15 ms·

Woodworking through the mind of an engineer

266 points by Ivoah 4y ago

cwkoss 4y ago
Wandel is really cool. Highly recommend his woodworking channel. Some of my favorite things he's made cluster around making high precision things with tools that are usually easy to use imprecisely. Copy Carver - kind of a manually run 3D CNC, lets the user 'trace' in 3 dimensions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyNu8lpQI1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyNu8lpQI1g Pantorouter - build an oversized template, then end-cut a piece in a way that scales down that template (effectively multiplying precision of the template to achieve precision you wouldn't be able to get otherwise) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_72hOY2vPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_72hOY2vPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJzuM3PRAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJzuM3PRAI
- netsharc 4y ago
  He also made a pantograph out of LEGO.. for chocolate! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2FY0xLwAcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2FY0xLwAcw
  - cwkoss 4y ago
    Great vid, I had missed that one. Cutting chocolate on the bandsaw cracked me up, classic Matthias
- TacticalCoder 4y ago
  These are amazing. I could swear I've seen some of an horizontaly, not vertically, mounted pantorouter. Since discovering the pantorouter for woodworking I always wondered: wouldn't the same technology make sense for ultra precise 3D printing at home? Instead of having the motors drive directly on top of the model, have the motors drive a pantorouter instead and have the smaller end of the pantorouter on top of the model. It's "just" simple machines right, lever and axle basically? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_machine All I could find is people 3D printing parts to make a pantorouter for wood. But I'd really love to see one for finer 3D prints.
  - Animats 4y ago
    Linkages lose you rigidity. Bad in machine tools.
  - foobarian 4y ago
    I would think that play would be difficult to keep low enough to make this worthwhile. A servo driven hot end is already pretty precise, so a pantograph-like transfer would have to be rigid and tight enough to beat that. No small feat.
  - earleybird 4y ago
    Here's Stefan Gotteswinter giving a talk about his Deckel G1L pantograph engraver.[0] For the side load on a 3D printer it probably would work fine but as others have mentioned, 3D printers are already relatively precise. 0.04mm/step on my ender 3 as I recall. (about 1.5 thou) [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYtJyebx83Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYtJyebx83Y
croo 4y ago
I'm following him on and off for years. He's the most engineer minded woodworker I met on youtube and what stands out for me is the precision he does his stuff. Most other woodworker goes by gut feeling or well established tricks or jigs to make stuff easier. This guy goes by raw precision. I don't know how but he manages to cut stuff by the hair of a millimeter on purpose.
- foobarian 4y ago
  I've enjoyed reading/watching his posts as well, most recently for garage storage as I just moved into an empty one. What I found refreshing is that he is not snobbish about materials and has no qualms about using 2x4 pine or old pallets, as long as they accomplish the job in a desired way with suitable margins. Very engineer-like indeed :-) As a result I was inspired to calculate out forces/stresses for a 1x2 pine structure, driven by the crazy lumber price inflation, and now have a 1x2 scrap wood rack, a 1x2 free-standing shelf, a 1x2 wall-attached shelves...
myth_drannon 4y ago
About 17 years ago I was an intern at RIM/Blackberry and even then Matthias was a legend in the company, built the communication/foundation layer for the device.
- memish 4y ago
  Matthias is a good example of a 100x engineer. He's insanely productive.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    for a reason, a lot of woodworkers on the web hate him, and it often has to do with his choice of paint color.. people are strange.
    - vanderZwan 4y ago
      That basically sounds like a really on-the-nose version of bikeshedding, hahaha
- speg 4y ago
  Whoa - I was also a coop student around that time (2007) but I never knew about the RIM connection until now.
  - MatthiasWandel 4y ago
    I left the company in 2007
    - imglorp 4y ago
      Thanks for all the great content! I would be interested in a more meta piece about how you approach problems and how you regularly achieve that 100x thing.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  Damn I had no idea.. I thought he was just a peculiar woodworker.. a lot of things are obvious now.
bergenty 4y ago
I wish he bought a CNC machine because a lot of what he’s doing can be done so easily with a relatively cheap $1500 dollar system.
- z9znz 4y ago
  The downside is that CNC woodworking videos are less interesting. I know it's not "easy", but it looks too easy compared to less automated methods. Some of the most enjoyable videos I've watched are of people using Japanese techniques and only traditional hand tools.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    There’s enjoyable ASMR tier videos and there’s useful videos and I think Matthias falls strongly into the latter category. Would love to see what he could come up with given the extra capabilities.
    - frosted-flakes 4y ago
      A lot of what he does is pure entertainment and has very little practicality. It's all about the cool ideas and the engineering. No sane person would spend the time and effort to build a band saw out of wood when you can buy a good metal one for a few hundred dollars. At least, that's how his blog posts and videos used to be. I haven't read or watched any of his stuff for many years because I disagreed with him on so many things. I still do want to make a crokinole board like the one he made (I started many years ago, but didn't grt very far).
      - HKH2 4y ago
