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Woodworking for Engineers

• gomox 6y ago
  Matthias Wandel's channel is a true YouTube goldmine. My favorites of his are the DIY woodworking machinery videos, featuring things like making a table saw from scratch, without a table saw. https://youtu.be/RBucMKhrL8M https://youtu.be/RBucMKhrL8M
  • jbergknoff 6y ago
    Indeed. I went through it all about three years ago and learned a ton (starting from essentially "I have a table saw but I don't know what the miter slots are for"). For people interested in this stuff who haven't seen Next Level Carpentry, I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXRNHTVpEdhz9BIvomETGiQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXRNHTVpEdhz9BIvomETGiQ.
  • mkl 6y ago
    Seconded. I highly recommend watching the back catalogue. Also fascinating are the many videos about making and using pantorouters, a very versatile machine of his own invention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_72hOY2vPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_72hOY2vPg (see video description, and there are older videos of different models too). He sells plans for many things he's made on his website.
  • barking 6y ago
    Good channel I found it through my interest in making cider. He made an apple scratter which works fairly well ( https://youtu.be/htT-gZ7ck64?t=147 https://youtu.be/htT-gZ7ck64?t=147 ) but having done more research I think Claude Jolicoeur's (renowned cider maker) is better ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuEqqSgoGcQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuEqqSgoGcQ ). You can see how superior the latter is in the videos which because of its "wedge angle" has no need for a hand plunger to force the apples between rotor and the stator
  • jmkd 6y ago
    It feels churlish to point it out, but occasionally he delves into new areas and makes some dreadful beginner mistakes by trying to invent solutions from scratch without any knowledge or apparent interest in conventional wisdom. For me this takes the engineering approach too far. Prefer when he understands traditional solutions and explores scope for improvement / reinvention.
    • wil421 6y ago
      There’s some other YouTube channels I liked but after watching for a little while I noticed the same thing. I want to learn the right way to woodwork not how an engineer or a very clever person would invent a solution for an already solved problem.
    • MatthiasWandel 6y ago
      Some specific examples would perhaps make your case, instead of just making an unfounded assertion.
  • jacquesm 6y ago
    He's got a pretty nice ribbon saw though! Also: "Actually, I did use a table saw to square up some of the pieces."
  • TheRealWatson 6y ago
    The irony is that some of his most popular videos are about mice games and mice traps.
• RNCTX 6y ago
  Very nice. Woodworking has been a hobby of mine off and on my entire adult life. Two things stand out as having a big impact on woodworking in the past 15 years or so, related to this post: 1) The large-scale adoption of Sketchup as a drafting/designing tool. If you go to any woodworking forum you'll find lots of people talking about it, and it has raised the skill level of a lot of people who are new to woodworking considerably, just by making it a "computer friendly" hobby and making more complex designs possible for people without a high amount of basic knowledge. 2) The social aspect of the internet generally, results in a lot of knowledge about paints, finishes, equipment, and methods being shared. Before the internet, fine woodworking was still something that could only feasibly be learned by apprenticeship. These days, you see people buying historic homes that need a lot of work, for example, and "just figuring it out." PS: for anyone else who might try playing with wood, the answer to how close your measurements should be to make mortises fit JUST right is 5 thousandths ;).
  • jakear 6y ago
    I agree, SketchUp (and woodgears) was a big part of how I was able to pick up woodworking as a kid. I don’t have much love for the product as it is now however. I would prefer the free SketchUp from 10 years ago to the current free tier (web app). Does anyone know if any good open source SketchUp-like tools?
    • andyfleming 6y ago
      The open source tools I’ve seen aren’t great unfortunately. An alternative to sketchup is Fusion 360. Autodesk has a free hobbyist license.
      • imtringued 6y ago
        FreeCAD is cool but very ugly both in terms of aesthetics and UX.
        • bboygravity 6y ago
          IMO Fusion 360 is way uglier in how often it crashes (and how slow it is) compared to FreeCAD.
• richsu-ca 6y ago
  I made my shed using his design and techniques. Every fall, when we stow away backyard furnitures, the umbrella, and Cycles into the shed with ease. I thank him. https://woodgears.ca/shed/shed1.html https://woodgears.ca/shed/shed1.html
  • frosted-flakes 6y ago
    Interesting shed. He put the roofing screws in the wrong place though. They should go on the flats, not the ridges, so that the gasket is fully compressed. In heavy rain, that roof will likely leak. My shop certainly does, and whoever built it also nailed the roof like that. I have a friend who owns a company that manufactures and installs metal roofing, and this is his professional opinion.
