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

[heimlaga]

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.

 

[Cabinetman]

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.

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

 

[D_W]

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.

https://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/a-surveyors-compass-i-made-for-david-brinkley.16980/
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.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

.

Myself I can be wiewed in one youtube video.

Can we have a link, please?

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

 

[D_W]

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).

 

[heimlaga]

Can we have a link, please?

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

All right here it is:

 

[thetyreman]

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.

 

[Adam W.]

All right here it is:

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

 

[johnnyb]

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

 

[heimlaga]

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.

 

[Just4Fun]

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.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

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.

 

[D_W]

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.

 

[thetyreman]

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.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

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.

 

[D_W]

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).

 

[Adam W.]

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 ?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

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

 

[Just4Fun]

Ister=lard

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

 

[Droogs]

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