker
That's yeah. And I've I've talked to some people that build sets and it's just it's just cobbled together and they throw it out like it's just it's just made it's disposable. It'll teach you some basic hand tools not hand tool but whatever some basic hand eye coordination kind of woodworking skill but not not as focused on woodwork as you know it's really a shame because if you think about all the stuff that
01:09:55
Speaker
we do here in the shop that we probably don't even think about or take for granted. All of the thinking that takes place on the job. Simple math, advanced math with geometry and trigonometry. My wife was a, she's a retired math teacher and I can't count the number of times I consulted
01:10:19
Speaker
her and her whole math department questions that, you know, had to do with design and scaling certain designs and shapes. And I would stump, you know, a whole high school math department. And then there's the problem solving, the engineering, strength, durability. These are things we we do on a daily basis that would help almost any
01:10:49
Speaker
career path, just the thinking and the problem solving. Yeah, it translates to so many different things. Thinking for yourself, independent work, this is what they claim they want and everybody on the job, right? Yeah, how to overcome like the feeling of defeat and just put your head down and finish the job.
01:11:12
Speaker
Not that we not that we experience. Never. Never. Well, I mean, that's a that's not every day. It's a tough one to learn.
Overcoming Woodworking Mishaps
01:11:24
Speaker
You know, it's hard to I'm guilty of it to to get past that that fuck up and just get the job done because it. I mean, you have to take it with a grain of salt. Yeah. That's why we have the wall of shame. Yeah.
01:11:40
Speaker
Even just, you know, when things aren't going right. Yeah, just work through it. And, you know, yesterday we blew the belt on the, on the, the wide, I always say wide belt sander, the drum sander, the conveyor belt, the feed belt that the pieces actually sit on, you know, it's a 38 inch wide.
01:12:03
Speaker
belt. And yeah, we blew it up. It's now it's a 28 inch wide belt. Yeah. A large splint there of oak ripped a long slit in it almost completely across the whole thing, you know. Yeah. And you said, what time is it? I said, I think it's time to hang up our hat. But you know what, then we, we cut the belt off, we changed the paper, we ran the pieces through and we put them in the water and we got them in there soaking. So it's like,
01:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, we would have been no better off just going home. No, we got we put in another hours work. Yeah. And we actually we were better off because we came in this morning. We didn't have to think about that at all. Yeah. All that work was done. Yep. And we had some other problems.
01:12:54
Speaker
Well, this is life in the small business because we're every position here, you and I. We do everything. We're maitre d' to dishwasher. Yeah. And the guy cleaning the bathroom. That's right.
01:13:12
Speaker
But we will call in Roto-Rooter. Something bad happens there. We don't do all of it. That's right. We draw the line somewhere.
01:13:25
Speaker
Man well Canada seems to have their act together When it comes to the trades and a couple other things when they you know when you compare them to us. Yeah So very good. I hope you took advantage of that program Andrew and If you did let us you know, let us know what it was like and tell us about it. Yeah
01:13:47
Speaker
Maybe I'll retire up. You know, I'd retire to Canada, but it's too cold up there for me. Yeah, it's getting too cold here. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess we're getting to the end of our regularly scheduled program.
Beer Tasting Highlights
01:14:00
Speaker
Yeah, we're at the end of the questions. So what'd you think of the beers? Man, well, that first beer, the... The Mo Pills? The Pillsner. That thing went down so easy. It hit the spot.
01:14:14
Speaker
because I was thirsty and it was such a familiar kind of taste, you know, that that classic American beer. But as I alluded to, it was like a good version of it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that light.
01:14:36
Speaker
crisp clean kind of yeah, yeah taste yeah, that you that's the kind of beer like if you want to try and pick a beer for
01:14:45
Speaker
12 different people to like. This is like even the people that say they don't like craft beer, they could drink it and not grumble a little bit, but not a whole lot. Yeah, easy, easy. And this other one, man, this is good too. This is really bright, crisp. This is a little more my speed. The Sunkist Citra.
01:15:09
Speaker
This New England-style IPA is a silky citrus bomb. We used a heavy dose of CitraHops and complemented it with soft, piney touch of Centennial to create a sun-kissed delight.
