# How you know people are interested in fake woodworking...



## D_W (12 May 2021)

..rather than actually making things. 

(this an off-take from a friend of mine who was a life-long extremely high-end maker. When I mentioned the popularity of Roy Underhill, he flatly said "the main audience for Roy is people who want to imagine they could woodwork or who do a little bit here and there and want to imagine they could do what Roy is doing". )

He said this after I said that as a kid, I watched the shows on PBS here (our narrower focus version of BBC there), but each time I watch something on the woodwright's shop, it shows enough to see someone else doing work, but roy jumps around, seems friendly and I leave not really having gathered much. 

So, what's the version now?

Peter follansbee makes a great deal of "stuff" even though he works at a museum. I don't follow peter that much, other than to note that he's interested in the making of things and how to make them, and not in turning himself into a personality with amazon revenue sharing links, etc. What's the result? You can watch his youtube channel if you want and actually learn to make things. 



generally around 2000 to 5000 views for each of peter's videos. People aren't really even interested in watching someone else make things if it actually includes fully making them vs. putting together some kind of something for nothing sort of gimmick "secret trick" or "buy this!" stuff. 

How about highly edited videos from someone who doesn't have any woodworking accomplishments but follows the heavy editing format and, in this case, the something for nothing gimmick. 

587k views so far. 

Jay bates and april wilkerson also come to mind, or stumpy nubs (ugh..."how can I sell you overpriced amateur tools via affiliate links and product placement"). I haven't ever seen anything on either of their channels that wouldn't have been far better time spent reading an older book that's actually about making things. 

Some of these folks seem like nice people, but the comments on their videos are unreality. "Rex can make anything". 

Really? I doubt it. I can't. I seriously doubt he can, either. In peter's style, peter can pretty much make anything and will learn to do it and share it. The fact that it's reality really seems to turn people off.


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## adidat (12 May 2021)

april wilkerson

she does my head in! oh look at this i made (with the help of my 5 staff) oh look at this fancy new bit of very expensive kit, that i was given or paid very little for.

adidat


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## Woody2Shoes (12 May 2021)

D_W said:


> ..rather than actually making things.
> 
> (this an off-take from a friend of mine who was a life-long extremely high-end maker. When I mentioned the popularity of Roy Underhill, he flatly said "the main audience for Roy is people who want to imagine they could woodwork or who do a little bit here and there and want to imagine they could do what Roy is doing". )
> 
> ...



I like PF's laidback style and quiet competence, that and the gratuitous bird pictures!


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## D_W (12 May 2021)

adidat said:


> april wilkerson
> 
> she does my head in! oh look at this i made (with the help of my 5 staff) oh look at this fancy new bit of very expensive kit, that i was given or paid very little for.
> 
> adidat



There's nothing morally wrong with her channel, but it was offered up to me by youtube early on and I watched a couple of videos. The unintentionally sinister part of it is that viewers suspend disbelief when watching the channel and forget that the point of the channel is to get free stuff and then get ad revenue (the two go together), and the woodworking is there as a third wheel at the very best. It creates the illusion that the presenter has "chosen" the stuff they're working with by discretion when that's never or nearly never the case. The bigger channels can get 5 figures for a couple of arranged videos with new products (on top of ad revenue and link-through revenue for the items).

I never click on any amazon link - ever - if there is a reference token on it.

I have a terrible youtube channel. the point of it is to never make any money on it, and make sure the ad revenue is always clicked off. only the most diligent people who want to do something will watch the videos (e.g., this morning, I got a nice comment from someone looking to make a new wedge for their plane - only someone who actually wants to do that will power through the agonizingly slow, long and poorly produced videos). It took me nearly no effort to share the info, and I figured my goal was that 5 people would use the information to make something they couldn't have figured out easily without them. I think that goal has been met.

It's an irk of mine, I guess, that youtube now will not serve me other peoples' terrible videos - I didn't even know PF was posting videos. But even some are quite good, but not linked to revenue sources and therefor not a harpooning device to stick beginners with targeted ads -Curtis Buchanan's videos about making chairs are a gold mine. they were posted before the algorithm went so skewed toward highly produced ad garbage and got several tends of thousands of views each. you can watch them and pretty much understand how to make a chair. That's a bridge too far for many who want to imagine being resident where woodworking is going on without having to learn to do it well (which is a shame, because the feel of making or doing something that's actual quality is unmatched by making a whole bunch of junk and then wondering how to sell your tools).

The product placement bothers me, though, as it creates an illusion of choice by a presenter unless there is a big sticker on the stuff saying loudly "I'm using this because I'm paid to, do your own due diligence".


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## D_W (12 May 2021)

Definitive titles and statements aren't that useful either. 



I shared this at a specific point. This is an "all inclusive" video about wooden planes. Look at the iron on the jack plane. It's straight across or nearly straight across. What are the chances that there's a lot of experience behind this, as in working wood, and then with that, working more than test cuts on pine?

Wooden planes are a personal irk of mine because with a little bit of information about set up and use, they're monstrously useful (and cheap). Setting them up like a group of users and adding a "Scrub plane" isn't. The average person will never get from rough wood to accuracy at a mark, but they will have a shelf full of almost valueless planes to deal with. 

(I think rex seems like a nice guy - at some point, even if it's an irk of mine, it's what the market wants. The pro wrestling version of woodworking. The guys who make one specific thing very well are either hard to find on youtube, or don't choose to post what they make - those of us wanting to make things or learn enough to see if we want to actually get to making things well lose out).


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## Garden Shed Projects (12 May 2021)

I quite like Rex Kruegers channel. He is a bit rough around the edges but uses some interesting techniques that are useful for an amateur woodworker. 
Some of these channels provide inspiration for folks like my self woodworking out of a garage with basic tools.


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## BucksDad (12 May 2021)

You just have to accept it for what it is - YouTube is a replacement for TV and so lots of people watching are just watching for mindless entertainment. I expect a lot of people who enjoy the likes of Jay Bates never intend or plan to make anything. To be fair to Jay as well, he himself doesn't describe himself as a professional woodworker but as a content creator / YouTuber.

I am just getting started in woodworking and I find this gatekeeping strange. Most of these channels do not proclaim themselves as experts or master craftsmen/women. Most seem pretty self aware with their limitations but if people enjoy watching them, who are we to stop them or berate them.


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## D_W (12 May 2021)

I'd liken them to learning the basics of golf from a guy who has been an announcer and plays to a 30 handicap. You can get started on the game, but you could also get started from someone good (often, it seems to difficult - which is a problem with the learner understanding that it's not "one simple trick"). 

I have seen relatively little of rex (perhaps 10 videos, but that's enough) - I don't have the same distaste for him that I do for the other product placement channels like s. nubs or april wilkerson (and I don't have a personal distaste for those folks, either, but the "i'm your friend" gimmick is sort of the oldest trick in the book. It's a business and they're there to get something out of you, they're not really there to share anything. The 10% or so who want to make things start off on the wrong foot and some don't continue or waste great amounts of money (I did, too, getting information from people who were not actually the business of making things).

It does cause problems (the friend gimmick), though - if you suggest away from someone with a lot of fanboys and toward someone more credible (but maybe less friendly), people will tie you up with "it's more important for someone to be nice and I like this person better". OK, I guess it's a matter of priorities and what goes down easy with coffee in the morning? Who knows.


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## Jameshow (12 May 2021)

No one's mentioned Paul Sellars yet! 

Anyone like him. 

Anyone subscribed to the paid for material? 

Most of his stuff is paid for it seems 

Cheers James


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## D_W (12 May 2021)

BucksDad said:


> Most seem pretty self aware with their limitations but if people enjoy watching them, who are we to stop them or berate them.



berate is a bit strong, but you're right. Youtube started in its growth phase as a platform to get free content from creators to gain market share. It's moving (moved long ago, I guess) to curated information now, so it's more or less a modern TV version. 

Interestingly, if you would call someone "just a TV personality and not a real ____", people are fine with that. If it's a youtuber, people feel like there's something more personal. there isn't except for the delivery method, but you're viewing and the person you're viewing isn't interested in what you're doing if you're not. With TV in the early days, older folks had trouble understanding that this was one-way, too (with stories of older ladies getting dressed up to watch liberace on TV because they didn't want him to see them not getting spiced up for him). 

It's generally harmless until someone wants to do something in earnest, but most folks who persist will get an older text or bits from older texts and suddenly realize they're the missing link.



(youtube is now rolling RK videos in my background, again, he seems like a nice guy to me. If someone were expecting to use a wooden plane a lot and would make one like this instead of buying an older wooden plane and fitting it properly, they'd be going the wrong direction. Will they know that? Probably not. I didn't. )


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## D_W (12 May 2021)

Jameshow said:


> No one's mentioned Paul Sellars yet!
> 
> Anyone like him.
> 
> ...



Paul is sort of in the middle. I think he calls himself a lifestyle woodworker, but I get referred to him through blind emails from time to time. He doesn't work entirely by hand and I don't think he ever has productively. I think he went from working in a power tool shop to teaching students. When he does rough dimensioning work other than something you do for site work (he's fine cross cutting with a hand saw, etc), it can be painful to watch. He seems like a nice guy, though, too - just like rex. 