        > A lot of what he does is pure entertainment and has very little practicality. It's all about the cool ideas and the engineering. No sane person would spend the time and effort to build a band saw out of wood when you can buy a good metal one for a few hundred dollars. Did you see that article the other day about someone cutting their Gameboy in half so they could make it fold in half? That is so impractical. Why didn't they just buy one like that? You may not learn by watching people work and listening to their reasoning, but others do.
z9znz 4y ago
He makes interesting videos. And he says "mohse" many times, which is always fun. But one common fact of the most successful Youtubers is that they have been putting out content fairly consistently for years. There definitely seems to be something about time and consistency in the equation of success.
- tantalor 4y ago
  > And he says "mohse" many times Are you talking about the word mouse? I don't hear anything unusual about his pronunciation.
  - ents 4y ago
    He says "mouse" exactly the way you'd expect a Canadian to say it.
    - z9znz 4y ago
      I'm used to hearing tall Os from Canadians, but I guess this was the first time I've ever heard a Canadian talk about a mouse. If I hadn't first seen the creature, it would have taken some time for me to realize what he was talking about :).
  - rzzzt 4y ago
    Mortices, maybe? Also tenons, with a custom jig.
- MatthiasWandel 4y ago
  The time part is very important -- it's important to start 15 years ago when the field was less crowded, and then develop your skill as you go along.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
I love his videos about making his own bandsaws, belt sanders, etc. I've heard/read of people doing this sort of thing, but his videos documenting the process are really fascinating. Also his website is well worth a peruse: https://woodgears.ca/ https://woodgears.ca/
- bgilroy26 4y ago
  In 2008 or 9, I was an underdiagnosed college student with intersecting mental health challenges who had trouble getting out of his room Something about the geometric java games where you would click your mouse very precisely made them a great primary intermediate step activity-wise to building the self-esteem I needed to get out of my room and get help. I will always be very grateful.
abraxas 4y ago
Well, that's not a very round number in any counting base I can think of...
- soperj 4y ago
  My assumption is that they rounded it: 1,720,440 in base 8 is exactly 1/2 a million in base 10. Clearly this is what they were trying to convey.
- MatthiasWandel 4y ago
  Why, its nearly the square root of 3.
mwattsun 4y ago
I have a buddy who retired around the same time I did who turned his hobby into a retirement project on YouTube. Like Matthias, he also worked on low level code for devices (Philippe Kahn's Fullpower.) In this regard I think YouTube is great for providing retired people a good way to share the knowledge they've accumulated over a life time and make a little money in the process. Ward's electrical and electronic repair https://www.youtube.com/@WardCo https://www.youtube.com/@WardCo
- vanderZwan 4y ago
  First video I see: a visit to Tim Hunkin's Arcade. That's a good sign, Tim Hunkin is basically the nerd equivalent of "the band your favorite band likes". [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kQE0Ooqmoc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kQE0Ooqmoc
dmtroyer 4y ago
He must love video editing. Surely he could afford to hire a few video editors with this many subscribers if he wanted to focus more on woodworking.
isbjorn16 4y ago
Woodworking has probably been one of the most important things to add during my career. I went from being and feeling like I knew how to do most everything to being forced into confronting the fact that just because I'm experienced, I don't know everything. I make so many fucking mistakes when I'm woodworking that, when people ask about what I make in my woodshop, I just respond "sawdust and mistakes, mostly". I'm not comfortable not knowing what to do; I've been building on a really stellar foundation for so long that when I need to do something outside of that universe - not situated over that foundation - I tend to flounder, get frustrated, and feel like the dumbest man alive. Woodworking made me confront the fact that while I may be really good at building scalable systems and high quality code, that doesn't mean I'm the master at everything, and I'm *going* to find things I need to stretch to learn. It's made me get comfortable with making mistakes again (well, as comfortable as I can be, I reckon). It's also made me comfortable with realizing when I'm hitting my patience limit and walking away instead of banging my head against the wall for hours. A bit of distance, let my subconscious chew on it for a while, and revisit it later, rather than just trying to put my head down and shove my way through. Long story short, you should all pick up woodworking, or metal working, or throw some pottery or paint or something. Get comfortable with being a rank amateur fuckup and revel in the process of learning instead of fabricating without a hitch. I know that I, for one, really needed it.
- Animats 4y ago
  > that doesn't mean I'm the master at everything And then you see someone who is the master at everything in construction.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKYFdwWx2QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKYFdwWx2QU
  - juhanima 4y ago
    The way she goes about it, using power tools without goggles and gloves is just horrifying. It's a lovely concept, showing what can be done with the materials and tools available. But I wouldn't recommend such a cavalier approach to anyone in real life. This seems very staged to me anyway, with the result not matching to the process shown. Also the structural integrity and endurance of those constructs seems a bit questionable.
sbf501 4y ago
Engineers like woodworking because they spend so much time often building intangible things (like software engineers), that it satisfies an unmet need to hold, feel, or experience their creations in a tactile way. Thus said a therapist I had ages ago.
- peter422 4y ago