    • nkurz 6y ago
      Interesting, I wasn't aware of this recommendation. Searching, it seems to be somewhat contentious. Most --- but not all --- manufacturers recommend installing in the flat (usually with shorter screws at the ridge to join panels). Sometimes a distinction is made based on gauge and style of panel: very thin is always on flat, rounded corrugated is always on the ridge. Some local regulations though appear to require installing through the rib. Discussion here points to some of the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches: https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/projects/179392-metas-roof-wood-screw-placement.html https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/projects/179392-metas-ro.... If you find a firm manufacturer's recommendation for the style of panel that Mattias is using, perhaps email him? I think this is the sort of thing he'd be eager to get right.
      • frosted-flakes 6y ago
        I think that forum thread is confusing two types of metal roofing: large wavy S-shaped heavier-gauge corrugated steel (often galvalume), and flat thinner-gauge steel or aluminum with short ridges every 6"-8" that Matthias used. As you said, it's also my understanding that the corrugated wavy stuff should be screwed on the ridges (that's how my friend did our sauna roof), not the valleys; and the flat stuff should be screwed on the flats, not the ridges. But I don't know whether nails have different recommendations (I imagine my friend would say don't use nails, use screws instead). I'm certainly not an expert, but my friend is. I'd rather not contact Matthias though. I once wrote to him about some minor problem with his website (many years ago, way before his YouTube channel was popular), and his reply was rather mean-spirited and completely uncalled for. I don't hold it against him, but it's soured my opinion of him ever since. In any case, once you make holes in the metal, you can't really remove the screws.
• doctoboggan 6y ago
  Matthias is one of the all time greats of YouTube woodworking. I’ve been following his channel for probably close to 10 years. He does have an HN account and may show up here if he notices enough inbound traffic from this submission.
• aaronblohowiak 6y ago
  This is good for functional stuff. For fine furniture, please subscribe to Fine Woodworking digital which gets you access to the back catalog of magazine articles and video workshops. Fine woodworking features articles and workpieces by professional woodworkers while the editing of those articles is done by professional writers to make it accessible to amateur woodworkers. It is an amazing resource - please help support it.
  • dfc 6y ago
    Thank you for saying this. I'm the woodshop steward at NovaLabs and I can't tell you how under appreciated FWW is. People bring in half baked plans some YouTube/Instagram influencer all too often. Most if the time they don't even have a cutsheet.
• jml7c5 6y ago
  To Matthias, in case you do pop in to this thread: you've forgotten to set a character encoding for pages, so some browsers display gobbledygook instead of apostrophes. For example, on https://woodgears.ca/faq/video.html https://woodgears.ca/faq/video.html: "How’s your (shoulder?)"
  • simonebrunozzi 6y ago
    I took your suggestion and emailed him (mentioning it was from you on HN, of course). Hopefully he'll read it.
  • MatthiasWandel 6y ago
    fixed that page.
• war1025 6y ago
  A bit unrelated, but I discovered "The Woodwrights Shop" has the most recent ten seasons available on pbs.org. Something very satisfying about his approach to woodworking.
  • JKCalhoun 6y ago
    Love that guy. Pretty sure he's always high tho.
    • nabilhat 6y ago
      Think of Roy Underhill as the Cliff Stoll of woodworking instead of klein bottles. Imagine Roy waxing philosophical about klein bottles then reproducing an oaken klein bottle he found buried under a barn that one time. Working frantically, nearly but not quite done in 25 minutes flat, but! with five minutes devoted to showing off that one of a kind klein bottle plane a friend just happened to have given him as a gift ten years ago, because showing off that one oddball tool was the entire point of this whole episode. Roy's the best kind of nerd. He REALLY loves what he does and how he does it, and makes it so contagious that I kinda want to take up woodworking just so I have an excuse to attend one of his classes.
  • modeless 6y ago
    Thanks for this, it brings back many childhood memories. Can't believe the show is still running.
