My garage shop got a big updgrade these last couple weeks. I was able to insulate the rest of the garage area. I can't tell the difference it made once that last piece of insulation went into place. My best description is buttoned up. Immediately, the air was different. The space no longer felt like a park picnic shelter. The garage was now a distinct space. A few days later, it was cold here. However my space heaters kept my work area warm enough that I didn't need a hat or extra sweatshirt.
Over the past year, I've filmed an extended tour of my shop. It runs to four parts. That's a lot for a space that's only 96" x 280". The videos are more than a "What's in here?" I go into the lessons I've learned in the 16 years I've been working in that space. That shop taught me about tools, process, mindset. Those are the things I share in the videos. My hope is that it shows other woodworkers that small spaces can be great places to build projects.
Transcript
A service for all who will be quoting from this episode in academic papers.
Phil (00:04.429) Welcome, welcome everybody. It is the ShopNotes podcast, episode number 256. Got the whole trio back here for, I don't know, almost mid-December podcast. Logan, John, and I, ready to answer your questions, respond to your comments, and deal back some smart remarks of our own. This episode of the
Notes podcast is brought to you by Gorilla Glue. When you're working on a project in the shop, you put in hours of effort and the last thing you want is for that project to come apart because the glue didn't hold. That's why you should keep a bottle of Gorilla Wood Glue on the bench. It's non-foaming, cleans up with water and dries a natural color. Of course, there's that reliable Gorilla strength you always trust. Also look for Gorilla Wood Filler. It's the go-to product for strong, durable repairs. Gorilla is strong enough for the pro and easy enough for the beginner. Built by you, backed by Gorilla.
Alright, John and I had to freestyle last week.
Logan Wittmer (01:51.309) Yeah.
John Doyle (01:51.874) Yeah.
Phil (01:53.059) And here we are with some questions and comments from folk.
PuppyDoc's got a couple of them. He said, battery versus corded. I had three different battery platforms and hated having all those batteries and chargers taking up space. I eliminated most of my cordless tools and went back to corded for sanders and routers. Connected to dust collection anyway. Drills and drivers are the only cordless tools I use anymore. I still have one Ryobi trim router and two batteries that never get used.
I also have a rigid trim router and rigid drills drivers that are my go-to tools for most days. When they die off, they're being replaced with Milwaukee.
Logan Wittmer (02:41.484) All right, there.
Phil (02:41.538) He had also said, I realized last night that I was two episodes behind watching and had to do a mini binge. I was going through withdrawals. Yeah, the shop notes podcast shakes are real. From last week, chisels. I have a set of chisels similar to John's except that Harbor Freight should have paid me to get them out of the store.
Logan Wittmer (03:03.533) You're not wrong there.
Phil (03:07.764) Having said that, I intentionally abuse them when they need sharpening. I'm practicing on them before I destroy the good set that are still in the box. After two years, my sharpening still leaves a lot to be desired.
Logan Wittmer (03:21.069) Okay, so I was not here last week, but I'm guessing a set, know, budget set of chisels came up like that, right?
John Doyle (03:23.147) Ahem.
John Doyle (03:28.29) Yeah, that might have been from a couple episodes ago when I was talking about the Freeman arts chisels that I
Phil (03:28.564) I think that was.
Logan Wittmer (03:33.12) Yeah, it was yeah So, you know what rumor has it legend has it that? The beloved European grocery store Aldi that is here in the States Supposedly there is an occasion where Aldi has a set of chisels there and Supposedly they are fantastic for the price
Phil (03:33.75) Yeah.
Phil (03:54.592) Yes.
Phil (04:00.8) I think my brother has a set of those and he would agree with that.
Logan Wittmer (04:03.319) Yeah.
Like, you know, this is all legend. Like, Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, a winning season for the Miami Dolphins, and the Aldi Chisels. It's all elusive and we don't know if it's true, but if I ever see any, I'm gonna buy us that just to mess around with.
John Doyle (04:23.766) Yeah, I might have to go on an Aldi quest. Check it out. This sounds interesting. Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (04:27.873) Yeah. It gets you though. It's like a Costco quest. Although at Aldi you fill up your cart, it's $37.
Phil (04:35.606) Right. Yeah.
John Doyle (04:38.102) Yeah, yeah, going back to my Menards chisels, sharpening them is like sharpening a pencil eraser on sandpaper.