The one bit for me that's off with paul is chiding people for spending money on tools and then recommending that they spend near four figures several times to go to his classes or pay to get his content (which is personality delivery, and not any more useful than reading an older text from prior to 1900s in terms of woodworking with hand tools). 

Those older texts can lead to shock for people, though, with statements like "one doesn't want to see end grain or exposed dovetails in finished work".


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## scooby (12 May 2021)

Jameshow said:


> No one's mentioned Paul Sellars yet!
> 
> Anyone like him.
> 
> ...



Not a fan personally, its all the 'I've invented this, I've never seen anyone else do this, etc' that puts me off. I can't remember the specific details but I found one of Paul's 'unique' procedures in 'Woodworking devices and Aids' by Robert Wearing.
Another thing that irked me, was a comment I read here years ago. A member (can't remember the name) went to one of Paul's classes and most of the interaction they had was with Paul's assistants, whilst Paul floated about taking photos. If you pay to have a class with someone, you'd expect them to play a bigger part.

Oh, that was a bit of a rant.

I have to admit, I'm a newcomer to Peter Follansbee's YouTube after discovering it about 8 months ago..I really like that channel. The goldmine for me was the Sampson boat company channel after someone here brought it to my attention (sorry I can't remember who it was but thank you). Thats a great channel!

Sam Angelo and Mike Waldt are the main 2 other you tubers I watch at the moment. Having recently started turning, I've learned quite a bit from them and they both come across as being good people.


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## D_W (12 May 2021)

That's another value of reading old or republished texts. You find quite quickly that what you think is _____'s method is either not really their method, or it's bettered by something else that's less cumbersome once you have some skill.

Wearings techniques give students success. Repetition and focusing on standards generally replace most of them in the long term unless someone is really conscientious and unbothered by having to jig a bunch of operations that don't really need jigging. 

Beginners need some success and getting to the latter point, though - most won't stick to get there. 

I've had a recent email exchange with someone who wants to use planes to join panels. I told them what I'd do and what the long-term target is (joining them without needing a square or straight edge - the two boards will be joined. laying one on top of the other while the bottom board is in a vise and looking at the joint is all you need to know, and then leave the remainder of the roughing until after the panel glue. if someone doesn't trust their eyes at that point, they can take a straight edge and see if the two panels sit on top of each other without tension in a way that's resulting in planar surfaces, but it's nice to do all of the work without having to constantly stop and check with squares and straight edges. 

This kind of thing is not going to be popular with beginners - in my email exchange, the issue of a panel not coming out of the clamps flat is tied to "I checked the edges carefully with a square, it should've been flat". 

Yes, it should be. It's hard to see really well across half an inch with a square when the face of the board may no longer be planar, and then expect a 12''
wide panel to be flat. It's judging a half inch thickness to get flatness on a wide surface. It's a whole lot easier to judge the surface and then leave room to correct later. 

The method that I describe requires no cauls or any such things either - the boards don't need to be punished into place as the test joint sits in position under its own weight. 

There are no stop shavings or anything involved either, and on long or wide joints, the fitting can be cleaned up with a smoother instead of continuing to joint over and over.


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## BucksDad (12 May 2021)

Good points D_W. And yes, berate was a bit strong - sorry. 

I've found Instagram to be a bit better for following furniture makers. I think the format of sharing pictures or 1 minute stories works much better for people whose primary focus is the actual making.

Personally I enjoy following Waters & Acland and their students that they frequently highlight on their feed.. lots of ambitious furniture projects done to an excellent standard


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## Cheshirechappie (12 May 2021)

Isn't it the same in many walks of life, though?

Take sports - football, cricket, baseball, rugby, snooker, ping-pong, you name it. A few people on the pitch or table working their wotsits off, and thousands stood or sat around just watching and shouting at them.

Never be any different.

To be fair to Roy Underhill, he does a very fair job of making what could be a very boring watch entertaining for the lay person. If you want detailed instruction, there are other sources.

Could also be that the people stood around gawping at sportsmen or woody entertainers are individually damn good at doing something; car repair, for example, or lorry driving, or emptying dustbins, or orthopaedic surgery. There are Youtube channels of people driving lorries and repairing cars, but how many dustbin emptying Youtube channels do you know? Not many, I suspect - but I'll bet you're glad your bins are emptied.

Some people make lengthy and boring videos about how to plane a piece of wood straight. Some people make entertaining videos about planing wood. The entertaining ones get more views. Quelle surprise!


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## D_W (12 May 2021)

Cheshirechappie said:


> To be fair to Roy Underhill, he does a very fair job of making what could be a very boring watch entertaining for the lay person. If you want detailed instruction, there are other sources.



Yes, he started as a TV show in the 1980s or something. Interestingly, it was on PBS at least once a week in rural areas where I grew up, but it's not as easy to find here in the city. I LOVED the show. 

He brings legitimate folks onto the show (sometimes charismatic beginner teachers, but often someone from williamsburg or another accomplished worker like that). It's the format - PBS needs to make the show and it can't just appeal to woodworkers. I'd imagine his classes are vastly different than the show. 

The reason this comes up (the TV show format) is just my comment to someone here about not quite getting enough to take something to the bench and get after it on fine work. He lined me out on the "that's not the point. the point is something other than showing you how to make things" .

Given my history here, being surprised to see roy actually show up in the forum mention because I didn't know if he actually made much, I actually learned he was more accomplished than I expected and not less, but this isn't under a current lens where I can make one of two things well and understand what it means to try to do it well and skillful and efficiently, it's under when I started woodworking. As a non-woodworker, rather than thinking he was a woodworking hero, I thought he was practicing some sort of throwback escapism. But it looked neat with all of the axes and such.


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## D_W (12 May 2021)

BucksDad said:


> Good points D_W. And yes, berate was a bit strong - sorry.
> 
> I've found Instagram to be a bit better for following furniture makers. I think the format of sharing pictures or 1 minute stories works much better for people whose primary focus is the actual making.
> 
> Personally I enjoy following Waters & Acland and their students that they frequently highlight on their feed.. lots of ambitious furniture projects done to an excellent standard



I think it was fair to assume, though. I'm not berating individuals (the danger of saying I would go to different sources if the point is actually making is that it's interpreted often as "you're just dogging that guy"). It's fair to anticipate that because there will be people who are just doing that. 

I was trying to shorten the title and used the word "fake". that was a bad choice lensing back on it now, what I wanted to say was "that people are more interested in watching woodworking and imagining they could do it because there's a burden with actually doing it". I, too, like to watch certain people work rather than doing it myself. Even routine stupid things, like how someone in the third world who is a manual laborer will dig with a shovel. It's fantastic. I'm sure it's punishing work to them, but the efficiency and vigor is shocking. Here in the US, my neighbor is an actual trade laborer and he wants to put a fence up, but he will absolutely not do it until he's able to get a free loan of a two man auger or a truck mounted auger. He only has to install about 15 posts. I'd bet on a site with a power auger, though, he's fast, as he works commercial jobs. It's all in how you look at things. 

If paul sellers makes a funny looking pine clock with a tiny face on it, it's not "fake" working, it's just not fine work. 

I have issues talking with people about woodworking by hand because normally what I run into is "yeah, but I don't want to do that, do you have suggestions for which japanese disposal saws I can buy for ripping and resawing?" No, not unless you're making boxes or something small. Or like the mention of joining panels above. If someone says they want to do one panel by hand, OK, I'm not the guy. If you say you're going to work all or mostly by hand and you hope to join several hundred, then I can tell you what I know about it because I did it "the hard way" first, too. I also tried to rip boards with japanese saws, which people constantly ask about because they feel like if they could be productive with rough work with disposable saws, they could skip learning to sharpen saws.


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## Ollie78 (12 May 2021)

There was one guy, Tommy Mac who made a crazy bombe secretary in episodes. 
I found it interesting enough to watch that all, though I have no intention of making one.
He did actually cover the process in good detail. 

I agree that there is a sort of youtube woodworker "format" which I guess is a business model that works, can't really fault them for it. 
I find the occasional gem, I like one Japanese guy, ishitani or something, very nice work.

I find myself watching stuff more for inspiration and relaxation than actually to learn techniques.
I love the channels where they restore old machines from rusty and knackered to fully working, it's relaxing to watch.

Ollie


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## jcassidy (12 May 2021)

Ha, YouTube!

I was mucking about with the hinges of a corner cabinet door just the other day, was out of true on all 3 planes. My 2 kids were watching me intently, then the 8yo asks - Dad, why do they make it look so easy on YouTube when it's really so hard?

Before I could say anything, my 10yo says (in a mocking tone because obviously 8 year olds don't know anything) "They make it look easy so they get more views and sell more ads!"

Modern kids have it well sussed, better than us.

*Edit* I hasten to add, I wasn't looking at YouTube but they did so they could help me...