  • matt_s 6y ago
    If you are ever in the Raleigh/Durham NC area, Roy has a school nearby where he actively teaches. https://www.woodwrightschool.com/ https://www.woodwrightschool.com/
• Animats 6y ago
  I miss the Techshop era, and access to CNC woodworking tools. Now that the documents from the TechShop bankruptcy are out, it's clear that the gym-type business model did not work at all. The business was kept going by finding new investors to pay for growth. It never paid for itself from membership fees.
  • mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
    Do you happen to know approximately how much higher the dues would have to have been to be for it to work?
    • Animats 6y ago
      Well, Human Made in SF has most of the old TechShop machines, and they charge $250 a month, plus they got subsidies under some job training program. TechShop was at $100, then $125, then, as "TheShop.build" (which, we find out in the bankruptcy litigation, was more closely associated with the original operation than previously believed) at $150. This is the SF bay area, though, and the real estate and labor costs dominated. The equipment wasn't really a big fraction of the cost. There are smaller nonprofit shops and hacker spaces, but they tend to have fewer and smaller machines and not enough working room. The surviving spaces are more into the college prep education business - it's where you send your kid to get their STEM ticket punched for college. Lots of kids working through the same canned projects. Some at the construction paper and scissors level, like advanced kindergarten. The fundamental problem with the gym model (pay by the month, come as often as you want) is that people who sign up for shop spaces show up too much. Some are there every day for most of the day, doing work. Gyms rely on only a small fraction of members showing up at any one time. At one point, TechShop had ten laser cutters cutting out Etsy stuff from opening til closing, and the laser cutters were booked weeks ahead. Then Etsy allowed outsourcing manufacturing, that stopped, and the Etsy crowd dropped their memberships.
      • mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
        Thanks, ah, that's an interesting insight re: usage patterns vs normal gyms, it makes a lot of sense to me that you might not have as many people holding the membership sort of aspirationally wrt attendance the same way you do at a fitness gym.
• starpilot 6y ago
  The most frustrating thing about this hobby in the YouTube age is every "DIY" video employing a full shop with $8,000 worth of tools. How is this different from professional woodworking? Where are the resources for beginners?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • ink_13 6y ago
    You may be interested in Matthias' videos where he makes his own tools, such as a table saw or a bandsaw.
  • mturmon 6y ago
    You might like to look at Paul Sellers' videos? He can get a lot done with hand saws, marking tools, and chisels. But in general, among hobbies, woodworking is pretty gear-intensive. Even if you try to avoid it.
    • mbrock 6y ago
      Rex Krueger is worth checking out too. The series he’s been making now is all about getting started with real woodworking using minimal inexpensive tools. There’s some craft-historical topics too especially in his approach to workbenches: he first makes a simple low bench in an old Roman style (inspired by Christopher Schwartz’s research) and later an English workbench with a big leg vise. Both relatively easy constructions from cheap softwood with ingenuity and definite pragmatism.
    • Ma8ee 6y ago
      It's just too easy that any hobby becomes spending hours drooling over equipment you want to buy rather than actually doing stuff (whether it is woodworking or playing the guitar). This is one reason I really like Paul Sellers: You don't need so much.
      • jeromenerf 6y ago
• k_sze 6y ago
  There is a very surprising statement on his "Gear Template Generator" page (https://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/index.html https://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/index.html): > I recommend printing the gears with an ink jet printer. Even cheap ink jet printers print very scale accurate but Not all laser printers are accurate. Does anybody know whether that's still the case, and why?
  • Cerium 6y ago
    Laser printers project the image onto a drum using a laser and a spinning mirror. There can easily be issues with the scale accuracy. Ink jet printers conventionally move the head along a linear rail with a timing belt and stepper or servo motors; that better guarantees the precision as the pully diameter and step size or encoder resolution are the items determining precision.
    • NortySpock 6y ago
      And nowadays the lasers have been replaced with LEDs, perhaps that changes the equation yet again! https://youtu.be/_saDCwsB9Ww https://youtu.be/_saDCwsB9Ww
      • dogma1138 6y ago
        The light source isn’t that much of an issue the problem is that you are projecting on a curved surface (even tho you are projecting a line at the time) and at an angle. Basically photolithographic printers can have the same issues as you have with projectors where the image can be skewed or morphed so if you are printing say a square you might not get 4 90 degree corners or perfectly straight lines, the size of the print can also vary depending on the distance between the projector and the drum if it’s not exactly the same as the printer thinks it is the size will change and it varies it would cause perspective shift skewing. With ink jet alignment errors would maintain the shape and size but the shape might not be aligned perfectly to the page so your errors would only be positional or rotational with photolithography you have perspective and projection transformation errors. Photolithography printers for engineering/architecture have builtin auto alignment to correct for this. While the errors even for most home printers are very small if you print something like a gear it’s enough to cause wobbling and fit issues. That said for wood gears if you cut them by hand I would imagine the tolerance errors from cutting would be worse than from printing unless you are very skilled.