01:15:22
Speaker
I can taste the pine. Yeah. And I see Sean's down there. So Sean is linking us up with his buddy in Arizona. Sean's in Arizona as well. His buddy owns a brewery, Kitsuni Brewing. And you're going to send us out a couple of beers in the next couple of weeks. That's cool. I got a little link to Arizona. Yeah. Went to Arizona State for a couple of years. Didn't graduate. Spent.
01:15:49
Speaker
way too much time doing stuff other than going to Arizona State. We have a similar story. The big difference is that when I went to Arizona State, it cost me like $2,000 a year. Yeah.
01:16:06
Speaker
Not only that the government paid for it because they said you know son you're you're broke We're gonna give you money to go to school. It must be nice. I know I mean it's I feel terrible Telling Jeff these things because it that world doesn't exist for him. No, you know it's For people my age. I think a lot of a lot of us forget
01:16:33
Speaker
how good we really had it, especially when you compare it to today's time. And now we all had our hardships and our trials, but compared to today, there's so many things that were taken for granted then, like renting an apartment. You didn't need, you just needed a job. I worked at 7-Eleven when I was a teenager and I had an apartment.
01:17:02
Speaker
So it's these things are done now. You can't find them. Those CEOs got to start trickling down some of that money. Yeah. What happened? It's trickling. It's trickling. It's a slow trickle. I hope you live to see that trickle.
01:17:20
Speaker
I want bet on it. No, me either. That could be another rant in Patreon because although I did get a little taste of the good times growing up through the 70s and such, I'm more of a Rage Against the Machine kind of guy. The washing machine. Yeah, the washing machine backed up today. It's all like something, isn't it?
01:17:48
Speaker
I guess before we, uh, we say our goodbyes and sign off here, we'll, uh, we'll open up clubhouse. If anybody has anything to say, any comments, questions, uh, feel free to raise your hand. Come on clubhouse. We got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, nine of you down there. Yeah. There we go. Who's this? Sean. You're alive, Sean. Sean. Welcome to the podcast.
01:18:16
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's right. What about that? See, I put it in the description. So, you know what? Clubhouse wants to come after us. They got nothing we could take. We got nothing they could take. Good luck. My dirty 1620s. So I actually so when you guys were talking earlier about like design and stuff, I kind of had a thought. I know you said like, you know, kind of look at some books and things like that nature. I was wondering if you
01:18:47
Speaker
inspiration.
01:18:49
Speaker
Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, there's a there's a lot of stuff published on Stickley. And and there's like a craftsman's guide and things like that. I could get you some exact titles. But if you just did a book search, Gustav Stickley or Stickley Brothers, even if the style of furniture isn't what you want to build, the proportions are so right on that you'll learn something from that.
01:19:18
Speaker
Yeah, the cool thing about Stickly 2 is it really lacks any ornamentation. So you can take the design and really and tweak it to make it something completely different. You take the proportions and the general idea and you can really make it your own by interpreting it in a mid-century modern style or whatever. Yeah, you read a great book recently, didn't you? The Command of the Renegade.
01:19:44
Speaker
Oh, Anarchist Design Book? Yeah, I'd say that's a good one, Sean. Anarchist Design Book by Chris Schwartz from Lost Art Press. So that book is on vernacular furniture, which is like basically think of like a dude in a farmhouse making a stool. It's all very purpose-built.
01:20:05
Speaker
sort of homemade furniture and you know it gets into the the nitty-gritty of the design and doesn't get too fluffy if you understand what I'm saying it's it's a it's a great book not what I expected it to be but really good a lot of stick furniture in there and yeah it was good and it's a nice thick book so a lot of info in there cool man like so is that book having is that like a lot there's a
01:20:38
Speaker
Yeah, there's got to be like a dozen or a dozen and a half different projects in there. And he actually goes through and tells you how to build them. There's, you know, cut lists and stuff. So. Rob just pulled out some books. Yeah, we pulled I just pulled three books off the shelf with stickly drawings in them.
01:21:00
Speaker
One's called Making Authentic Craftsman Furniture and it's got 62 projects inside and it's including articles from The Craftsman is the name of the book that Gustave Stickley wrote and published. There's another one called The Furniture of Gustave Stickley.
01:21:22
Speaker
Yeah, I've read that one recently. I'll hold these up just in case anybody's watching. And these are like big paperbacks. So they're inexpensive books as well. And then another one, shop drawings for craftsman furniture. Again, all based on Stickley's designs. Yeah, I think they call those like trade paperbacks. Yeah, yeah. It's like a nine by 12 kind of deal.