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## KingAether (12 May 2021)

I think its a bit of a stretch to say people like to watch "fake" woodworking so much as people like to watch what they can understand. I quite enjoy rex's channel for instance and for a while i could learn things, i still do occasionally but i still watch because i enjoy the personality and because he can keep things simple for dummies.
For some reason what came to mind was the difference between Bob Ross and Neil Buchanan. One was an artist with a tv show and one was a tv personality with an art show and you can really see the difference in the shows but many people found inspiration by both shows independently so does it matter which someone watched?
"If you can't do; teach" comes to mind

Smart kid who got it spot on there @jcassidy ! I think that because its "more personal" people think its all about sharing the video but its not 2006 anymore and youtube is a money machine. Take Rex again, ad's aside he has 4500~ patreons at $1/$5/$10 a month so while he might not be able to build a greene & greene style house with only 6 hand tools and a rubber band, he has been able to take something he enjoys doing and market it to make 5 figures a month while getting other people into the hobby in an easy to watch way. Thats respectable in my opinion, not something to look down on as "fake" woodworking.


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## D_W (13 May 2021)

It's YouTube, not woodworking. Accomplishments making YouTube videos are not woodworking and nobody is learning or coming up with something new. At some point you have to be able to admit it's just fluff and not accurate enough to amount to anything.


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## Trainee neophyte (13 May 2021)

D_W said:


> It's YouTube, not woodworking. Accomplishments making YouTube videos are not woodworking and nobody is learning or coming up with something new. At some point you have to be able to admit it's just fluff and not accurate enough to amount to anything.


From the trainee perspective: the fine furnature master - craftsman videos are of absolutely no use to me. I can't do that, don't aspire to make furnature like that (yet, but who knows?) and whilst impressive, are a drain on my limited time. I don't watch them because I don't get anything anything useful from them. I use YouTube as a resource, searching for information on a specific task or problem. I have watched several of Rex's videos, because that's where my level is. I don't follow anyone, and don't even sign in to YouTube, mostly because it know it annoys them.

So I think horses for courses, and I think the number of hits reflects the number of would be woodworkers, vs the number of experienced, well versed experts looking for fresh content. There will always be more trainees than experts, because some of us don't make the cut.

There may be more puns in the above than I intended.


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## clogs (13 May 2021)

regardless of what I watch on the telly.....
all I seem to get is "your shouting at the telly again dear" from the kitchen.....hahaha.....

I love wood work but I'm engineering based and prefer rural inventions on U Tube......
some of those Chinese machines are a work of art when you have nothing to start with.......


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## Just4Fun (13 May 2021)

D_W said:


> Accomplishments making YouTube videos are not woodworking and nobody is learning or coming up with something new.


Something may not be new to you or me or anyone with some basic knowledge, but it might well be new to people in the target audience for the videos.

Do you use the same logic in other fields?
Pythagorus? That's not new. You could learn it from a dusty old book!

When people are starting in any field they need to learn the basics. When I were a lad (tm) I typically learned from books but had youtube and similar formats been around I'm sure they would have been more attractive to me.


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## recipio (13 May 2021)

Stumpy Nubs is watchable and and stresses he is free from product placement..'Four Eyes' are another good team who actually finish what they start. However, most of the American sites are into sponsorship and the products are of course often only available in the US.
Nobody is perfect but I think the quality of design is better is UK than the US so I fall back on my dusty magazines for inspiration. I must be turning into a grumpy old git.


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## lucgizi (13 May 2021)

Just4Fun said:


> Something may not be new to you or me or anyone with some basic knowledge, but it might well be new to people in the target audience for the videos.
> 
> Do you use the same logic in other fields?
> Pythagorus? That's not new. You could learn it from a dusty old book!
> ...


Couldn't agree more! 
For a weekend woodworker like me these basic instructional videos are priceless. Can't afford to do a course or qualification in carpentry or cabinet making, much as I'd love to, and definitely can't afford to quit my day job for my hobby, so all I'm left with are the people who have the time to share what they have learnt. And while it's fascinating to watch master craftsmen showing off their skill, Paul Sellers is definitely closer to what I can achieve


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## Woody2Shoes (13 May 2021)

I could watch this guy all day every day (I think it's self evident that, like Peter Follansbee, he's paid his dues and knows his onions etc. etc.):



https://www.youtube.com/c/CurtisBuchananChairmaker/videos


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## D_W (13 May 2021)

Woody2Shoes said:


> I could watch this guy all day every day (I think it's self evident that, like Peter Follansbee, he's paid his dues and knows his onions etc. etc.):
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/c/CurtisBuchananChairmaker/videos



Those videos are gold.


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## D_W (13 May 2021)

recipio said:


> Stumpy Nubs is watchable and and stresses he is free from product placement..'Four Eyes' are another good team who actually finish what they start. However, most of the American sites are into sponsorship and the products are of course often only available in the US.
> Nobody is perfect but I think the quality of design is better is UK than the US so I fall back on my dusty magazines for inspiration. I must be turning into a grumpy old git.



I don't know why stumpy nubs would absolve himself when he clearly does product videos to try to farm off of his viewers. His trend diamond hone video is a clear attempt at talking about something he knows little about to get people to go to an Amazon link. The trouble with it is that trend plates are just horribly overpriced Chinese goods sold for more than Japanese and American made equivalents. That kind of thing is as unethical as product placement, and it's blatant.


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## D_W (13 May 2021)

Just4Fun said:


> Something may not be new to you or me or anyone with some basic knowledge, but it might well be new to people in the target audience for the videos.
> 
> Do you use the same logic in other fields?
> Pythagorus? That's not new. You could learn it from a dusty old book!
> ...



From the beginning, I tried to find legitimate makers to follow. If I am going to look for advice on metals to make chisels from, I'm not going to look to forged in fire, I'm going to experiment with historically accurate stuff and go to larrin thomas for any discussion of things newer.


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## D_W (13 May 2021)

I haven't had to go back and watch videos about Pythagoras over and over by the way. If you knew how to apply the Pythagorean theorem, would you go watch fifteen videos from people who posted a video about it four years ago and then again last month, or would you be writing proofs four years later?


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## D_W (13 May 2021)

follow up on the stumpy numbs video that I was referring to (I don't watch the guy's videos, but recalled this one). 


For a guy who says he doesn't do product placement, it's pretty "interesting"! Youtube's labeling system requires it to be labeled paid promotion. 

 

go to the middle of the video and he starts going on at length about lubricants on stones right into a sales pitch for trend's mixture of mineral spirits and naptha priced up to $300-$400 a gallon based on the container sizes. 

Does numbs have enough knowledge to have a clue what he's talking about? No. He recommends against using water on a nickel electroplate hone. Nickel doesn't rust under water. When he says "I don't recommend", it's as if he is asserting he knows what he's talking about, but he has no clue. I see other videos listed below when I search for this one - from him - about diamonds coming out of plates, etc, but these are retreads of others' videos. 

At one point, I would get random comments through my channel that I should "check out stumpy nubs". I can't remember if that's where I came across this, but leading a bunch of beginners to products that are extremely overpriced in my opinion, which is qualified in this case, I know far more about this stuff than he does and have never attempted to push any of it at anyone -it's unethical. He's unethical in my opinion and has very low standards. 

What does it matter if he's taking advantage of beginners and "farming them"? It may not bother you. It irks me.


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## D_W (13 May 2021)

By the way, I have something on the order of 20 different diamond hones floating around. None have never rusted and they are used almost exclusively with water. 

When trend put a video up telling people they cannot use WD40 or water and pushing their blue tinted mineral spirits and naptha mix (I checked with a chemist here in the states regarding their MSDS - the components in the mix are something you could buy at a very low cost ), I left a comment in it with a question about why mineral spirits and naptha mixed together would be so expensive, and why they couldn't give a specific reason why people shouldn't use WD40 or water (I've used both on diamond hones for more than a decade now, but mostly water). I expected that I would be blocked or my comment removed. 

Instead, trend removed the entire video from youtube, at least temporarily at the time.


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## D_W (13 May 2021)

Trainee neophyte said:


> I can't do that....



This part isn't true. There are few on here who couldn't make something finely. You may not enjoy it, but that's a different story. I can make fine planes - nobody ever taught me to do it and there's nothing special about my skill set. The thing that drove me to make fine planes was wanting a specific result and knowing what design I wanted them to be. 

The woodworking instruction for beginners is backwards. It's a matter of teaching beginners methods but they have no clue what result they're looking for because nobody talks about standards. Teaching someone standards or reasonable design is a dead end money-wise, but when you talk to George Wilson or listen to Curtis Buchanan, they will often say "I don't know, maybe I do this the hard way" because they're working to a standard and they have no clue if there's some paint by number method that supposedly gets to the standard of work they're doing more easily. Most of the folks who advocate such a thing make things slower and less finely than either of them, anyway. 