• monksy 6y ago
  This is pretty funny.. I just finished a few shelves for my media area. (Went from pineboard to finished product) https://imgur.com/a/VOeWisn https://imgur.com/a/VOeWisn All of them are level.. however I do need to work on my cable organization and slim down some of the cables.
  • mod 6y ago
    Looks pretty good for pine. You must have used pre-stain conditioner?
    • monksy 6y ago
      No pre-stain. However, I did sand them down quite a bit.
• gorgoiler 6y ago
  I love digging out a saw every now and then. I just built 20x bamboo cages for filling out canvas tomato pot bags, to support plants up to 6’ high. The first ones look awful. The last ones look ok. I rated myself on how strong they are, how quickly I built them, and how few steps they took rather than on how good they looked. It felt analogous to iterative hacking in a scripting language. Oh how I’d love a workshop in which to do some actual quality work as opposed to random hacking!
• ludwa6 6y ago
  Must-see presentation (~1hour) for anyone interested in this topic is "Programming With Hand Tools" by Tim Ewald: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShEez0JkOFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShEez0JkOFw
• robotmay 6y ago
  Has anyone found any good non-American-continent woodworking YouTube channels? Nothing against the Americans/Canadians etc, but this is one area where regional differences make a pretty huge difference in terms of wood and products available. If, like me, you're in the UK and looking for vaguely specific details regarding woodwork online, you're going to find an awful lot of American content and very little local stuff (a blog opportunity there perhaps). A good recent example of this effect for me was when I was looking up pine stains. You will find constant references to something called "pre-stain conditioner" online; this basically doesn't exist in the UK. Everyone online is insistent that you need it, and you can just about buy it here (it's expensive), but it turns out it's pretty irrelevant. In the UK our pine is typically a different variety, and so therefore has a different composition, and our terminology is different here too; wood stain in the UK is, I think, "wood dye" in the USA? Please correct me if you know better :) For reference I use this stain: https://www.wood-finishes-direct.com/product/manns-pine-wood-stain https://www.wood-finishes-direct.com/product/manns-pine-wood..., which makes no mention of pre-stain conditioner, and I've had very good results with it so far.
  • Ma8ee 6y ago
    Paul Sellers have moved back to the UK. In addition to his website [0] and blog there's plenty in his YouTube channel. And my feeling is that Europeans in general don't insist on staining everything like Americans do. Or maybe it's just us in Scandinavia that actually think the bright natural color of birch, but even pine, is quite beautiful. [0] https://paulsellers.com/ https://paulsellers.com/
    • robotmay 6y ago
      I learnt to carve spoons from a few Swedish guys so I have a lot of love for a simple linseed-oil finish :) Can't get any nice, bright, linseed-oil paint in the UK though, which is a bit of a bummer. I ended up using stain for this current project as the room called for dark wood, but the only two real-wood options for skirting boards in the UK are pine or oak, which are both light woods, so I opted to stain pine for it. And thank you! Someone at work mentioned his videos recently and I completely forgot the name.
• raister 6y ago
  I saw someone commenting on YouTube that there is a lot of people from software looking into woodworking. I guess it calms you down after a stressful day. Nothing relax you more than hand planning a crooked board and making a simple dovetailed box.
  • jays 6y ago
    For me, it’s also about building something that will last longer than a few years. Seeing something physically taking shape and the pride of your craftsmanship after it is completed is quite rewarding.
  • jabl 6y ago
    I think it's due to software people often liking to build things, be it software or something else. For me, it's that, but also something simple, concrete and long-lasting. At work, I sit in front of a computer, wrangling with something as abstract as "information" through 147 abstraction layers, standing on the shoulders of software and hardware high-tech representing certainly $trillions of investment. In some ways, it's the pinnacle of human achievement, but it also means that you're but a very very small cog in the whole machinery. In contrast to that, woodworking with handtools is something where the tools have existed for hundreds of years, if not millenia, the techniques are largely millenia old, and whatever I do is something physical I can see and touch, and won't be obsolete in a few years.