01:21:49
Speaker
And if you want to see an example of somebody who's taken like sticklies and the shaker ideal to market, look up Thomas Moser. He's made a very successful business.
01:22:06
Speaker
just basically interpreting Stickley's furniture. Yeah. Yeah. He has a book called I think it's just called How to Build Shaker Furniture. And I didn't finish it. I got like three quarters of the way through before I had to return it. But that was a good book.
01:22:23
Speaker
Yeah, they have like a mission style line, shaker, a craftsman line and the the stick, stick chairs and stools that they've been building at Moser. Man, I got a real hard on for those things. You know, they do really nice work and it's reasonably priced. I mean, it's it's a good place to work to. Yeah. Yeah.
Admiration for Frank Lloyd Wright
01:22:46
Speaker
I would love to have a shop like that one day where we can gainfully employ two dozen or three dozen people. That would be awesome, wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah. You know who else I like is Frank Lloyd Wright.
01:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. He's awesome. And because he a lot of his stuff failed, you know, he pushed the boundary so far that things didn't always work.
01:23:20
Speaker
His buildings are famous for having leaky roofs and contractors having to go back, you know, a decade later and fix the foundation or something. But his ideas about personalization and proportion and scale, to me, they're the best ever. Yeah, I would agree. I mean, I follow like an account on Instagram that really just shares his stuff daily. I mean,
01:23:51
Speaker
It just looks absolutely incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe not super functional most of the time. That's what I mean about about Frank. He was, you know, he was a real maverick. Yeah, dreamer. Yeah. That's what makes things great.
Challenges with Late-Joining Designers
01:24:11
Speaker
Well, thanks, Sean. Yeah, we got some time here. We're closing in on the hour and a half mark, but we got some time if anybody else wants to come up. Thanks for having me, guys. Thank you.
01:24:23
Speaker
How come everybody got shy all of a sudden? Any takers, any takers. Brendan, how about you? I'm going to call you out. Keystone Carpenter. Yeah. I was in the room last night with you and Matt talking about I wanted to jump in a couple of times, but I was a little hesitant. The conversation was going. I didn't want to interject. But there was a discussion about when designers should enter the job.
01:24:55
Speaker
I had a bite in my tongue there for a hard second. What's up, Brendan? I don't know really much about woodworking, but I'm still on that repair. If you follow me on Instagram, if not, I'm doing a repair right now. So I have the quiet time to kind of listen in something like this. Normally I wouldn't, but very, very intrigued, just kind of hearing.
01:25:23
Speaker
you guys talk about, you know, wood shop and things like that. So what was your question there before about last night, Jeff?
01:25:32
Speaker
So last night, the question arose from that woman, Kate. When should a designer enter the job? And I know I have an opinion. I'm sure Rob has one. Strong one. Yeah. I know Rob's going to say probably not at all. But
01:25:54
Speaker
So we've had experiences where a designer comes into the job late in the game and it really throws a wrench in the gears because we as furniture and cabinetry designers, we have our own vision and then someone else comes in with their own vision and sort of muddies the waters.
01:26:17
Speaker
Personally, I think if a designer is going to be involved, it needs to be from the very beginning. There needs to be a meeting between client, designer and tradesman, whether that's a remodeler like yourself or a woodworker or mill worker. That way, a cohesive design can be created and there's not this sort of miscommunication that happens down the road.
01:26:44
Speaker
Yeah. For me, I'll agree with that aspect of it, you know, where the timing should be from the onset. But I think the most important thing is delineating the responsibilities. In my experience, and it's not vast, I'll say, but I've been around the block a couple of times.
01:27:10
Speaker
Designers are oftentimes given much more responsibility than their ability and acumen deserves. And as Jeff stated, we're a design build shop and we bring a lot to the table. We're not just a couple of guys that are building boxes. We put a lot of effort
01:27:33
Speaker
into the overall design and function and form of everything we build and we consult with the client just as much as any designer would. And I think we may even have the client's best interest
01:27:52
Speaker
At heart more so than almost anyone else on
Successful Design Firm Collaboration
01:27:56
Speaker
the job. Yeah So it's hard for us to to coexist with a designer that feels like We're an inferior
01:28:08
Speaker
Or you get into this competition, where it's designer and client versus woodworker, or designer versus woodworker, where really the goal is to just provide the client with the best possible product.