  Another key difference is that software is never finished, you can always fix a bug or add a feature or tinker with it. When you build a piece of furniture for yourself or especially somebody else, when you finish it, it's done. All the little mistakes and imperfections are just part of it, and there is nothing you can do about it. Just accept and be proud of it and move on to the next project. It seems odd but it's a very nice feeling for somebody who mostly deals in abstract, perpetually updating software.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - _carbyau_ 4y ago
    I do not think of wood like that. I see wood as a great material for shaping, adjusting, bolting news onto etc. If I ever got actually good at making stuff I would never be able to stop tinkering. Fortunately, I am not good (and need to make money) so it remains an aside - a nice way to fail better.
- sprior 4y ago
  At one point as a programmer at IBM, me, my manager and his manager were all woodworkers. Same explanation you gave.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  The material and sensitive aspect are important but I'd add another factor: physical geometry. Real objects can't be coupled virtually like bits. They interlock in simpler ways.. it creates hard constraints too but I think our brains often prefer them. Unlike a video game, most objects can traverse each others (well to an extent).
powersnail 4y ago
My biggest regret about college is not taking that workshop training lab that the Architecture department offered, which was open for any student to join, for free. With a lot of free scraps that can be practiced on. It would have been a great experience. Now, wood working courses around me cost a thousand bucks, are at least 10 miles away, and are completely full. They only train for power tools, which I don’t have the space for at home.
- mauvehaus 4y ago
  Where is around you? I can try to offer some suggestions of places that offer hand tool classes or instructors who travel to look for. If it's nowhere I know of anything, I can at least start out by offering that Mary May does an online woodcarving school of video lessons. Edited to add: You appear to be Bay Area (unless you misspelled Berklee, then I can help you). That's an area I know little about the woodworking scene in. You might see if the Krenov School's summer offerings suit your needs. They're in Fort Bragg. The American School of French Marquetry is in San Diego, and is quite specialized.
  - yonig 4y ago
    For an example: I am enrolled in a woodworking class my Park District has. It is $50 for about 8 classes. YouTube is great but having an expert to ask questions to is priceless. I am also planning on getting a membership to a maker community that has a full shop (just bring your own wood). All the tools you could need. Especially valuable since I live in an apartment and can’t set up my own space if I wanted to. Plus they also have things like metal welding, textiles, electronics facilities and more if I want to branch out from the woodworking. $50 a month. The people I’ve met there also buy in to the community aspect so they are very, very helpful. Make use of these options if you have them in your city.
  - powersnail 4y ago
    Bay Area indeed! Thank you very much for the recommendation! I’ll check them out.
- dv35z 4y ago
Jemm 4y ago
Article didn't mention his website woodgears.ca .
agumonkey 4y ago
He kinda bootstrapped my desire to make wood based mechanical devices. ps: https://archive.ph/5bdae https://archive.ph/5bdae just in case
nickstinemates 4y ago
Started woodworking when I started a little back yard farm and built all of the housing for the animals. Learned a lot. Built everything with my wife, who outside of comfort operating power tools, is a much better builder than I am. Forced me to confront a lot of my shortcomings as a developer because iteration is a lot more expensive in woodworking than it is in programming.
sossles 4y ago
Woodworking can be a good hobby for an engineer as there's a lot of problem solving - both design problems or construction problems (like how to set up a particular cut to make it more accurate or efficient). Combining those worlds is even more fun. I had a simple project involving an Arduino board and built a nice housing for it out of wood that managed to combine my interest in software, electronics and woodworking all in one!
semireg 4y ago
Years ago, I thought that 3D printing would be an interesting hobby … until I realized that the frustration was aligned with my software dev day job frustrations. The lathe, the chisel, the saw - crucially the opposite of additive manufacturing. What are the analogs (er digilogs?) in software dev? Tree shaking? Ah, so many metaphors!
westhom 4y ago
I’ve always been curious to learn more about Matthias’s RIM days. I might have read somewhere he was responsible for low level radio design / engineering, as a very very early employee. Every once in awhile his electronics knowledge kinda sneaks out in a video and you know it’s the tip of an iceberg of knowledge he has no interest in revealing.
bigmattystyles 4y ago
Holy cow, when you go to his channel and look at his video catalog, it just keeps scrolling! That in and of itself is super impressive - I don't think I've ever seen a quality personal channel with this many videos.
ranting-moth 4y ago
I remember when I was getting into woodworking and found Wandel's channel. I had so many 'unusual' questions in my mind, and watching Wandel's videos answered about 90% of them. I'd also highly recommend Paul Sellers channel. He's a traditional woodworker. Watch for example his mortice and tenons how-to video. He's an old school master craftsman. If Bob Ross would have been a woodworker, he'd have been quite like Paul Sellers.
jmkd 4y ago
Wandel is doing something right, that's for sure. But for me he goes a little too far in ignoring established wisdom in his attempts to reinvent the wheel. While I admire the idea of going back to first principles, debunking myths and applying new perspectives, sometimes you need to acknowledge that things are done this way for a very good reason so let's use that as a foundation, instead of going further back and eventually, painfully concluding that you have not been able to reinvent the wheel. Here is a particularly egregious example that simply causes harm to those trying to refinish wooden floors: https://youtu.be/mHiF8xwjRGI?t=357 https://youtu.be/mHiF8xwjRGI?t=357