    • wetmore 6y ago
      Woodworking and building things in general also requires similar related process such as "debugging", but I find the debugging to be a bit more fun when working on physical objects because you can visualize more easily and use physical intuitions.
• m_fayer 6y ago
  I wonder if anyone knows of any resources for people who want to maximize the woodworking they can do in an average-sized city apartment. We don't have the space to for a real woodshop. But what we can do is dedicate a sizable closet to tools, try to get as far as we can without the big stuff, and live with woodworking involving a significant "set up a temporary shop in the middle of the living room" and then tear it down phase. I've been doing this for small projects, improvising and making do, and would love to hear stories of how others have managed.
  • perpetualpatzer 6y ago
    The standard advice for this if you want to woodwork as a hobby (not for utility, that is): learn to use handtools. Paul Sellers is a good youtuber for this (and there are many others). The r/woodworking subreddit is also quite active and has good starting resources. Dust control for power tools is much harder, so if you're limited to working in your living space, it can be a problem.
    • saalweachter 6y ago
      Also, if you are using an electric saw in your apartment in the middle of the city at any time of day, you are probably a bad neighbor. I think a lot of the question is going to be, is your goal to work with wood and make things in general, or do you have specific sorts of things you want to make? There is really no limit to what you can make by skillfully assembling small pieces of wood into large panels, but it's a lot easier to make inlaid wood boxes in an apartment than bookshelves and desks. A lot of the woodworking you see is furniture making, which typically involves a lot of dimensional lumber and large wood panels which are easiest worked with table saws, planers, joiners and routers, and a large shop and lots of machinery is a boon. But inlay, woodcarving and even scrollsaw work can be done with smaller pieces of wood and little or no power tools.
      • m_fayer 6y ago
        I use power tools only during working hours and try to never go over a cumulative hour of use per day. In Berlin at least I think it's fine, this city has a DIY-ish culture, lots of apartments have homemade furniture, and the sound of electric tools is a common one.
• throwawayForMe2 6y ago
  I am a big fan of Mr. Chickadee, he doesn’t talk much. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHkYrJ2Fbe7pBjEZvkFzi3A https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHkYrJ2Fbe7pBjEZvkFzi3A
• wandering-nomad 6y ago
  Does anybody know of any Indian youtube channel/blog/website which dispenses similar knowledge. I am deeply interested in pursuing woodworking and such in my spare time but haven't been able to start because of paucity of resources applicable to Indian context
  • balladeer 6y ago
    Not really. There ares some who do workshops/etc (I know some in Bangalore - Masterclass, Kaydo) but they don't really have much info online. Try talking to them. By the way if you are from there, there's IWST you might want to look at. The tools and the wood - I kept trying but I couldn't really figure out a way to procure these easily and with some help in selection. Getting them from abroad would cost multiple limbs.
    • wandering-nomad 6y ago
      Thanks! I am in Bangalore and will definitely give IWST a try. Btw, I found a DIY woodworking site from India https://indiandiy.blogspot.com/ https://indiandiy.blogspot.com/
      • balladeer 6y ago
        Were you able to get some info on how to procure tools and wood etc?
• MatthiasWandel 6y ago
  Matthias here (surprixed to see my website hit the front page of HN). Got any questions for me?
• MatthiasWandel 6y ago
  Matthias here. Surprised to see my website hit the front page of HN overnight. Got any questions for me?
  • jhallenworld 6y ago
    I'd love to know how much you make on your software... I imagine much more than the youtube ad revenue. This seems like a great formula for success- youtube content provides free advertising for your side project. EEVBlog does the same thing with his meters.. I did buy your gear template generator and tried it on the laser cutter. It's cheaper than the solidworks add-on that does the same thing :-) Which is more successful, your plans or your software?
    • MatthiasWandel 6y ago
      The software is a good chunk of the revenue, but youtube makes more than the sw. But when others talk about how much they make on youtube, it's alwas more than me per view. Biggest revenue contributor is plan sales.
  • Dumblydorr 6y ago
    Hi Matthias!! Huge admirer here in Providence, RI. Your site is extremely helpful, but would you recommend seeking a master to learn from? I feel I'd progress faster as an apprentice than as a YouTube learner. My goal is to do dining tables, bed headboards, fancy boxes, currently I'm just doing picture frames. Also, that pantarouter is incredible, kudos! When you routed 3 dowels I was very impressed. How did you envision the machine?