Logan Wittmer (04:47.115) This deal just balls up and rolls off edge
John Doyle (04:50.018) Yeah, just like, yeah. It's like you can take a lot off, but can you sharpen a pencil eraser? I don't know.
Phil (05:00.258) Does it do anything? I dunno.
John Doyle (05:02.338) It was worth the price though, free.
Phil (05:08.546) Jean Marie McCracken says, does John have a home shop as well? Can we see his setup?
John Doyle (05:11.175) Thank
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's part of our online education, setting up shop class that we just did. So for a price.
Phil (05:18.796) Chandas.
Logan Wittmer (05:29.301) For a price you can see a shop.
John Doyle (05:31.103) Yeah, it's pay-per-view
Phil (05:33.814) Right. We're just trying out different models of how you want to see the three of our shops. So like Logan's, you get to see Logan's shop on audio spread out over five years.
John Doyle (05:47.234) You can see my...
Phil (05:48.704) Mine is on YouTube, spread out over, I don't know, we're probably on two years.
and John's were going to do the pay-per-view model.
John Doyle (05:59.83) Yeah, you can see my old garage shop. If you go back to like the 2020 podcasts, I think I did some in there and did some some videos or stuff in there. Yeah. Yeah.
Phil (06:10.181) that's right.
Logan Wittmer (06:11.679) don't remember that.
Phil (06:13.258) Yeah, early in our first season, we were doing those from home. And I think John had the sliding shop cabinet, sliding door shop cabinet behind him.
Logan Wittmer (06:17.962) I mean, I know that.
John Doyle (06:20.684) think it was out there.
Phil (06:29.12) Whereas now we've upgraded and John's got the chili cook off trophy behind him.
John Doyle (06:36.354) There it is. It's not my trophy.
Phil (06:40.97) No, not yet. Larry Atha says, Popwood may have reported this, but Bosch formed an alliance in Germany called AmpShare.
may or may not be related to Captain Planet, don't know, where the same voltage batteries work with multiple brands, Bosch, Fine, Rothenberger. I like this idea. With respect to screws, I like to use good quality screws and usually order screws consistent with the project materials list. If I'm building from a magazine project, I order from McFeely's or Boat Depot or Kennedy Hardware usually. I will use square or
slash Robinson slotted or Phillips head. I bought a bunch of new screwdrivers from Casey tool, Haco and philo with ergonomic two component grips. And now I just enjoy using wood screws. I like them better than my old craftsman acetate handled screwdrivers or even the grace USA wood handles, which is I think fighting words for some people.
Logan Wittmer (07:52.477) I have the Filo wood handle screwdrivers. Those are my nice ones. I say they're my nice ones. I always reach for those stupid tough built ones that I bought Menards out of a year ago, but for my nice like shop ones, I have the wood handle Filos and I really like.
Phil (07:57.175) Yeah.
John Doyle (07:58.164) you
Phil (08:12.586) Okay, I hadn't heard of that brand, so.
Logan Wittmer (08:15.69) They have, yeah, they're just, I mean, they're just like a beach wood handle. They have a leather strike cap on them for all those times you have to impact drive a screw by hand. So. Yeah.
Phil (08:26.912) Right. It's just hard to coordinate the turn with the hit.
Phil (08:35.394) Boy9GGZ says, can you please write a note to my wife giving me permission to buy all the straight router bits there are? Thanks, not confident Santa got my list.
Logan Wittmer (08:47.764) Yep. They have to be from woodpeckers though because they're the best in my opinion.
Phil (08:53.76) Yeah, I did use the working on my supersized saw horse and was routing for plywood and grabbed one of their 18 millimeter dado bits. and it was, it was a delight to use. Cause I know just the regular straight bit, but for dados, because the, cutting flutes are angled as a down cut.
Logan Wittmer (09:13.841) like the data clean out bit.
Logan Wittmer (09:18.973) Got it, okay.
Yeah, that's how their data cleanup bits are too. Yeah.
Phil (09:23.531) And then.
okay. The other thing that I like about them is that they're the cutting edges are short. I think it's only like nine sixteenths of an inch, which is lovely because I feel like a lot of plywood bits. I probably said this before, like the cutting flutes are like an inch and a half long, which is stupid.
Logan Wittmer (09:43.207) Yeah, when are you ever cutting a dado or a groove for plywood that deep?
Phil (09:50.72) Yeah, or that you need it. You need the cutting edge to be engaged that long, you know, so.