266 points by Ivoah 4y ago

Wandel is really cool. Highly recommend his woodworking channel. Some of my favorite things he's made cluster around making high precision things with tools that are usually easy to use imprecisely. Copy Carver - kind of a manually run 3D CNC, lets the user 'trace' in 3 dimensions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyNu8lpQI1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyNu8lpQI1g Pantorouter - build an oversized template, then end-cut a piece in a way that scales down that template (effectively multiplying precision of the template to achieve precision you wouldn't be able to get otherwise) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_72hOY2vPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_72hOY2vPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJzuM3PRAI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJzuM3PRAI

netsharc 4y ago
He also made a pantograph out of LEGO.. for chocolate! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2FY0xLwAcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2FY0xLwAcw
- cwkoss 4y ago
  Great vid, I had missed that one. Cutting chocolate on the bandsaw cracked me up, classic Matthias
TacticalCoder 4y ago
These are amazing. I could swear I've seen some of an horizontaly, not vertically, mounted pantorouter. Since discovering the pantorouter for woodworking I always wondered: wouldn't the same technology make sense for ultra precise 3D printing at home? Instead of having the motors drive directly on top of the model, have the motors drive a pantorouter instead and have the smaller end of the pantorouter on top of the model. It's "just" simple machines right, lever and axle basically? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_machine All I could find is people 3D printing parts to make a pantorouter for wood. But I'd really love to see one for finer 3D prints.
- Animats 4y ago
  Linkages lose you rigidity. Bad in machine tools.
- foobarian 4y ago
  I would think that play would be difficult to keep low enough to make this worthwhile. A servo driven hot end is already pretty precise, so a pantograph-like transfer would have to be rigid and tight enough to beat that. No small feat.
- earleybird 4y ago
  Here's Stefan Gotteswinter giving a talk about his Deckel G1L pantograph engraver.[0] For the side load on a 3D printer it probably would work fine but as others have mentioned, 3D printers are already relatively precise. 0.04mm/step on my ender 3 as I recall. (about 1.5 thou) [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYtJyebx83Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYtJyebx83Y

croo 4y ago

I'm following him on and off for years. He's the most engineer minded woodworker I met on youtube and what stands out for me is the precision he does his stuff. Most other woodworker goes by gut feeling or well established tricks or jigs to make stuff easier. This guy goes by raw precision. I don't know how but he manages to cut stuff by the hair of a millimeter on purpose.