01:28:25
Speaker
And you know, everybody needs to put their ego aside and whoever has the best idea really should be the exactly. And now we've struck up a beautiful relationship with a design firm. Yeah. And it's it's so cool because.
01:28:41
Speaker
The exchange of information and ideas just flows freely back and forth. And there's nobody saying, well, this is my idea. This is your idea. Let's go with this one instead of that one. It's it's problem solving in the truest sense.
01:28:58
Speaker
Yeah, we're able to manifest their ideas into real tangible things because they have a as a designer, they have an overarching idea of what the project needs to be. But they're they're not equipped to create the specifics. Right. And I'm not saying that all designers are this way. You know, they're I'm sure there are ones out there who can, you know, create a real
01:29:23
Speaker
shop drawing and a real design, a real finished piece of furniture who aren't actual furniture makers. But so they're able to just feed us an idea and we can take it and make it into something that's real, right? Create a real design, not something that's just a reference or inspiration photo. We take the constraints of the of the the home and the function of the piece and we turn it into something that's real.
01:29:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So they've really come to appreciate what we do and we appreciate what they do in in the same sense. And in fact, they'll come back to us and say, yeah, this is pretty good, but it's not great. Yeah. Can you can you, you know, twist it a little bit sideways here and take this out? We're looking for more of this look. Yeah.
01:30:11
Speaker
yeah it needs to be a harmonious relationship right right and that's the that's the point that that we've uh come to with most designers it's it becomes a little bit uh i mean i i try not to act it
01:30:28
Speaker
But I could probably be a little resentful of their presence and I feel like they resent our presence if we try to say we're more than just cabinet builders. Fortunately with my experience with designers
01:30:53
Speaker
has been pretty good. And I think the reason being is if they've been more, I guess,
01:31:01
Speaker
decorators are starting out that they have a tendency to defer you know certain things to the contractor and you know while I do like that and this has been relationships that have been formed kind of prior to working together so it's kind of like hey we're going into this already with
01:31:24
Speaker
know, an approach that's, you know, run the same side here. But, you know, as I've progressed in my business, I've found that I'm not a designer, and I'm not someone who's drawing or scaling or anything. And I do have that, that knack, or I guess that kind of that, that skill set, but at the same time, I feel like I'm also spending a lot of time that I haven't allocated or budgeted or charged management that, you know, should be on the designer, like,
01:31:54
Speaker
like molding scales or drawings of, you know, to scale and things like that. And I think that just comes with, you know, time and who I, you know, partner up with. But, you know, I find myself a lot of time in the field, like making these decisions.
Integrating Design in Woodworking Businesses
01:32:13
Speaker
And though I do enjoy it, you know, finding time where it just is taking away from the bottom line.
01:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, we all want to be paid for our time on the job, our years of experience and sort of the intangible things too that we're bringing to the table that you know and care what molding is going to look appropriate. In a fair world, you're going to be compensated for bringing that to the job.
01:32:47
Speaker
Have you ever considered integrating some type of design service into your business where you act as the designer and you have plenty of experience so you know how to compose a nice looking bathroom? I've thought about it.
01:33:12
Speaker
to use even some of the most basic setups or programs like drawing a simple space in SketchUp or Chi for 2020. So I feel like with a little bit of time spent learning those programs, I could capture simple designs like that and pocket some of that money where right now I'm just kind of passing that along to the designer.
01:33:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good investment. I would say yeah, and I was gonna say you know I'm sure you run into jobs where there is no designer and So between yourself and the homeowner
01:33:54
Speaker
You're both sort of playing designer and there's no reason you shouldn't be compensated for actually doing that design work because you've done enough work where you know to pair this tile with this Schluter or whatever combination of things within a home. So I think you'd be surprised how well equipped you probably really are compared to a lot of these interior designers or decorators.
01:34:22
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of designers start out, you know, they move from sort of the hobbyist, you know, arranging rooms for friends to putting a sign out front and they're assembling ideas from pictures online. And like people in our boat, we're sort of developing ideas more from scratch.
01:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's, you know, some of the coolest things I feel like I've done really just been on the fly. Like letting the, letting the homeowner just kind of let me run with my ideas.
01:35:05
Speaker
and profitable? No, but I feel like the creativity can be there and you can really get into your zone and be in your element. But with the right tools in place and some learning about some of these software programs, I feel like that can easily be captured and capitalized on.