One of my coworkers said he'd like to get into the hobby of making things - woodworking, etc, whatever the kind of making might be. I asked him what he wanted to make, and he said he had no clue. There are a lot of people who come into woodworking this way and they end up making a couple of stools or something and wash out. I told him to wait to pick up a hobby of making things until there was something that he really liked and wanted to make as you can't really work to a standard if you don't have any interest in the thing you're working to make. 

As far as time? There's a period furniture maker here who has a booth at one of the local faires. I don't think he'll make it and he probably has a day job by now. He learned to make period furniture in two years of trade college here. Very well- far better than I'd have an interest in making it. One would guess that he spent a couple of thousand hours making furniture during those two years and came out of the other end making period bits with well carved ball and claw feet and such. Anyone here could learn to do that, but most don't want to. The latter is fine, but don't want to and can't are two different things. 

I thought I was firmly in the "don't want to" camp for everything making-related early on until George Wilson sent me a PM on a forum and said "give me your phone number". I wasn't a fan of that. I did, anyway, and he proceeded to tell me where something I posted fell short, but he could see that I could do better work and suggested several things. I didn't want the burden - I would like making nice things, but I didn't want to fail at it. I followed his advice and the next of the same thing that I made was superb looking. What I was missing was knowing what the thing I was making should look like. The execution in general wasn't too hard because I then knew what the important standards were, so don't violate them - the rest is minor details, and how you get it done doesn't matter. In that case, it was a closed backsaw handle and that was a decade ago. I'd still be making junk if I hadn't come across george (I'd have quit woodworking by now). What I learned about design and crispness from that transfers over to pretty much everything. It was such a minor difference in how hard it was to make something - I had the same skill set as I did a week or so before, but the results were drastically different. The satisfaction of having made something well was high enough that on anything that I want to make going forward, I realize that it's worth understanding those bits so that you don't end up throwing away what you make. All the tools I'd made to that point were kind of subpar vs. what you could find floating around used, and I ended up throwing them away. A huge waste of time other than learning that it's pointless to make things you don't actually want - they'll get thrown away.


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## sometimewoodworker (13 May 2021)

adidat said:


> april wilkerson
> 
> she does my head in! oh look at this i made (with the help of my 5 staff) oh look at this fancy new bit of very expensive kit, that i was given or paid very little for.
> 
> adidat


The earliest videos of hers were really quite good but that was before she both got a sawstop table saw and started getting given tools or sponsored by tool makers and moved house. Since the move, and probably a year or 2 before she became virtually unwatchable


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## Linus (13 May 2021)

Jameshow said:


> No one's mentioned Paul Sellars yet!
> 
> Anyone like him.
> 
> ...


Yes me.


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## Cabinetman (13 May 2021)

" How you know people are interested in fake woodworking." Well I’ve followed this thread from the start but I’m still not really sure exactly what the question is. 
Are we talking about the YouTube people or the novices and why would anybody actually want to be interested in fake woodworking? Or is it that the YouTubers are interested in it as it brings them followers and cash? I’m sorry I’m being a bit dense here. Ian 
What I would say is that when I happen to catch people badly demonstrating anything they invariably have umpteen planes on display that you know you they just never use, and at least four rechargeable drills in a rack.


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## D_W (13 May 2021)

Cabinetman said:


> " How you know people are interested in fake woodworking." Well I’ve followed this thread from the start but I’m still not really sure exactly what the question is.
> Are we talking about the YouTube people or the novices and why would anybody actually want to be interested in fake woodworking? Or is it that the YouTubers are interested in it as it brings them followers and cash? I’m sorry I’m being a bit dense here. Ian
> What I would say is that when I happen to catch people badly demonstrating any
> thing they invariably have umpteen planes on display that you know you they just never use, and at least four rechargeable drills in a rack.



You're on the money - I used the word fake for brevity, but it was really meant to refer to going to sources who aren't credible workers or makers because the video content is constant, well edited/quick, repetitive and not mentally taxing to think about. 

Your mention of the planes hits the bullseye as I was going to say that earlier, but have already gone long. When someone has some kind of ultra neat caddy with tons of hand tools in it, but the tools are retained in a way that they can't be gotten easily at hand, then it's just for show. It's part of the fakeness. 

I have nothing but filth in my shop. I'm not an accomplished maker in general, but i can make planes at a professionally viable level (without them being kits or some kind of goofiness). I don't have stuff like that hanging in my shop because it's hard enough to arrange the tools you actually use in some way around your bench so that you can get them easily by a reach and pull. The planes I use are under my bench loose. I don't have a head on view when I make videos because there's no space behind my bench, and I don't clean up (I draw a little bit of ire, but once in a while run across a maker who says "great, that looks like a shop that's being used" - invariably, when someone says that, if I track them back to a forum, etc, they also have a huge run of things made). It's possible, of course, to have a neat shop and do prodigious amounts of work, but you can see quickly that the person talking does the work if they make a video. 

There's sort of an acid test on youtube, I guess - if you see a charismatic presenter and look at videos 5 years ago and look at them now, and they're not progressing or have barely progressed, they're not really there for woodworking. The channel is the point. It's not really possible to record progression (with intent) because it loses beginners. Thus, you don't typically see regular content from the makers who are actually doing high level work or teaching high level students.


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## D_W (13 May 2021)

Cabinetman said:


> " How you know people are interested in fake woodworking."



By the way, the question was really more of a statement - just my observation that even when someone is making something in earnest, it kind of blows over quickly. I find peter's working fascinating, even though IT's not something I'll probably do, but when he demonstrates what he's doing, he's covering all the bits of how it works. I guess most people are wired differently. Peter's work is sort of the $26 per 2 liters of brandy types stuff, the real deal - and most of the other woodworking is "tastes like it's not hard liquor" stuff. Flavor removed and replaced with berries and sugar taste.

I started making chisels a few months ago - it's been agonizing to find people who are blacksmithing something like chisels who actually can answer what they're doing forging and why. I've had to guess and in some cases, guess, and destroy and see how things look after destruction.

The bulk of car shows here are similar. I don't even remember what the names are, but they follow a format (except in the case of the car shows on TV, the guys doing the hosting can at least install the bits they're advertising - they're actual mechanics or industry men). The format is this:
* want some extra power for your chevelle? PLEASE FORGET the idea of modifying the parts you have and getting hands on knowledge. We have a drop in kit for you. 
* want your car to handle better (you guys know most of our muscle cars handle poorly), here's a $14,000 all included partially pre-assembled independent suspension makeover for you $15,000 classic car. 

They are just complete product placement type stuff, but you get that from them pretty quickly. They avoid talking about alternatives or anything that looks like an individual learning about doing valve work on their own car, taking parts to a machine shop, etc, because sometimes you do all that stuff and after a few trips down a drag strip, something blows up. if the drop in parts blow up, it becomes a messy warranty issue and that doesn't make for good TV. It has to look like golly ghee, this is easy (never mind $45k worth of parts going into a $20k classic car).


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## Cabinetman (13 May 2021)

Thanks Doug, understand now and yes I know exactly where you’re coming from. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve said on here, you don’t need to spend a fortune on tools, all my everyday tools fit in a carry rack that comes out of secure storage at the beginning of the day and goes back at the end, 90% of them are the ones I started college with four decades ago and I think my work speaks for me.


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## Stevekane (13 May 2021)

Utube videos are a bloody godsend when Corrie and the “Love” programs are on, see a few crazy Americans, plus a few bumptious “experts” mainly doing things I wouldnt be intrested in anyway, but all entertaining in an informative way even if your looking at what they are doing and thinking, crikey I wouldn't do it like that, but at least your getting ideas and its readily accessible so I think whats not to like?,,,and you can always watch “Love Island” if it really irritates!


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## Bojam (13 May 2021)

Ollie78 said:


> I find the occasional gem, I like one Japanese guy, ishitani or something, very nice work.



Yep, he does great stuff!


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## John Brown (13 May 2021)

D_W wrote:
"You're on the money - I used the word fake for brevity, "

You're having a laugh, as we say in limeyland.
I don't think you know the meaning of the word "brevity".


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## doctor Bob (13 May 2021)

I love talking to fellow business owners and woodworkers but could think of nothing worse in my spare time to sit down and watch woodworking  

People ask me "when you retire are you going to set up a workshop at home"................. how come they never ask a bus driver "when you retire are you going to buy a bus and drive around the village"


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## D_W (13 May 2021)

John Brown said:


> D_W wrote:
> "You're on the money - I used the word fake for brevity, "
> 
> You're having a laugh, as we say in limeyland.
> I don't think you know the meaning of the word "brevity".



perhaps you couldn't make it through my replies, but I mentioned previously that I used it because the space for a _title _is limited and I couldn't think of a way to say "people would rather watch a bunch of high production value hacks who spend all of their time improving on how to generate more revenue on their channel, none on being a better woodworker, and then the entertainment is confused for a building standard. Vs. the other option of watching a professional go through details about doing work to a standard". 

>>I don't think<<

Yes, got that.


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## D_W (13 May 2021)

Unfortunately, now youtube thinks I want to see sumpy numbs videos, but there's a filter feature that will allow me to get rid of that. 