Yeah. So anyway, here is the prescription. I hear by Phil Huber of the Woodsmith Shop TV show, authorize insert user to purchase whatever straight bits are necessary for the materials that you're working with. If you are working with plywood, then you need a fractional sized three quarter, a 23, 32nd bit.
and an 18 millimeter in order to do three quarter inch material. You may scale this down for half inch material if you do so, if you need to. For quarter inch, just pick a quarter inch bit, it's close enough.
Phil (10:44.148) signed the cast of the Shop Notes podcast.
Logan Wittmer (10:51.634) We're not doctors, but together we spent long enough time in college to be one.
John Doyle (10:53.974) Yeah. Yep.
Phil (10:58.594) JWTBotDad says regarding corded versus battery tools, my general rule of thumb is if I'm hooking up a dust hose to it, I might as well hook up a power cord too. The other factor is how much sustained power is needed. My Ryobi circular saws are pretty wimpy, even with the HP batteries. Haven't tried an edge battery yet. So when I was looking at track saws, I wanted a corded saw.
Now you have the Festool cordless track saw,
Logan Wittmer (11:32.168) Yeah and it's... I've had it.
Phil (11:34.658) But mean, it's also fast tool, so they're going to engineer it for to be beefy enough.
Logan Wittmer (11:41.609) Exactly. Yeah. And like listening to, you know, Puppy Doc and you know, everyone's saying, if you're hooking up a dust collection, yeah, corded. And I'm kind of like, yeah, you know what? You're 100 % right. Like, yeah. Because the problem I have is that with it being cordless,
like my track saw, just cut a couple sheets of plywood last night working on a CNC stand.
And I'm lazy. Like, I have the short little track through the track down. I'm like, it's battery powered. I don't need to plug in anything. So I'm not gonna roll the dust extractor over here. So I just make the cut. You know what I mean? Where it's like, if it was corded, that I'm more likely than to say, yeah, I should throw the dust extractor on it. Cause that's my extension cord at that point, really. So.
I don't know, I'm a huge fan of cordless stuff, but there's definitely some instances, like I just bought, I think I said this a couple weeks ago, I bought a couple of secondhand Colts. So now I got little stable Colt routers and each one has a different bit in it and it's lovely and I have no issues saying this. They're corded, mean, but they're plugged in at my bench, like that's where I'm working, so I don't know.
I do like my battery powered stuff, but I have no problem having a tail.
John Doyle (13:21.058) Yeah. We have the battery powered Festool track saw here and we just have the dust bag on it and that's fine. I mean, the dust isn't obnoxious or anything. It does pretty well. So we don't hook up a hose to that.
Logan Wittmer (13:38.172) Yeah. the problem is I didn't have my bag on because most times I do hook it up. But those instances where I'm just being lazy, I didn't.
Phil (13:54.603) Jacob Schenker writes, G. There is a fourth episode to Phil's shop tour. You've got to be kidding me. This is exciting news about the insulation though. Are we getting heat then as well? And yes, there is a fourth episode of my shop tour. And I explained it in the video, but I think there's really two reasons. One is just the symmetry of it. Just it might workshop
broke down into four distinct sections, I think. And it felt right to just bookend it, you know, starting with storage, two working spaces, and then finish it with storage. Just was a good way to segment it out there that way. The other reason I think is that even though my shop is small, I think workshop, and we've seen this with Logan as he's been setting up his shop.
over the course of this podcast of like, every part of your shop is worth considering. Like you don't just throw tools in there and it's like, boom, now you have a shop. Like you w you do that at first, but then after a while, it's like, Nope, this doesn't work. Or I would really like to beef up, you know, the capability of this particular area, or I'm always tripping around this thing and, and it's a journey. that's
Logan Wittmer (15:01.742) Mm-hmm.
Phil (15:24.438) So it's not really a shop tour so much as a shop tour and memoir all at the same time.
Phil (15:33.526) Which I mean, like I said, we've seen with your shop, Logan, like you've set up your, I mean, there's some things in your workshop now that are where they've been right from the beginning. Like your table saw, your work bench for the most part, but other stuff has shifted around simply. Yeah. Simply because it's like, Nope, actually this belongs over here.
Logan Wittmer (15:45.947) Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (15:51.703) Everything is moved.
Logan Wittmer (15:57.988) Yeah, yep, 100%.
And you don't know that's how you live in it. Like, you don't know that's how you live in it.
Phil (16:03.001) yeah, I... Right.