01:35:29
Speaker
Yeah, you'd see a remarkable difference in how that sort of presentation changes your ability to land a job and sort of, not control, but sort of, you know, navigate a job from start to finish, you know, with the client knowing what to expect and your ability to spell it out so there are no surprises and things like that.
01:35:57
Speaker
For sure, you know, I wouldn't want to necessarily get into, you know, whole house design or projects, at least right away, but at least capturing some of those simpler projects, you know, that maybe doesn't necessarily, you know, warrant a designer from the start.
01:36:15
Speaker
Yeah.
Nutella vs. Peanut Butter Debate
01:36:17
Speaker
You know, we could throw this out there. You know, if anybody's got things, they could always throw them our way. You know, we have the ability to do it. And we would love to team up with anybody out there that needs some design help if we can do something like that. What do you guys use when you design your
01:36:40
Speaker
your pieces. Yeah, a combination of SketchUp and Fusion 360. Yeah, they're both, you know, 3D drawing programs from the computer and gives us the ability to, you know, email things back and forth to clients. That's really nice and designers. And the true to scale
01:37:09
Speaker
drawings really show what'll work. You know, we would sometimes get sketches and, you know, somebody would be asking for four rows of shelves and this and that and you look at it and it's like, well, the ceiling will have to be 18 feet high for this to actually work. You know, when you do it in real scale, you can only fit two rows of shelves. So it's a handy tool in a lot of ways.
01:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, and we're able to do most of our prefabrication work remotely. So more often than not, like money has already changed hands before we ever see a job site. Yeah. Well, yeah, I thought maybe we had a little insight on the conversation last night. I had to leave a little earlier than I had hoped. My wife was giving me the look.
01:38:11
Speaker
Well, I was on Clubhouse and sitting on the couch listening and she's like, give me a side eye. Give me the side eye. It can be addictive, even though it's like, how can the audio app be time consuming? You could just hop in a room and just, you know, two hours goes by and it's like, where'd it go? Yeah, I got to stay off during the workday because I'm just getting grossed in the conversations.
01:38:39
Speaker
Jeff, you got to go into the rooms where nobody knows who you are during the work day. I camp out in these rooms where I can just listen and nobody's going to call him. Do anything. The NFT rooms. Yeah, buddy. I actually just bought a domain name on some thoughts about that. Well, that's for another try. Oh, yeah. I had to pick your brain because I have an interest to learn, but I don't know anything yet. But that's yeah, that's a conversation for another day.
01:39:07
Speaker
For sure, for sure. I should check out the rap battle groups. I popped in there about midnight last night. Interesting. That sounds incredibly entertaining. Wow. Rap battle? Yeah. Yeah, Matt and I were in the room peanut butter versus Nutella. Is that what it was? Yep, absolutely. It was just some random thing. It was like eight o'clock in the morning. There was people from all over the world that were all disgusted. It was great. People were talking about toes and all this stuff. I was dying.
01:39:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's hilarious. Yeah, I grew up eating Nutella back when only Italians knew about it. And we get it for breakfast on toast. And every now and again, my mother would put like a sliced banana on there. Oh, yeah, that's good. All right. So, Rob, we know where you fall on that side of the equation. Yeah. What do you say? That's a tough one. Like if I had to pick one to like forever. Yeah. Forever choice. Forever.
01:40:04
Speaker
I think I would go with Nutella because I actually prefer almond butter like for just like a sandwich or something like that. All right, fair enough, fair enough. I have to say if I didn't have Teddy's crunchy peanut butter in my life, I don't know if I would. Sean, Brendan, you guys want to weigh in? You're already up here.
01:40:29
Speaker
Oh, I love it. It's just like, I have to say I'm, uh, I'm just completely grossed out by the whole conversation. If I had to make the choice, I would just say, uh, probably Mattel. All right, Brendan, last one to weigh in. You got the rest of your life ahead of you with two jars. Peanut butter for sure. We split the, we split the screen. I didn't get washed down.
01:40:59
Speaker
No, we didn't split. That's three against two. Oh, you're right. I forgot you got two guys in one bubble. Yeah, I could crush a jar in Nutella with a spoon right now.
01:41:14
Speaker
I think I get gassed on the peanut butter. Yeah. But I do love both. I don't know. I mean, it would be close. I love Nutella, but it would be real close for me if I had to only have one for the rest of my life because I love a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Only not the grape jelly. I'm a big like apricot, peach jam kind of guy. That's good. I like strawberry or raspberry. So I almost had it today for lunch. I was debating whether or not I'd have it.