Out of curiosity, he supposedly posted a video about safety as if he nearly had an accident to pitch people toward an amazon affiliate link to buy the item, and then boasted that the video wasn't sponsored. I'll bet there was no near accident any time recently, just suspecting that there's a long list of amazon products that he or some assistants/editors want to make up stories for. Normally, if something dangerous happens, you keep the offending wood to show people because it's illuminating. I have a piece of thin wood that was cut on a curve by a tablesaw and thrown at me like a frisbee from when I was a beginner. 

..but that wasn't enough. After declaring the product wasn't sponsored, he went on to pitch one that was. 

It looks like his collection of planes has gotten larger behind him - I doubt he's very good at using them, but it does appear that if he ever needs a bench plane that's got low use, he'll be able to find a bunch. 

Just my opinion, but looks like the wranglerstar of woodworking to me. Nothing there. 

I checked just to be sure, and of course, there's a revenue share token on the amazon link (who'd have thought there wouldn't be).


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## space.dandy (14 May 2021)

D_W said:


> Out of curiosity, he supposedly posted a video about safety as if he nearly had an accident to pitch people toward an amazon affiliate link to buy the item, and then boasted that the video wasn't sponsored. I'll bet there was no near accident any time recently, just suspecting that there's a long list of amazon products that he or some assistants/editors want to make up stories for.



If you're talking about the incident I think you are, that was a genuine and quite serious accident. He wanted to do some 'power carving' and decided to ram on his Stetson and fit one of those god-awful chainsaw-blade-wrapped-round-a-wheel things to an angle grinder. Quite predictably it snatched, he lost control and ended up with a severely mangled hand. To his credit he did post a couple of detailed videos on what went wrong and I'm sure they did contain a sponsored advert for some 'safer' alternative, but hey, I suppose he has to pay for his hospital bill somehow.


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## Jonm (14 May 2021)

This has been posted on this site before but worth a second look. Not quite woodwork, more access using wooden ladders. All you need are the ladders, hemp rope, pulley, hemp lashings, string, bits wood fixed together, lump hammer, chisel, small blocks of wood and some steel pins (dogs). No need for scaffolding, hard hats just ability to work at height. Easy to listen to, low key, no overstating and quite terrifying (for me).

Definitely for watching and not doing. This is part 1, part 2 should follow on automatically.


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## space.dandy (14 May 2021)

D_W said:


> I never click on any amazon link - ever - if there is a reference token on it.



Why not? It's probably the most harmless method of revenue generation and costs you nothing. If you've watched a video and found something worthwhile in it, where is the harm in giving the creator a small 'thank you' by using their link?



D_W said:


> I have a terrible youtube channel. the point of it is to never make any money on it, and make sure the ad revenue is always clicked off. only the most diligent people who want to do something will watch the videos (e.g., this morning, I got a nice comment from someone looking to make a new wedge for their plane - only someone who actually wants to do that will power through the agonizingly slow, long and poorly produced videos). It took me nearly no effort to share the info, and I figured my goal was that 5 people would use the information to make something they couldn't have figured out easily without them. I think that goal has been met.



Sorry, D_W, I really can't fathom your argument here. Is this some kind of zen guru thing? The master will only share his secrets with the worthiest of students? Are you saying that I must prove my dedication by poring through hours of diatribe to discover the few nuggets of useful information?

I've watched a few of your videos and you're right: they are terrible. But there is useful information in them that (to me) is worth running the gauntlet. I really don't know why you object to making a meagre amount of money from ad revenue, but I assure you it makes not a jot of difference to me. You are the only person affected by your decision, so if you're trying to make some sort of statement then I'm afraid I've missed it entirely.



D_W said:


> The product placement bothers me, though, as it creates an illusion of choice by a presenter unless there is a big sticker on the stuff saying loudly "I'm using this because I'm paid to, do your own due diligence".



It's not an illusion of choice, it _is_ a choice. The choice to use something because it was gifted, or because you are being paid to use it, is no more or less meaningful than choosing to use it because it looks pretty. Viewers shouldn't need a big sticker to prompt them to use their brain.


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## Andy (14 May 2021)

I make guitars and fancied my hand at doing a banjo for a change of scenery, so started doing some research, and came across this chap, who's attitude to problem solving I find quite frankly amazing:


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## Cooper (14 May 2021)

Cabinetman said:


> all my everyday tools fit in a carry rack that comes out of secure storage at the beginning of the day




A lovely piece of work but I have a question. You must have a table saw and planer thicknesser or similar to prepare such a beautiful piece.
I'm still using most of the hand tools I had to get for college more than 50 years ago. (Though I've added a few powered bits and pieces)


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## Cabinetman (14 May 2021)

Yes I do, I made bespoke furniture for a living and unless you are one of the very few who can charge megathousands you can’t afford the time to do everything by hand, but saying that I plane everything by hand to finish it. In case anybody is wondering the doors are push to open hence no handles. Ian


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## Gary_S (14 May 2021)

Nothing wrong with people making money from ads and placement. If people want more videos from these people they need to support them. making videos takes time and effort and that should be rewarded. 

There are many creators who finish pieces on YT, Bourbon Moth, Ishitani, Square Rule and the list goes on. Some people watch these and want to learn how to do this themselves. Thats where some guy or girl showing how they managed to make dovetail joint, a tapering jig or whatever is a useful appendix to the this is what I make videos.

To make a piece and show / teach all of the techniques required to make it would be a Herculean task. Matt Estlea is currently making a tool box, he teaches some of the techniques in the series of make videos and refers people to his other videos which explain the techniques in depth. That much content must have taken months to create and edit. If he makes money from ads, Patreon or placement, good luck to him and well done.

A lot of what I am reading here seems like envy. More seems to be the equivalent of arguing over how many woodworkers can dance on the tip of an awl with entrenched views and a fetish for micro adjusted accuracy to be used working a material that has movement, imperfections and character.

Paul Sellers made a workbench from plywood, I watched that with interest because it seemed to me that this was making something that any person could make with materials almost anyone has access to to enable them to build something which they could use to build more things. Bravo Paul.


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## Gary_S (14 May 2021)

Cabinetman said:


> Yes I do, I made bespoke furniture for a living and unless you are one of the very few who can charge megathousands you can’t afford the time to do everything by hand, but saying that I plane everything by hand to finish it. In case anybody is wondering the doors are push to open hence no handles. Ian


I love that piece. Well done.

I think that most YT woodworkers employ what Mark thingy the Wood Whisperer refers to hybrid woodworking. My favourite being the English Woodworker who applies skill and craft with pragmatism.


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## D_W (14 May 2021)

I give paul a pass -he was brought up here, but he has his own special gimmick. It's not about lack of skill, it's about substituting mood. ("lifestyle"). He does peddle a lot of the something for nothing gimmick, though (the ply bench, the hag's tooth in a 2x4 - all of that stuff gives the illusion of something for nothing as long as you don't build any of it thinking you'll use it for long). His objective is to sell something else and proclaim not being beholden to tool companies. 

I haven't yet met someone who is a Rob Cosman subscriber or a Paul subscriber who has progressed into understanding design and self-problem solving to make fine work, but that's not their point. Someone who learns the basics and then becomes an independent curious type is a bad customer for them.


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## D_W (14 May 2021)

Here is the person I mentioned earlier - who learned all of what you see here at a two-year trade college - stephen's college here (thaddeus stevens is what it used to be referred to as). One of the more famous high level instructors worked there (it was phil lowe or something like that...edit, looked it up. Steve Latta). 






Founding Furniture







myfoundingfurniture.com





This (stevens college) is a trade school that offers instruction like this or HVAC, etc. As in, they teach the kids to work wood - it's not pompous or overwrought with anything other than learning how to do things instead of making excuses or building egos - (if your desire is fine furniture, they'll teach that. If it's making kitchen cabinets, they'll teach you that instead). Two years, no mystical stuff, just teaching you how to make things without excuses not to. 

I saw this guy set up the year after he graduated. This furniture isn't what he's learned to make 10 years later, it's what he was building right out of school, and as his bio says, he learned it in those two years. 

That should make people think about what's possible and what's not. As to whether or not he's a single example? No, he placed fourth in a competition on one side of the state (three other trade school students from another school in philadelphia beat him). The real issue for this stuff is finding customers. He's definitely older looking now (he was a fresh faced kid sporting this furniture at a booth in a craft faire that typically sells brooms and turkey legs. It was a bit of a shock.


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## D_W (14 May 2021)

space.dandy said:


> Sorry, D_W, I really can't fathom your argument here. Is this some kind of zen guru thing? The master will only share his secrets with the worthiest of students? Are you saying that I must prove my dedication by poring through hours of diatribe to discover the few nuggets of useful information?



No, it's a matter of spending time. Are you going to try to be popular, or are you going to try to start discussion only with people who are actually interested. Nobody has to prove anything to me or anyone else. You either go through the content to learn something, or you don't - if it's more fun to be entertained and hypothesize that you may potentially do something with the 10% of the actual process that's presented (that's very easy, enticing - like watching other people dig a ditch - it looks easy), or you're looking for something to use. 