foobarian 4y ago
I've enjoyed reading/watching his posts as well, most recently for garage storage as I just moved into an empty one. What I found refreshing is that he is not snobbish about materials and has no qualms about using 2x4 pine or old pallets, as long as they accomplish the job in a desired way with suitable margins. Very engineer-like indeed :-) As a result I was inspired to calculate out forces/stresses for a 1x2 pine structure, driven by the crazy lumber price inflation, and now have a 1x2 scrap wood rack, a 1x2 free-standing shelf, a 1x2 wall-attached shelves...

myth_drannon 4y ago

About 17 years ago I was an intern at RIM/Blackberry and even then Matthias was a legend in the company, built the communication/foundation layer for the device.

memish 4y ago
Matthias is a good example of a 100x engineer. He's insanely productive.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  for a reason, a lot of woodworkers on the web hate him, and it often has to do with his choice of paint color.. people are strange.
  - vanderZwan 4y ago
    That basically sounds like a really on-the-nose version of bikeshedding, hahaha
speg 4y ago
Whoa - I was also a coop student around that time (2007) but I never knew about the RIM connection until now.
- MatthiasWandel 4y ago
  I left the company in 2007
  - imglorp 4y ago
    Thanks for all the great content! I would be interested in a more meta piece about how you approach problems and how you regularly achieve that 100x thing.
agumonkey 4y ago
Damn I had no idea.. I thought he was just a peculiar woodworker.. a lot of things are obvious now.

bergenty 4y ago

I wish he bought a CNC machine because a lot of what he’s doing can be done so easily with a relatively cheap $1500 dollar system.

z9znz 4y ago
The downside is that CNC woodworking videos are less interesting. I know it's not "easy", but it looks too easy compared to less automated methods. Some of the most enjoyable videos I've watched are of people using Japanese techniques and only traditional hand tools.
- bergenty 4y ago
  There’s enjoyable ASMR tier videos and there’s useful videos and I think Matthias falls strongly into the latter category. Would love to see what he could come up with given the extra capabilities.
  - frosted-flakes 4y ago
    A lot of what he does is pure entertainment and has very little practicality. It's all about the cool ideas and the engineering. No sane person would spend the time and effort to build a band saw out of wood when you can buy a good metal one for a few hundred dollars. At least, that's how his blog posts and videos used to be. I haven't read or watched any of his stuff for many years because I disagreed with him on so many things. I still do want to make a crokinole board like the one he made (I started many years ago, but didn't grt very far).
    - HKH2 4y ago
      > A lot of what he does is pure entertainment and has very little practicality. It's all about the cool ideas and the engineering. No sane person would spend the time and effort to build a band saw out of wood when you can buy a good metal one for a few hundred dollars. Did you see that article the other day about someone cutting their Gameboy in half so they could make it fold in half? That is so impractical. Why didn't they just buy one like that? You may not learn by watching people work and listening to their reasoning, but others do.

z9znz 4y ago

He makes interesting videos. And he says "mohse" many times, which is always fun. But one common fact of the most successful Youtubers is that they have been putting out content fairly consistently for years. There definitely seems to be something about time and consistency in the equation of success.

tantalor 4y ago
> And he says "mohse" many times Are you talking about the word mouse? I don't hear anything unusual about his pronunciation.
- ents 4y ago
  He says "mouse" exactly the way you'd expect a Canadian to say it.
  - z9znz 4y ago
    I'm used to hearing tall Os from Canadians, but I guess this was the first time I've ever heard a Canadian talk about a mouse. If I hadn't first seen the creature, it would have taken some time for me to realize what he was talking about :).
- rzzzt 4y ago
  Mortices, maybe? Also tenons, with a custom jig.
MatthiasWandel 4y ago
The time part is very important -- it's important to start 15 years ago when the field was less crowded, and then develop your skill as you go along.