    • MatthiasWandel 6y ago
      Being an apprentice is probably bretter, yes. But I have no idea where you would find a master who wants an apprentice, let alone a master at all.
      • dheelus 6y ago
• richardw 6y ago
  If you’re not a woodworker, try it. I watched a bunch of YouTube and spent my December leave building my daughter a kitchen step. Such a nice experience to work with something physical. Creative and exacting. Start with a plank and an idea, end with a much-loved piece of furniture. The outcome: https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/ex4hej/first_project_kitchen_steps_for_my_daughter/ https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/ex4hej/first_p...
• b0rsuk 6y ago
  Woodworking looks strangely appealing and it's satisfying to make something with your own hands, at least once in a while. But with how absent-minded I can be I'm scared of losing a finger. Around here we say every carpenter loses a few sooner or later. Are there foolproof ways to keep them?
  • bicx 6y ago
    Only use unpowered hand tools maybe. Unfortunately, using powered saws is always a little dangerous. Some table saws have a detection mechanism if it hits your flesh that causes it to hit the brakes immediately, but there aren't many other saws with that sort of safety feature. There are safety devices and safety protocols, but it's probably best to avoid them if you know that you tend to be absent-minded. Any safety device that lets wood near the blade will also let your finger near the blade.
  • SkyPuncher 6y ago
    I have a strict process that I go through with any powertool that can get me quickly (not really worried about drills or sanding equipment). * Never leave the tool running * If I can't keep my fingers at least 6 inches away, I need a jig. Many tools I keep 12+ inches away. * Clamps and wood scraps are your friends. * Unplug every tool immediately after done using. * Hand and body check immediately before turning on a tool. * Again, jig everything that I can.
  • jeromenerf 6y ago
    « A useful tool is dangerous » is what I teach children. Some could say that a blunt chisel is more dangerous than a sharp one, but that’s the next level class :) Risk is accident probability x damage potential. I guess that if you think your nature increases the probability factor, then I would choose the tools with the least damage potential, I would stay off power tools.
  • oflannabhra 6y ago
    Probably the most dangerous tool in a shop is the table saw. SawStop is really the only truly foolproof method to prevent injury. Unfortunately, they are not licensing their patent (even though they tried to initially), and they have shut down several other companies who have come out with similar mechanisms (at least Bosch). The downside to this is that the cost of safety is relatively high ($2000+), and there is no way to retrofit high-quality used saws from the used market ($500+)
• crimsonalucard1 6y ago
  I'm waiting for the day where 3D printers become so powerful that I only need a minimal set of these "physical" DIY skills to build random physical objects. Anybody know of a printer that can get me very close to this goal?
• sq1020 6y ago
  All this woodworking and carpentry stuff seems so interesting. For those who are experienced, what's the most efficient way to gain basic woodworking skills? And what's the best advice you would give a beginner who's starting out? I.e. things you wish you had known when you were starting out.
  • BannedInSweden 6y ago
    Actually - I started out by building the bed from this website (woodgears). Youtube has a tone of good basic tutorials and this site provides basic plans (mind you - they needed some tweaking, there were errors in sizing and the twin bed we bought was actually larger than this specified). Turned out great - except the headboard wasn't tall enough (kid bangs his head on it occasionally so re-doing that soon). In general, just find something you want to build and build it. You will learn a LOT. Its very much like programming in that sense. You can do very simple 2d plans in openoffice draw or similar visio style tools and then buy the basics at home depot or lowes or wherever. Hand tools are ok to start but would suggest some basics like a circular saw or a portable table saw to help make things a little more straight. If you don't have any of these things then expect to spend a few hundred dollars on tools to even do something basic. You can get away with cheap tools for a project or so but if you are serious about doing this long term you are better off buying fewer higher quality things than more lower quality things as they won't last (ie dewalt over ryobi and anything from a woodshop over anything from harbor freight). As for things I wish I'd have known when I started? Buy a good face-mask for dust protection. I had no idea how freakin toxic pine dust is. If you don't have a super high quality (read thousands of dollars) dust vac system then work in a well ventilated area (like outside) with that mask on then clean up after each session before you go inside so you don't track that junk in. Oh and hand planing is the suck.