I set a channel up before youtube was as highly produced as it is now, have no interest in turning ads on or editing videos and kind of hoped for about 50 subscribers who were actually doing things. The format has passed that by, and no big deal, it's their site. If you cater to high views, it becomes a tax on you if you just want to deal with the topical stuff. If you're rex or numbs or any of those people selling patreon or ads, well, that's the point - the material isn't. If you're not wanting to deal with throngs of people asking questions, then you make a dumpy channel like mine and once a month or so, you get a snide comment, but most people just leave. It's actually great. As long as you're doing it for no reason other than to just share something. I hope for five people to use something that I post - but if zero find it useful, that's fine, too. If 100 do, I'll be surprised. The number who find something useful (vs. entertaining) probably doesn't increase with view numbers. 

As far as the tokens - I don't follow tokens. It's a principles thing. When someone shows you a video and adds a token to the item they're trying to sell you, they usually spin a yarn about how the item was somehow meaningful to them, but the odds are slim that the video wasn't made with a fake story to push you to go to amazon with the token hoping that you'll buy the item and a bunch of other things. I don't ever buy any of that rubbish, but the token will remain resident if you buy something else. The principle part is that I'm not reinforcing the behavior of making videos with fake stories one after the other when magically every "meaningful" experience can be purchased on amazon. Seems a little unusual, doesn't it? Especially when someone boasts that they weren't sponsored by the product. If they can get 1000 people to buy anything on a pass through with their token, getting sponsored would just add work. 

Quite often, segments of the "stories of experience" match passages word for word in the ad copy of an item either in a listing or on a manufacturer's site. it stinks.


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## Ttrees (14 May 2021)

'Tis a bit strange that some on the forums, and not just here..
bring up some of these channels and come away with the thought that they have a basic understanding of how to do things well.

It's an important subject when it relates to tablesaws or planers for instance,
Without going into that though...

How do those folks manage to find places like this, with such a seemingly brief time studying woodworking online,
but not have stumbled across folks who have somewhat more credentials regarding the specific task at hand?

I suppose it's harder to pick and choose the who's who of the specific tasks in hand, when you don't have all the names to fill in the blanks.
Surely this forum makes that simple, no?

I agree that you can learn skills very quickly, if you practice well 
and not practicing doing something wrong.
It seems that most folks who watch those snazzy edited videos are looking for some sort of shortcut, 
as they might have something important missing out of their 
setup or something?
I don't get, not wanting to watch something that will help, by going to a good source like Follandsbee for hewing, Charlesworth for accurate planing, yourself David, for learning to set a double iron plane, and watching other interesting woodie stuff for entertainment purposes if one wished like Chris Harbor.

Tom


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## D_W (14 May 2021)

Ttrees said:


> I suppose it's harder to pick and choose the who's who of the specific tasks in hand, when you don't have all the names to fill in the blanks.
> Surely this forum makes that simple, no?



Depends on who is giving the information out. At one point, George Wilson in the US landed on the blue forum over there. He'd just retired and was still full of interest in talking craft. He is probably the finest maker I've ever met - as in, he has a great understanding of design, is able to work entirely by hand or with machines, can carve, make metal dies, refurbish machinist tools, make musical instruments, furniture, guns, just about anything. 

Some of his work has made it to the queen's residence (or at least some part of the royal property), as awards for PGA tour winners, to heiresses with extremely deep pockets, to the duponts here (who took a shine with things he was making and shopped his output) and to a gaggle of american presidents (at least in contribution of some part of a good if all of it wasn't his trade). 

That said, he met resistance from the fanboys and eventually left the forum. So what does this have to do with a list of "real things"? The folks who were upset by his insistence that people can learn the principles of good work remain with some claiming that he's a fraud or flatly saying that he's not as good of a craftsman as someone like Sellers. A statement like that is idiocy. He is a savant. On one of the other forums where this was asserted, the poster finally after badgering admitted that he didn't consider someone a good craftsman if he though they were rude. 

I talk to George fairly often. He's 80 now and still sharp, but not full of energy to make things any longer. He is enormously patient and will explain things or help with design without asking anything in return. What he doesn't tolerate well is people asserting that with 3 months of experience, they should be regarded just the same as far as advice goes. 

In a straw man scenario, this can be enticing "well, just be friendly, it's not really that important". But when someone comes along making something relatively finely and they want that last kick toward making it finely and not just relatively finely, George is the guy who can look and in 10 seconds tell you the difference between "I can't see what's wrong with it but it doesn't look quite right to me" and "I can't see anything wrong with it, it only looks right". 

Forums will chew someone like that up when they assert every so often that something is important enough to get right, or when they are critical of something presented by a blogger. At one point, Chris Schwarz developed a fascination with clenching nails, but he did it unnecessarily sloppily. George, who would've seen hundreds of things clenched with nails and done plenty of it on his own repairing rare good or making for a museum criticized the result as unsuitable. It literally caused folks to register for the forum that he was on just to complain and then post the link over to CS's blog, which caused CS to blow up. This kind of thing is interesting when it comes to folks who like to volunteer "I'm not posing myself as a fine maker" but then when they come up short and it's pointed out, they have the ego of someone who thinks they are and can't look at the criticism and see if it's valid. 

This is just one little example - if you're going to follow along and clench nails and it takes the same effort to do them neatly or not, doing them the way "your hero" does them doesn't serve you. Doing them the way "your hero" does them to spite a fine maker doesn't ,either. These last two cases generally win a majority of the time under the illusion that the blogger or presenter is your friend and George, who is turning your wheel a little with no expectation of anything in return is "rude". 

It's bizarre, but part of the falseness. That someone who seems friendly in a video where they're there only to get something out of you is actually your friend. Same kind of illusion April Wilkerson going from obvious rank beginner to putting together a plywood cart with 20 brand new triton tools all lined up neat in the background. If they're never discussed, it's not apparent to the newcomer that those just appeared and that it's probably not what she would have bought (the terms of the agreement aren't discussed, so the viewer is working with a curated idea of reality). 

This isn't remotely close to being limited to woodworking, of course. Placement of guitars and gear etc. in that arena is rampant, and while most folks will say "we know they're compensated" would suddenly think a little less well when they find out that the pusher of the goods doesn't like them that well, but received 7k to make three videos that had to be approved by a manufacturer and the words the person says in the videos were edited and written by someone else. 

All of the sudden, that doesn't seem so genuine and in the spirit of "just keeping the channel going".


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## D_W (14 May 2021)

Jonm said:


> This has been posted on this site before but worth a second look. Not quite woodwork, more access using wooden ladders. All you need are the ladders, hemp rope, pulley, hemp lashings, string, bits wood fixed together, lump hammer, chisel, small blocks of wood and some steel pins (dogs). No need for scaffolding, hard hats just ability to work at height. Easy to listen to, low key, no overstating and quite terrifying (for me).
> 
> Definitely for watching and not doing. This is part 1, part 2 should follow on automatically.




Another one that I've seen before, but is absolute gold. When you feel like working on something and think "I can't", then think of someone like dibnah. 

Imagining yourself going up the ladder like that is enough to give you what my mother referred to as "loose poo", just with the imagination, though. 

Anyone ever climb something like that untethered? I had a relative (same one as mentioned with the windmill) who also had a 200 foot radio tower on the same property as his window tower. It had large round head bolts for foot pegs and he would go up the tower and work untethered, and once you're up off the ground a little, there's a whole lot more breeze than you expected from ground level. 

I went up about a fifth of the way at one point when he asked if I wanted to climb it (i thought it would be neat), and then chickened out. I guess you can get used to that, but with no experience and no safety didn't seem like a great way. My mother would've killed him (her brother) if she'd have seen me going up it. 

And that seems about half of this - as the pegs were already there and in the tower.


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## heimlaga (14 May 2021)

I think D_W has a very valid point though it at times gets lost in a dense underbrush of irritation and frustration.

As I get it the point is that many of the more famous youtube "woodworkers" are more about acting and storytelling and marketing than about showing and teaching how the thing they pretend to be experts at is actually done to a decent standard.
I can nothing but agree wholeheartedly if that is D_W's point.
Roy Underhill is in my books a prime example. A good television presenter they say. Probably a good woodworker within his rather narrow field of woodwork when left on his own with no camera running. Sometimes pretending to be an expert of everything far outside his field when placed in front of the camera while avoiding carefully to show enough detail for everyone to figure out that he knows nothing. Sometimes pretending to be the little knowing presenter within his field while every movement shows that he knows at least something.
In short making a fool of himself in my eyes........ and strangely enough that is what people like to watch.