Phil (16:08.364) Yeah. mean, it's a lot for what they say with a house, you know, like you don't move into a house and then immediately go into fixer up mode until you figured it out for a little bit, because you got to live in it, you know, like, I don't know, 15 years or so. Cause then you know exactly what you need to do in order to sell it.
Phil (16:35.814) Yes, I do have insulation in now, all the way through and it was amazing the difference that it made in the feel of the space, just like it has that feel of just being buttoned up and closed in.
Logan Wittmer (16:51.269) like getting to that point in a construction like whether it's a house or a shed or whatever where you get insulation in it like the sound is different like not that it's quieter it is quieter but everything sounds different because it's all contained and it like you said it's just buttoned up it's tight it's like oh this is what this is gonna be like
Phil (17:15.446) Yeah. I don't have the drywall up. We were going to do that last weekend, but you know, daily life just kind of gets in your way on some stuff. So hopefully this weekend we'll start getting drywall. Part of it is the intimidation factor. My son's helping me and the ceiling is going to require 15 sheets of drywall, which just is a lot of overhead, overheadedness.
John Doyle (17:40.194) Yeah. Start building up those neck muscles.
Phil (17:44.396) Right.
Phil (17:47.683) So yeah, I do have a quartz radiant heater in there and a small little space heater that my wife got me and it was pretty cold earlier late last week maybe I was out there and it was amazing having those on and having that space.
enclosed fully now that it was like, these heaters are actually doing something that the heat wasn't just instantly disappearing off into the void. that was, it was lovely. I've been out there quite a bit now and yeah, just a delight.
Phil (18:35.17) Finally, Dale Michaels Woodwork says, Hey, what software are Dylan and John using to draw things up? Sketchup is really starting to irritate me and I'm thinking of going to Fusion. Thoughts.
John Doyle (18:50.942) I've, well, we use Inventor, which is probably way overkill for woodworkers. It's more of a engineering design software. And I've never used Fusion, but Chris, I feel like Chris has used Fusion, hasn't he, for his CNC stuff. But yeah, there's probably something in between, like Fusion, between SketchUp and Inventor or SolidWorks, so.
Logan Wittmer (19:06.34) Mm-hmm.
John Doyle (19:18.464) Yeah, that'd be something to look into, I guess.
Phil (19:23.158) But yeah, we use Inventor, which is an Autodesk product. And I mean, that was a decision that was made years and years ago. And so we've just kind of stuck with it. yeah. Logan, do you do Fusion for your 3D printing?
Logan Wittmer (19:44.077) No, I should, but I don't. I am the equivalent of a guy that edge glues plywood in his shop and I use SketchUp for my 3D prints. To be honest with you, if I need to design something, I'm limited to what I'm able to do in SketchUp.
John Doyle (19:59.456) you
Logan Wittmer (20:10.678) And that is just because I have not taken the time to learn Fusion, to learn any of those modeling softwares. And quite frankly, a lot of them are expensive. And for me just to dink around with it, I don't feel like I'm gonna get my money's worth out of it. So my thought is if I'm gonna 3D print it, I can probably build it out of wood.
Phil (20:11.058) yeah.
Logan Wittmer (20:37.794) And if I could build it out of wood, I could build it in SketchUp. It's kind of the way I look at it. So that's kind of like, there aren't many things that I've designed from the ground up. I did my light, my outlet covers out here in SketchUp and it worked great. Like perfect. You know, I'm printing an outlet cover.
But I know, like, I would love to get to a point where I have the time to, you know, go take a night class once a week on learning fusion. I think it'd be sweet. Also, I think that that would help scratch a little bit of the itch that I think will come with, like, wanting to, you know, learn some CNC mill work stuff.
where, you know, like, and some of that crosses over into the CNC world and stuff like that. like, there's definitely, there's definitely a curiosity there. It's not a curiosity that I can deal with right now, but currently, if I need it, I do it in SketchUp, then export it, and then import it.
Phil (21:52.995) Yeah. I think Fusion has a free personal use version, right?
John Doyle (21:57.73) Thank
Phil (22:05.664) And that at Woodworking in America this year, Ben over at Fine Woodworking did a presentation on Fusion, which was kind of, which was interesting because I know enough in SketchUp to realize my limitations. And I was just kind of curious to see what Ben would talk about with that one. And it was, it was really interesting even for somebody who doesn't do that very often. So that was cool.