MichaelCollins 4y ago

I love his videos about making his own bandsaws, belt sanders, etc. I've heard/read of people doing this sort of thing, but his videos documenting the process are really fascinating. Also his website is well worth a peruse: https://woodgears.ca/ https://woodgears.ca/

bgilroy26 4y ago
In 2008 or 9, I was an underdiagnosed college student with intersecting mental health challenges who had trouble getting out of his room Something about the geometric java games where you would click your mouse very precisely made them a great primary intermediate step activity-wise to building the self-esteem I needed to get out of my room and get help. I will always be very grateful.

abraxas 4y ago

Well, that's not a very round number in any counting base I can think of...

soperj 4y ago
My assumption is that they rounded it: 1,720,440 in base 8 is exactly 1/2 a million in base 10. Clearly this is what they were trying to convey.
MatthiasWandel 4y ago
Why, its nearly the square root of 3.

mwattsun 4y ago

I have a buddy who retired around the same time I did who turned his hobby into a retirement project on YouTube. Like Matthias, he also worked on low level code for devices (Philippe Kahn's Fullpower.) In this regard I think YouTube is great for providing retired people a good way to share the knowledge they've accumulated over a life time and make a little money in the process. Ward's electrical and electronic repair https://www.youtube.com/@WardCo https://www.youtube.com/@WardCo

vanderZwan 4y ago
First video I see: a visit to Tim Hunkin's Arcade. That's a good sign, Tim Hunkin is basically the nerd equivalent of "the band your favorite band likes". [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kQE0Ooqmoc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kQE0Ooqmoc

dmtroyer 4y ago

He must love video editing. Surely he could afford to hire a few video editors with this many subscribers if he wanted to focus more on woodworking.

isbjorn16 4y ago

Woodworking has probably been one of the most important things to add during my career. I went from being and feeling like I knew how to do most everything to being forced into confronting the fact that just because I'm experienced, I don't know everything. I make so many fucking mistakes when I'm woodworking that, when people ask about what I make in my woodshop, I just respond "sawdust and mistakes, mostly". I'm not comfortable not knowing what to do; I've been building on a really stellar foundation for so long that when I need to do something outside of that universe - not situated over that foundation - I tend to flounder, get frustrated, and feel like the dumbest man alive. Woodworking made me confront the fact that while I may be really good at building scalable systems and high quality code, that doesn't mean I'm the master at everything, and I'm *going* to find things I need to stretch to learn. It's made me get comfortable with making mistakes again (well, as comfortable as I can be, I reckon). It's also made me comfortable with realizing when I'm hitting my patience limit and walking away instead of banging my head against the wall for hours. A bit of distance, let my subconscious chew on it for a while, and revisit it later, rather than just trying to put my head down and shove my way through. Long story short, you should all pick up woodworking, or metal working, or throw some pottery or paint or something. Get comfortable with being a rank amateur fuckup and revel in the process of learning instead of fabricating without a hitch. I know that I, for one, really needed it.

Animats 4y ago
> that doesn't mean I'm the master at everything And then you see someone who is the master at everything in construction.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKYFdwWx2QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKYFdwWx2QU
- juhanima 4y ago
  The way she goes about it, using power tools without goggles and gloves is just horrifying. It's a lovely concept, showing what can be done with the materials and tools available. But I wouldn't recommend such a cavalier approach to anyone in real life. This seems very staged to me anyway, with the result not matching to the process shown. Also the structural integrity and endurance of those constructs seems a bit questionable.

sbf501 4y ago

Engineers like woodworking because they spend so much time often building intangible things (like software engineers), that it satisfies an unmet need to hold, feel, or experience their creations in a tactile way. Thus said a therapist I had ages ago.

peter422 4y ago
Another key difference is that software is never finished, you can always fix a bug or add a feature or tinker with it. When you build a piece of furniture for yourself or especially somebody else, when you finish it, it's done. All the little mistakes and imperfections are just part of it, and there is nothing you can do about it. Just accept and be proud of it and move on to the next project. It seems odd but it's a very nice feeling for somebody who mostly deals in abstract, perpetually updating software.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- _carbyau_ 4y ago
  I do not think of wood like that. I see wood as a great material for shaping, adjusting, bolting news onto etc. If I ever got actually good at making stuff I would never be able to stop tinkering. Fortunately, I am not good (and need to make money) so it remains an aside - a nice way to fail better.
sprior 4y ago
At one point as a programmer at IBM, me, my manager and his manager were all woodworkers. Same explanation you gave.
agumonkey 4y ago
The material and sensitive aspect are important but I'd add another factor: physical geometry. Real objects can't be coupled virtually like bits. They interlock in simpler ways.. it creates hard constraints too but I think our brains often prefer them. Unlike a video game, most objects can traverse each others (well to an extent).