I think the main problems with youtube are theese two:
-Comersialisation. As soon as you start to think about product placement or about what audience you are to attract you will either willingly or unwillingly be making compromizes and once you have stayed that course long enough it will be just show and no woodwork.
-The attraction of novelty. To increase the number of wiewers youtube woodworkers often find themselves way outside their field of knowledge. The totally ridiculous video with Paul Sellers teaching how to use a hatchet on green timber is a prime example. Some try to cover it up with show and some try to hide it with editing and Paul tried to proclaim that his way was the only safe way for an amateur. It would be much better to just confess to the wiewers that this is outside one's own field of knowledge. Paul is by all accounts a very skilled woodworker and a decent teacher too when staying within his limits and I rekon that limit is approximately two metres away from an axe or a hatchet or any green timber.
If I was trying to teach violin building or French polishing it would become an utter mess reaching the highest standards of ridiculosness but I think I could teach traditional log building or the making of casement windows and panel doors or even the basics of stick welding without making a fool of myself.

Myself I can be wiewed in one youtube video. Which is essentially a video with two chaps together explaining the mechanism of an 19th century windmill everything spoken in a dialect only understandable to less than 100000 people and therefore with rather clumsy subtitles all over the place. Though everything is very pedagogic and clear and people who have seen it say it helped them understand the principles of how the windmill works and how the parts are made.
The video has reached 299 wievs in half a year........
Not quite something you make money from but I am very proud of it.


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## Cabinetman (14 May 2021)

heimlaga said:


> I think D_W has a very valid point though it at times gets lost in a dense underbrush of irritation and frustration.
> 
> As I get it the point is that many of the more famous youtube "woodworkers" are more about acting and storytelling and marketing than about showing and teaching how the thing they pretend to be experts at is actually done to a decent standard.
> I can nothing but agree wholeheartedly if that is D_W's point.
> ...


 And I for one would be delighted to be able to see it, do you have a link please?


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## D_W (14 May 2021)

You're right - i'm terrible at brevity and sticking to the point and it makes the message hard to convey, but the message would be contentious, too, because it discerns reality and sometimes that's harsh on heroes. 

I mentioned George Wilson a few times. George is not a compass maker, George is a maker, in a class with the best who have ever been alive. 









A surveyor's compass I made for David Brinkley


Click THREE times on the pictures to greatly enlarge them. I was asked to make this by the management of Williamsburg as an inducement to get Mr. Brinkley to stay on another year as head of the Raleigh Tavern Society. That is a group of large donors(over $10,000 a year,I think). Since it is...




www.hobby-machinist.com





It would be hard to get him to do a blog or video series because he likes to find people who have talent (that's not me) and then help them along. For some of us in the more mediocre tier, it was pure luck that he was bored shortly after retirement and was on the forums for just a bit. 

I don't know what a David Brinkley equivalent there would be - figure your 1970s and 1980s most respected world news anchor who didn't have anything untoward about him and was totally professional. Around this time in the early 2010s, people were badgering George to show things that he'd made because he didn't do much of that at the outset, and when I called me the first time I'd heard of him and told me that a saw handle that I made wasn't very good, but could be better, I thought it was an obligation that I didn't want, and a bit presumptuous. It was just lucky that he saw that I could do something I thought I couldn't do. Not because I couldn't do it, but because I had the choice to let myself off the hook. I figured if it was too hard to do I could just run away and hide, but it turned out to be rewarding. 

It's a shame that the paint/lacquer work done on the face of the dial can't be seen - it's unbelievable. There aren't commercial stamps available that are suitable, so you can see what the result is - he made them. They are superb. I never felt like I could do anything with the aesthetics that he does, but I can take his ideas, start putting them in play and work up to them. 

As far as "the only way" type stuff where one DVD or blog instructor says one thing and another says the next - makers further along don't care about that. They care about results - only if a method fails to get results will you hear anything. I can recall george going "Oh God - another sharpening method thread" until the throngs beat George about until he relented and described what he uses to sharpen. I don't think anyone uses what he provided now, but it doesn't matter (as I recall, it was a diamond hone, followed by finishing on a spyderco stone and then green compound on something hard - yet again, another forum myth "no real maker ever uses these modern stones or really fine honing compounds" ...busted. 

If George (he communicates quite well, far better than I do) were to put together a series of instruction on the details of good work and the details of fine work, it would be invaluable to those of us who can't get the last little bits. For example, you're going to make a saw handle - within a very short period of time, you'll be able to make a crisp saw handle. The thing that separates the common dovetail saws from the seaton chest saws are the lines, and other than tracing those, I couldn't nail them. George can describe the proportions and what you should start with and look for. Where whimsey is OK, and where it's cheesy, and how much and in what proportion. 

It wouldn't sway folks looking for the something-for-nothing-and-this-guy's-my-friend crowd, but there's some small minority of us out there wanting to build a skill set and not just an item. 

I believe both Paul and Roy are joiners. Roy was a joiner or housewright at williamsburg. He's not a fine worker even though he can make things that look nice and would torch almost all hobbyists. It's not his job to be those things - it would limit his market - he does what he does well. Paul does, too, and only kind of irks me when he makes assertions about things that aren't that important. 

And FTR, I've sized green (And sometimes dry) wood with a hatchet, and I'm not sure that there's a way to make it perfectly safe. It's probably important for anyone starting with it to understand that it's not safe and it'll take time to understand what a safe work margin is. But the "safety first" way isn't going to be the way someone with experience can safely do it.


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## Phil Pascoe (14 May 2021)

heimlaga said:


> .
> 
> Myself I can be wiewed in one youtube video.



Can we have a link, please? 

Sorry, C, I didn't see your post.


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## D_W (14 May 2021)

I never read to the end of that post from george before (talked to him directly about the compass, which was offered in trade for narrating an hour or some fraction of video, which took DB exactly an hour to read (no mistakes in diction or reading). Maybe the most amazing thing about the entire compass story - that someone could read an hour or large fraction of an hour of copy that they'd never seen before in one straight take and not miss anything.

I see the post at the end though that George had to rush to work to make something for Mao. I think I'd have told Mao that only capitalists work on the weekend so we'd get it to him after Monday (not that you'd get to present a gift that you make - I'm sure it goes through some kind of security and all kinds of scrutiny).


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## heimlaga (14 May 2021)

Phil Pascoe said:


> Can we have a link, please?
> 
> Sorry, C, I didn't see your post.


All right here it is:


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## thetyreman (14 May 2021)

I know sellers isn't everyone's cup of tea, but at the end of the day he's probably getting more young people into woodworking than anyone else, he is good when you are first starting out and literally know nothing, if you follow his methods you'll get good results, I actually like how he's not perfect and just human, that's far more appealing than the vast majority of people on youtube.


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## Adam W. (14 May 2021)

heimlaga said:


> All right here it is:




What's ister that you use to grease the axel bearing stone with ?


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## johnnyb (14 May 2021)

I reckon the main main main thing is if your not making stuff your a fake. simple. if your spending more time watching you tube than making stuff consider what is happening. I reckon making stuff and then selling it soon makes you realise that your playing to much and producing to little. 
making something for no reason often leads down rabbit Warren's


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## heimlaga (15 May 2021)

Adam W. said:


> What's ister that you use to grease the axel bearing stone with ?


Ister=lard
Mixed with a bit of stockholm tar and used as lubrication. It sticks to the bearing surface and makes it slippery.


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## Just4Fun (15 May 2021)

johnnyb said:


> I reckon making stuff and then selling it soon makes you realise that your playing to much and producing to little.
> making something for no reason often leads down rabbit Warren's


Playing too much for what?
Producing too little for what?

I never make something for no reason. Everything I make is made so I enjoy making it. Occasionally the item I make has some practical use for me, but usually I give away what I make. I have never even tried to sell something I have made.

I certainly don't work as fast as a pro and could never make a living this way. I do woodwork to relax and - as my user name suggests - just for fun. I see nothing wrong with that.


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## sometimewoodworker (15 May 2021)

thetyreman said:


> I know sellers isn't everyone's cup of tea, but at the end of the day he's probably getting more young people into woodworking than anyone else, he is good when you are first starting out and literally know nothing, if you follow his methods you'll get good results, I actually like how he's not perfect and just human, that's far more appealing than the vast majority of people on youtube.


I’m not so sure about that, Steve Ramsey (woodworking for mere mortals) may be a little better and I would say that he has probably been doing his thing for longer than Paul and has, now, no sponsorship that I know of. He did have sponsors before but not now. He has also managed to keep most if not all things he makes reasonably simple.


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## D_W (15 May 2021)

matthias, heisz and maybe Ramsay kind of pioneered the something for nothing woodworking gimmick on youtube. Matthias is monstrously intelligent, and appears to have had a deep engineering career with a whole bunch of patents, and maybe burned out then after that (and he's cheap - like my ancestors - you get to a point where you don't need more money).

I always liked matthias - what he's doing has nothing to do with me, but generally until very recently, he did all of it with cheap stuff. He's engineering - and it's very clear what he's doing. I get enough of heisz pretty quickly because he takes himself seriously, a little too much so and that's kind of antithetical to the gimmick, but again, nothing on his channel is similar to numbs where he's just pure product pushing (the placement and sponsored stuff has probably grown a lot, so maybe that's no longer true - I don't know). 

I never watched ramsay's stuff much - I guess because youtube didn't think my watching pattern looked for it. 