Phil (22:38.582) and then other 3D modeling packages I'm just not familiar with. I wasn't aware that SketchUp supported 3D printing.
Logan Wittmer (22:44.288) Yeah, see my, go ahead.
Logan Wittmer (22:52.338) It doesn't. What it does though is you can export in file types that you can then pull into Bamboo Labs program and then you slice it in there. So basically what you're doing is you're taking a 3D model, handing this off to Bamboo Labs and saying, here at Bamboo Labs, take this 3D model and slice it. And it does that. The slicer runs it through and basically translates G code for the 3D printer.
Phil (23:02.446) okay.
Logan Wittmer (23:21.418) And I think the same thing can kind of be done with like vCarve and stuff like that for C &Cs Where you can just take a generic 3d model Whatever whatever format it is drop it in and it will generate gcode and stuff like that that you can then work with The problem that I have that I have ran into I guess with trying to learn some of these 3d programs
Logan Wittmer (23:49.704) is that when you get into some of these free versions, like when you get into some of these open source 3D modeling programs, let's just call it open source programs in general, those have to be 3D modeling.
A lot of the times, they're so powerful and there's so many bells and whistles in there because it's open source. Somebody just made everything. That half the stuff you don't need, like you won't touch three quarters of the stuff that's in there. So like there's a lot of noise when you're in those programs kind of messing around because there's just a lot of you don't need. But I don't know.
Logan Wittmer (24:35.337) I feel like I am just now getting to the point with SketchUp where I'm actually using 95 % of all the tools that are available in there.
Phil (24:46.05) Well, okay.
Logan Wittmer (24:48.011) So I haven't started to hit limitations yet where it's like, I want to do this, but I know the program can't. I'm still at the point where I want to do this, I'm just too dumb to figure it out. So.
Phil (25:02.22) mean, there's a certain skill set that within a broad range of woodworking, like you can.
go as deep down the rabbit hole as you want in order to be able to maximize whatever it is. And that's kind of been it with me is I just don't know that I have or want to devote that time to be able to do that sort of thing. Same thing with turning for me, you know, like I, I've turned a few things, okay. And with carbide tools, but I just know that in order to get that much better, I have to put in that much more time.
which takes away from something else. And it just is what it is. It's not a slam against turning. It's not, you know, I don't find it as fascinating in the same way that Logan does.
John Doyle (25:52.182) Yep. Sometimes you're just shooting for a B+. You don't want to put the work in for an A.
Phil (25:57.667) you
Logan Wittmer (26:00.917) Well, and here's the thing that I think with like learning the 3D modeling and stuff like that, like you have to have an end goal. I think if you wanted to learn it just to learn it, great. But I think for most people, like there has to be an end goal, right? So like if I'm just logging in his shop building stuff, I would never have a need to 3D model anything. Like.
I'm a, I'm like, I am a notepad full of notes type of guy and that's how I'm gonna build this thing. Once I've done the Sketchup model, what the hell am I gonna do with it? Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, like, too late! You know, obviously for the magazine stuff, like, this is completely different. But the, the...
John Doyle (26:39.33) Yeah.
Phil (26:39.426) project's built already.
Logan Wittmer (26:56.21) like printing thing, the CNC thing, like I get those because that's the end goal is to be able to, you know, hit print and run this thing, whether it's on a CNC or printer or a CNC vertical mill or whatever it is. So I guess, you know, I don't know, like if you want to learn it, what's your goal?
yeah, I don't know
Phil (27:26.882) Before we move on from comments and questions from last episode, I want to go back to one of them. John, there was the question about your little Rikon bandsaw. What's your...
John Doyle (27:39.616) I didn't, what was the question? I didn't even hear or see that one.
Phil (27:42.216) What did you, how have you been in, you you did that one video when we first got it. How's the long term review? What would you?
John Doyle (27:51.778) I love it. mean, I'm not like, you know, breaking down huge pieces of lumber or re-sawing huge pieces of lumber. So for what I do in my shop of just kind of tinkering around at home with it, it's been great. It doesn't, takes up hardly any space. I mean, you can almost like, I keep it on a cart and like, so it's on a stand and move it around or whatever, but you can almost take it and put it on a shelf. It's small enough and like,
great enough and so for the things that I do I love it so it's been great but if I did more heavy duty band saw it probably wouldn't be as well suited for that but you know it's been great for me
Phil (28:37.354) Okay. Cool. You can always send us a comment by email woodsmith at woodsmith.com for us to interact with or a question to respond to. Most of them, frankly, we get are from the shop notes podcast YouTube channel, where you can see all of this happening with a video component along with it. But however you want to do it, we'd love to hear from you.
for any questions, comments, and smart remarks that you have. All right, next segment is, Logan, the reason you weren't on podcast last week is you were traveling the wilds of Virginia.