powersnail 4y ago

My biggest regret about college is not taking that workshop training lab that the Architecture department offered, which was open for any student to join, for free. With a lot of free scraps that can be practiced on. It would have been a great experience. Now, wood working courses around me cost a thousand bucks, are at least 10 miles away, and are completely full. They only train for power tools, which I don’t have the space for at home.

mauvehaus 4y ago
Where is around you? I can try to offer some suggestions of places that offer hand tool classes or instructors who travel to look for. If it's nowhere I know of anything, I can at least start out by offering that Mary May does an online woodcarving school of video lessons. Edited to add: You appear to be Bay Area (unless you misspelled Berklee, then I can help you). That's an area I know little about the woodworking scene in. You might see if the Krenov School's summer offerings suit your needs. They're in Fort Bragg. The American School of French Marquetry is in San Diego, and is quite specialized.
- yonig 4y ago
  For an example: I am enrolled in a woodworking class my Park District has. It is $50 for about 8 classes. YouTube is great but having an expert to ask questions to is priceless. I am also planning on getting a membership to a maker community that has a full shop (just bring your own wood). All the tools you could need. Especially valuable since I live in an apartment and can’t set up my own space if I wanted to. Plus they also have things like metal welding, textiles, electronics facilities and more if I want to branch out from the woodworking. $50 a month. The people I’ve met there also buy in to the community aspect so they are very, very helpful. Make use of these options if you have them in your city.
- powersnail 4y ago
  Bay Area indeed! Thank you very much for the recommendation! I’ll check them out.
dv35z 4y ago

Jemm 4y ago

Article didn't mention his website woodgears.ca .

agumonkey 4y ago

He kinda bootstrapped my desire to make wood based mechanical devices. ps: https://archive.ph/5bdae https://archive.ph/5bdae just in case

nickstinemates 4y ago

Started woodworking when I started a little back yard farm and built all of the housing for the animals. Learned a lot. Built everything with my wife, who outside of comfort operating power tools, is a much better builder than I am. Forced me to confront a lot of my shortcomings as a developer because iteration is a lot more expensive in woodworking than it is in programming.

sossles 4y ago

Woodworking can be a good hobby for an engineer as there's a lot of problem solving - both design problems or construction problems (like how to set up a particular cut to make it more accurate or efficient). Combining those worlds is even more fun. I had a simple project involving an Arduino board and built a nice housing for it out of wood that managed to combine my interest in software, electronics and woodworking all in one!

semireg 4y ago

Years ago, I thought that 3D printing would be an interesting hobby … until I realized that the frustration was aligned with my software dev day job frustrations. The lathe, the chisel, the saw - crucially the opposite of additive manufacturing. What are the analogs (er digilogs?) in software dev? Tree shaking? Ah, so many metaphors!

westhom 4y ago

I’ve always been curious to learn more about Matthias’s RIM days. I might have read somewhere he was responsible for low level radio design / engineering, as a very very early employee. Every once in awhile his electronics knowledge kinda sneaks out in a video and you know it’s the tip of an iceberg of knowledge he has no interest in revealing.

bigmattystyles 4y ago

Holy cow, when you go to his channel and look at his video catalog, it just keeps scrolling! That in and of itself is super impressive - I don't think I've ever seen a quality personal channel with this many videos.

ranting-moth 4y ago

I remember when I was getting into woodworking and found Wandel's channel. I had so many 'unusual' questions in my mind, and watching Wandel's videos answered about 90% of them. I'd also highly recommend Paul Sellers channel. He's a traditional woodworker. Watch for example his mortice and tenons how-to video. He's an old school master craftsman. If Bob Ross would have been a woodworker, he'd have been quite like Paul Sellers.

jmkd 4y ago

Wandel is doing something right, that's for sure. But for me he goes a little too far in ignoring established wisdom in his attempts to reinvent the wheel. While I admire the idea of going back to first principles, debunking myths and applying new perspectives, sometimes you need to acknowledge that things are done this way for a very good reason so let's use that as a foundation, instead of going further back and eventually, painfully concluding that you have not been able to reinvent the wheel. Here is a particularly egregious example that simply causes harm to those trying to refinish wooden floors: https://youtu.be/mHiF8xwjRGI?t=357 https://youtu.be/mHiF8xwjRGI?t=357