01:41:44
Speaker
So yeah, I just go it's just it's just it's a little bit more nutritious too. So like, yeah, absolutely. You're out in the wild. Yeah, you'd survive longer on a jar of peanut butter. You might burn out on the chocolate. That's also my point, too. I can do a little bit of sweets. I'll have a little bit of ice cream now and again, but I'm not. I don't know. I kind of.
01:42:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't eat sugar. So I really can't eat the Nutella. You dream about it. Yeah. Yeah. Are you truly are you truly zero, like non zero grams for
No-Sugar Diet Challenges
01:42:22
Speaker
a whole day? Yeah. Yeah. Every now and then I fall off the wagon and then I deeply regret it. Last time I had I went off the wagon a couple of weeks ago and it took me about a week to feel right again.
01:42:37
Speaker
Is what it's it's it's it's keto, correct? Isn't that what that is? No sugars is like you're putting your body into keto or is that my confusing diet? Yeah, basically Okay, that's cool I'm not zero, but I do try try to keep as low as possible because I definitely and honestly It's funny you say that because I had a sip of us I bought a soda the other day I was somewhere and I was freaking thirsty and I just bought a soda randomly didn't really look at it and I started drinking it and
01:43:04
Speaker
And it was like, you know, one of those ones with like 60 grams of sugar and like 10 minutes. I had like taken a couple of swigs because I was thirsty. Like 10 minutes later, I'm like, I feel freaking weird, man. Like this is like, I don't know. I just didn't feel right. And I if you are truly zero, I could totally see how it would definitely throw your kind of balance off for a little bit of time. Yeah. Yeah. Like only when you stay away from sugar in between full sized bags of M&Ms.
01:43:33
Speaker
I was gonna say only like when you stop eating sugar do you realize how much it really affects you know everything your your state of mind and your body and I mean I get super irritable but yeah I definitely I feel a lot better I've been eating no or occasionally very little sugar for you know almost four years now so
01:43:58
Speaker
I don't know if you were ever larger or not, but I'm sure you definitely assumed probably a slider figure just because of that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm still fat and I don't need any sugar. I think that genuinely deserves a congratulations. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't I mean, I also have a four and a five year old in the house. So sugar is everywhere.
01:44:24
Speaker
Yeah, I'll tell you what, every Halloween I relapse. Because I just can't resist the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Oh, that's my thing right there. That's my weakness and my wife knows it. I can stay away from everything, but if she buys
01:44:44
Speaker
Yeah, here's the thing, too. It's like being a drug addict because if I had one bite of a Reese's, it's all over. Then it's like, I could just have one more and then you spiral out of control because that sugar gets into your brain. It's the alcoholic having the one drink. Yeah, there's no such thing as one Reese's peanut butter cup or one piece of cake or one cookie. It's just a drug.
01:45:12
Speaker
No, that's a whole box of servings. There's no such thing. This sleeve. It's a sleeve. Yep. Serving is two Fig Newtons? I hate them by the sleeve.
01:45:25
Speaker
Well, on that note, we'll we'll bring it to a close here this week.
Episode Wrap-Up & Patron Shoutouts
01:45:31
Speaker
Want to give a shout out to our gold tier patrons. We got David Murphy, Manny Sirianni, Dustin Fair, who's down there in the clubhouse room. Adam Pothast, David Schumacher, make Shoemaker. Sorry, David. That's that's usually the mistake I would make. Yeah.
01:45:49
Speaker
We appreciate you guys if you don't know the podcast is on YouTube as well so you can check out the video version there You know we're here every Wednesday on Clubhouse now as well you want your beer glass head over to the website you can get it and We'll we'll go ahead and do our little patreon after show here right after this where we sit down for you know anywhere between a half hour and an hour and Say some stuff that we're not allowed to say on the air normally
01:46:21
Speaker
Ancient aliens or something like that or conspiracy theories Somebody who did us wrong. Yeah, we're gonna tell you about stuff that we don't tell the general public But yeah, we appreciate you guys. Thanks everybody out there. Yeah Tune in next week. We'll see you for episode 28. Love the clubhouse Later guys. Yeah, be well
01:47:02
Speaker
Ain't no shame, but there's been a chain