Logan Wittmer (29:22.613) Yeah.
Sure was. It was a wild ride getting out there and getting home. I'll tell you that much. Yeah, I was on site with Shay Alexander, Albert Klein, and Jeff Luthquitz doing some shots in Shay's shop in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. A couple hours outside of D.C. Yeah, I was supposed to go out there on Sunday. Des Moines got dumped on a foot of snow.
half of snow last weekend and a plane slid off the runway like the night before I was supposed to leave which I guess if that happens and I'm like not talking like we don't have bluffs in the Des Moines area like it's not like this
plane slid off a cliff and was hanging there. It was trying to make a turn and it went like the anti-lock brakes kicked on and it slid right into the mud.
But because of that, the FAA has to come in, inspect everything, and give their blessing to have the plane pulled out of the mud. So it shut everything down to like, I don't know, noon or noon 30 on Sunday, so my flight just got canceled straight up. So I ended up jumping a flight out Monday morning and we shoved what should have probably been five days worth of filming. Like when I booked my flights, I had a full five days of shooting.
Logan Wittmer (30:54.206) with Shay Albert and Jeff. We condensed that down into three days. We shot Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and I was trying to get home for a Christmas party on Friday. Then, I don't know, Detroit.
Delta had issues with computers, so all flights were grounded for like six hours Friday morning in Detroit. I got rerouted through Minneapolis. Minneapolis flight was delayed by five hours, like absolutely ridiculous. yeah, was cool though. Like we ended up shooting a little lamp with Albert, so a little dovetailed box with a veneered and marquetry front panel
that was stabilized spalted hackberry and if it's sliced thin enough light shines right through it. So it's this little maple leaf that's like a little nightlight, it's pretty sweet. that, did a Hive Ice build with Albert that of course was covered in marquetry for our boy Jared Green out at Blue Spruce.
that's who that vice is going to. And then we did some kind of general veneering techniques with Albert. We did some...
like basket weave veneering, so cutting little squares and doing a basket weave checkerboard type thing. Some radial veneering, stuff like that. then Shay, we shot a little post and rung stool with a hickory bark woven seat. And the hickory bark is this super cool material. if you've ever looked at chairs, I'm sure you've seen hickory bark.
Logan Wittmer (32:52.048) there is a great hickory bark debacle over the last couple of years. Like there are like three sources for this hickory bark in the US.
and supplies are super limited. It's super hard to get. Nobody's really put an effort into harvesting this stuff. It's super labor intensive. You have to get any of the smoothbark hickory trees during the slipping season, which is like May to July or something like that. And you're hand harvesting this bark off of these trees. And...
that little stool that we did was, I don't know, maybe a foot and a half by two foot. So, you know, not huge, but it takes like 130 feet of hickory bark. Like it takes a ton. So it's a material that is hard to get ahold of, fairly expensive when you can get it, but everywhere it's sold out. And like there's wait lists for this stuff. Long story short.
Shay bought a Hickory Bark machine from Brian Boggs. So it's this machine that you put raw Hickory Bark into and it slices it to width, it skives it so it takes the bark, peels it into two and thicknesses each one. So you have an inner premium bark and outer second bark and then it coils it up. It's a super cool machine that Brian Boggs like, you know, rigged up in his
shop Super well thought out, but it hasn't been used in several years So I think in May and June
Logan Wittmer (34:36.508) Shay is going to be doing a hickory bark harvesting weekend at his place where his lagers are bringing in semi loads full of hickory. And then it's like, come hang out, learn this process, take home a little bit of hickory bark. And basically he's hoping to do 20 or 30,000 feet of hickory bark this year. But he expects that that's going to sell out in two or three days. So.
Kind of a cool material, looking forward to seeing what comes of that. Hopefully they can make the hickory bark harvesting worthwhile.
Phil (35:17.858) I think John's looking up right now the price of uncut hickory bark.
John Doyle (35:20.204) Yeah. Pure.
Logan Wittmer (35:22.736) Yeah, it's about a dollar, $1.20 a linear foot on Hickory Mark. So on the street, yeah, street value. Yeah, if you get into those basket weaving crowds, then who knows?