The something for nothing gimmick (I am an amateur toolmaker, which I probably already said) can leave you out a lot of time without very capable stuff. But the illusion doesn't deal with that ahead of time - it's interesting, just like the restoration videos are now - the idea that you started with nothing and end up with something - it must appeal to our survival or hoarding instinct or nesting - to make something out of nothing. 

What does toolmaking have to do with it? I made a gaggle of tools early on. They were generally good, but not "very good" or "great". They taught me one valuable lesson - if you make something and it's just OK, you won't use it and instead you end up with nothing for something. 

I was periodically watching matthias's videos when he got a sponsorship with dewalt and made several videos. People stopped buying his plans to a large extent and he pondered why that was, if they thought he had enough money from sponsor videos (it was several thousand dollars to make a few videos with some new cordless tools - he detailed it because of his frustration with losing traffic elsewhere and then having to give up some control of video content- which is reviewed and adjusted by the sponsor's discretion). I'm guessing that he knows the real reason that people stopped buying his plans - it's clear he's got more than a lifetime of money or he wouldn't have quit his job (and the page he links to talks of some details that illustrates that further. People stopped buying his plans because it broke the perceived relationship - here's the guy most folks like because he isn't placing products in front of them (so far as at one point to do a review of the DW735 against one of those canadian tire cheapie style planers, and he liked the cheap one better), and when that changes, people won't have the same fondness for you. 

The something for nothing and product placement channels will always dominate, because people want to imagine two things:
1) someone will help them by showing them how they could get something for nothing
2) someone will "help" them by showing them what to buy to get past a situation instead of learning

Buying must also appeal to some efficiency motive that we have - that we want to progress as lazily as possible, even when it's not helpful. It's like a switch, and most of us get past that and realize that the product placer woodworker (like a rockler type store in the US, buy this aluminum and plastic and chipboard tool to help you make this next little thing, and then another and another) is a road to endless buying the next thing to do something simple - you get to a generalized sense of skill and visualize an easier way to do things than relying on that. You want to cut a certain moulding? Either you get a shaper if you're a power tool person, or you use moulding planes if you're a hand tooler, and the moulding is done the same morning you want to do it - OR - you can spend $100 on moulding router bits, wait 5 days to get them and hold everything up. 

The skill and the knowledge without trying to find low quality low-wit work arounds is the something for something deal, but you as an individual own it and someone doesn't need to sell it to you. And it can be shared without someone having to buy it.


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## thetyreman (15 May 2021)

sometimewoodworker said:


> I’m not so sure about that, Steve Ramsey (woodworking for mere mortals) may be a little better and I would say that he has probably been doing his thing for longer than Paul and has, now, no sponsorship that I know of. He did have sponsors before but not now. He has also managed to keep most if not all things he makes reasonably simple.



I disagree, sellers was teaching for a long time before youtube so he's actually had far more experience, I'm not a big fan of ramsey's style, he's too shouty and loud.


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## sometimewoodworker (15 May 2021)

thetyreman said:


> I disagree, sellers was teaching for a long time before youtube so he's actually had far more experience, I'm not a big fan of ramsey's style, he's too shouty and loud.


I wasn’t going by pre YouTube experience but by actual YouTube publication. 
I don’t associate Steve R with being shouty or loud, so I’ll go back over a few videos and see if I can see what you mean. 

YouTube hasn’t been around long enough to encompass anyone’s career AFIK. 

I’ve seen 1 good tip from Paul S but probably 5 or 6 from Steve R

I am of course taking about things I can use, not about them objectively.


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## D_W (15 May 2021)

I think sellers started teaching classes in texas in the 1980s. Which sort of blew up the "new guy who has spent a lifetime in museums" that was wrongly told here (not by sellers, but by people who first find him and start making up their own explanations).


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## Adam W. (16 May 2021)

heimlaga said:


> Ister=lard
> Mixed with a bit of stockholm tar and used as lubrication. It sticks to the bearing surface and makes it slippery.


Sticky and slippery at the same time, interesting.

Do you make your own tar ?

I'm guessing that the axel just rests on the bearing and the top is accessible for regular greasing, is that how it goes ?


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## Phil Pascoe (16 May 2021)

First time I've heard of a use for it other than smothering hen's ar$es.


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## Just4Fun (16 May 2021)

heimlaga said:


> Ister=lard


Where do you get it from in Finland? I wouldn't have a clue where/how to obtain lard.


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## Droogs (16 May 2021)

Just4Fun said:


> Where do you get it from in Finland? I wouldn't have a clue where/how to obtain lard.


Tesco 43p per 250g block or your bacon runoff fat

I'd love to know what Stockholm tar is, never mind, just seen it is pine tar


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## johnnyb (16 May 2021)

I'll try and explain what I meant. before youtube I used to buy collect and sell antique tools. it was something that nearly displaced woodworking. they call it a rabbit hole on here. I think its really easy to fall down one. I found antique tools extremely pleasurable....but it was not woodworking. 
I make things everyday and sometimes I long for a rabbit hole. but the repetition of making and making helps cement and hone skills and thinking


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## Just4Fun (16 May 2021)

Droogs said:


> Tesco 43p per 250g block or your bacon runoff fat
> 
> I'd love to know what Stockholm tar is, never mind, just seen it is pine tar


I'd love to know where Tesco is _in Finland_


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## Droogs (16 May 2021)

You could get a home delivery from Poland I suppose 

or just have lots of bacon sandwiches


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## Just4Fun (16 May 2021)

Droogs said:


> or just have lots of bacon sandwiches


That's a pretty good solution to any problem


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## heimlaga (16 May 2021)

Adam W. said:


> Sticky and slippery at the same time, interesting.
> 
> Do you make your own tar ?
> 
> I'm guessing that the axel just rests on the bearing and the top is accessible for regular greasing, is that how it goes ?


The axle (think it is called wind shaft in English) is ballanced so that most of the weight is on the front bearing just inside the wings. The bearing is a hollowed out piece of granite and as you said open on top. The shaft is shod with longitudial spring steel bars let into the timber. The steel takes the wear and the wood between the steel bars distributes the lubrication...... or so I have been told.
The old bars were wrought iron with a thin steel face forge welded on but they were at the end of their useful life so I made the new ones from leaf springs scavenged from a broken up lorry at the scrap yard.

I have too many other things going on to make my own tar but I could if I wanted. However tar gets better if you make it in larger batches and that would be quite a job.



Just4Fun said:


> Where do you get it from in Finland? I wouldn't have a clue where/how to obtain lard.


I spoke to a local pig farmer who has some of his animals butchered locally and sells the resulting meat and sausages himself. He has the best bratwurst in the world by the way. Glada Knorren - griskött från frigående grisar
He sold me some pork belly fat and the woman with whom I live rindered it into lard in her largest cast iron kettle. The best lard which melted first she kept for frying and the lesser grade went to the windmill at work.


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## Just4Fun (16 May 2021)

@heimlaga : That is an interesting link. I have bookmarked it for later use.


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## Jameshow (16 May 2021)

Problem is with this thread and YouTube videos in general is that I've spent half an hour catching up when I could be woodworking! on the other hand I could have been reading the woke thread!!! 

Cheers James


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## Chris JH (20 Jun 2022)

I've been a hobby woodworker for the last 40+ years using a mix of hand tools and basic power tools. I made a lot of furniture (bed, bookcases, built -in wardrobes) in my 20s with very basic tools, when I bought a house that needed lots of work. I also repaired and restored some antique furniture - including a chair that still sits in our lounge. Now that I'm retired I've got a couple of small workshops - one mainly hand tools, the other houses a Kity combination machine, Charnwood bandsaw, Axminster belt/disc sander, a drill press, mitre saw, basic lathe, routers etc. I do like traditional hand tools - including interesting planes, draw knives, adze, shave horse, different saws and I collected many antique examples when I was living and working in France; I don't equate more tools with more productivity, its more a kind of industrial disease or affliction that gets worse with age! My latest acquisition is a beautiful joiner's bench and I've reorganised my shop to accommodate it, making a pact with myself to only keep the tools that I need and use frequently (the claw hammer being the only tool visible in the picture is just an unfortunate coincidence!). The other pictures are from recent projects.

The YouTube era has been a great influence on me as any formal training I had was limited to a few wood and metalwork classes at school. I admire Paul Sellars for his demonstrations of how to achieve accuracy and how to use and sharpen particular tools, I love Harry Rogers (Windsor chair to wooden cloggs) for his willingness to take on new challenges and share the journey, I watch Pask Makes for his diverse skills and creativity and Mr Chickadee for his hand tool skills and the scale of the projects he undertakes. I find watching YouTube videos can provide the encouragement, inspiration and technical expertise that gives me the confidence to push myself beyond my comfort zone and retirement allows me the time to enjoy the learning experience.

One thing I miss is the daily teamwork, camraderie and banter of the workplace. UK Workshop is somewhere to go to find the chat, the jokes, the advice, the wit and repartee that I enjoy. Keep up the good work, be creative and inspire us with your ideas, remember - time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana!


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