  • MarkusWandel 6y ago
    Matthias's brother here. Handy by general standards, but two left hands by the standards of Matthias and our dear departed dad. The most important thing about starting woodworking: Have something you want to make, and no exaggerated expectations. Example from real life: Want a little wall shelf for salt and pepper etc. for over the kitchen table. At the time I had no planer or circular saw, just a ragtag assortment of tools. But you can do a reasonably square cut with a small garage sale bandsaw, and I had a hand plane that was reasonably sharp, and a random board actually looked really nice once I planed it and put a clear varnish on it. Presto, shelf. What's there to lose from trying? http://wandel.ca/pic.cgi?a09614c7 http://wandel.ca/pic.cgi?a09614c7 Actually I think I also had one of those "Miter box" type guided hand saws, and used that to make the square cuts. If I were starting out now, I'd get a decent handheld circular saw and improvise a jig to make a clean crosscut with it. That too can be fun experimentation and construction lumber is cheap material. Later wanted to hang a lamp over the table, and going all the way to the ceiling and back with the cable, for a lamp this low, didn't seem right. So added a stick of wood to an IKEA shelf bracket, and: http://wandel.ca/pic.cgi?4db2d897 http://wandel.ca/pic.cgi?4db2d897 The key is not to kick myself because I can't do as good a job as my brother or my dad, but rather take pleasure in what I can do.
• conroydave 6y ago
  i just got smoked by that eyeballing game
• davexunit 6y ago
  Woodworking is a hobby I really enjoy, but I've found nearly every public figure in the community to be pretentious and exclusionary (I don't actively watch Matthias' youtube channel, I just know him as the "wooden band saw guy", so I'm not applying this to him), much more so than other hobbies I've tried, programming included. Seems like everyone who is a "real" woodworker has a giant dedicated shop space filled with Sawstop and Festool brand everything, massive planers and jointers, a wall of expensive hand planes, and an elaborate dust extraction system. Going into a Woodcraft or specialty lumber yard for the first time sucks because some old white guy makes you feel dumb. Am I a "real" woodworker if I just have part of a basement/garage and a few Ryobi tools? Am I a "real" woodworker if I make things out of pine instead of black walnut? What if I use pocket screws or rabbet joints instead of hand cut dovetails? Steve Ramsey's Woodworking for Mere Mortals youtube channel and his online courses (costs money, but quite affordable, IMO) are the best resources I've ever found for lowering the barrier to entry. I would have given up long ago if it weren't for his stuff.
  • Itaxpica 6y ago
    Hilariously, around like the third sentence of this I thought to myself "I bet this guy would like Steve Ramsey". He really is head-and-shoulders above anyone else making content in the hobby.
    • davexunit 6y ago
      I'm gonna sound like a paid shill if I praise him anymore than I already have but there's no way I'd be building my own cabinets if I didn't try making his BMW (basic mobile workbench) back in 2017.
  • mrgzg1 6y ago
    imo you are a real woodworker if you build something, regardless of the tools you utilize. "A Tool is Only as Good as its Use" I've gone down the rabbit hole of finding perfect tool to accomplish a task, be it in software realm or woodworking realm, only to realize I lost sight of the end goal in search for THE tool. Thanks for pointer to Mere Mortals channel! Pocket holes are one of those non-intimidating techniques that have kept me in the game too. I was pretty impressed by Kreg's mission: https://www.kregtool.com/about-us/mission.aspx https://www.kregtool.com/about-us/mission.aspx props to them and any one else leveling the field for novices. "Kreg products are designed to make wood projects less intimidating, to build confidence, and inspire success." I've been very satisfied by their pocket hole jig
• pknerd 6y ago
  I would like to know some more X for engineers like: - Cooking for engineers - painting for engineers. Etc.
  • jakear 6y ago
    Modernist Cuisine a good option for “cooking for engineers”. It was actually made by a former CTO of microsoft, Nathan Myhrvold.
    • __turbobrew__ 6y ago
      I find Cooks Illustrated is another good option. They tend to focus on the science of cooking and do a lot of exploratory work on how to hone/simplify traditional recipes to work better at home.
• agumonkey 6y ago
  This chinese elder makes stuff that ressembles mechanical jigsaw puzzles https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClaEdLrmti779-tyovta8zw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClaEdLrmti779-tyovta8zw