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.
How you know people are interested in fake woodworking...
- Thread starter D_W
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Trainee neophyte
Established Member
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.
clogs
just can't decide
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.......
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.......
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.
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.
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.
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
Woody2Shoes
Impressive Member
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
https://www.youtube.com/c/CurtisBuchananChairmaker/videos
Those videos are gold.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
sometimewoodworker
Established Member
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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Yes me.
Cabinetman
Established Member
" 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.
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.
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.
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).
Cabinetman
Established Member
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.