Phil (35:28.962) on the street.
John Doyle (35:30.626) street value.
Phil (35:37.045) Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (35:38.736) We also shot a part of that article was kind of a weaving, know, weaving with Hickory Bark. So we're going to do it as two different articles. We're going to do the weaving as a separate article from the stool, because I mean, you could do paracord, you could do shaker tape, you could do a bunch of stuff for this. The seat doesn't really have to be Hickory Bark. And then we did a, what Shay is referring to, we haven't decided on the name yet, but I'm kind of leaning towards studio stool.
where it's like a it's a shop stool it's a carved seat so not not Windsor chair but along those lines and draw knife and spoke shave shaped legs rungs stuff like that so kind of a good little way to mess around with a drawn knife spoke shave and shave horse and I like that stool because it
If anybody knows who the gentleman Brian Boggs is, Brian really made his name doing a lot of chairs and high-end furniture and high-end chairs. So Brian gets really nerdy when it comes to like the minutia of stuff. like looking at, know, hey, here's the angle that your hips should be sitting at in a chair to help, you know, your back. here's how you should, you know, here's how you should design a chair for absolutely
the best posture and stuff like that so she grabbed a lot of those a lot of Brian's kind of theory behind that and put it into the stool which is kind of and then Jeff Luffquitz Jeff just finished
Designing a shave horse It's a shave horse that is loosely Based on what Brian Boggs did with his shave horse, which which it has a ratchet mechanism for the The table so it's very easy to raise and lower the table get different heights on it and stuff like that But Jeff has set this up to where this shave horse is Very easy. It's all designed and built out of two by material
Logan Wittmer (37:57.805) from the home center so 2x6's to 2x8's you could you could grab it with minimal tools and build it and stuff like that and really what what he was trying to accomplish with designing this shape horse was
getting a Shave Horse that's not only easy to build, but it's ergonomic because Brian Boggs' Shave Horse, beautiful Shave Horse, great design. Brian's a big guy. He's like 6'2", 6'3". So like Jeff, who's like 5'4", he's like, I can't sit on this thing, it's too big. So this has a lot of adjustments and stuff like that. So we were talking about kind of proper Shave Horse design, proper draw knife design. There's a couple different styles of draw knives.
how the handles are in line with the blade and kind of shave horse ergonomics. So riding the shave horse is going to be Jeff's article.
Phil (38:58.37) Well, and shave the Brian Boggs's shave horse too was also really long. Like it was almost six feet long too, right?
Logan Wittmer (39:04.386) It was, yeah. Well, yeah, and I think, you know, like, it fits Brian, because Brian's a big dude, but like, you're a guy like us, it doesn't fit. I actually have, I have Brian Boggs' shave horse plans out here. I bought them. I was gonna build them. But now that I see Jeff's design, it incorporates a lot of what I like about Brian's in a much smaller, like, I think, I don't think that.
John Doyle (39:26.306) you
Logan Wittmer (39:33.282) Jeff's new design is any more than maybe 60 inches, so five foot maybe. Jeff has thought it out very, very well. What I think kind of cool is that Jeff and Shay are pretty good friends, live very close together. Shay, think, would agree that he's learned a lot from Jeff.
Jeff is an extremely talented graphic designer, had a very successful career in graphic design. So he's done a lot of drafting and designs. He has manuals to make Brian Boggs's two-slat and three-slat chairs. They're his side chairs. He's put together his shave horse manual to build the shave horse. And he's selling them on a pay what you can mentality, kind of like Curtis Buchanan does with some of his stuff. Or it's like, you hey,
Phil (40:29.322) I think Jeff did the drawings for Curtis's chairs too, right? Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (40:33.015) He did, yes he did. So it's like, so this shave horse, like, he wants people just to build it. He wants people to build it, but he's like, you know, at the end of the day, I probably have a full year's worth of work in this thing. And it's 200 pages, like it's a lot.
So he's like, know, pay what you can. My suggested retail price on this is 35 bucks, which I think is a freaking steal on what you're getting out of that. But he's like, if people can only afford to pay 15 or 20 bucks for it, I still want people to build it. So you can get it on his website. But what is cool, I think, is that because Shay and Jeff are...
such good friends, Shay and Alexander Brothers Lumberyard is selling kits for this shave horse. So you can get just the material kit where it's like, I don't know what the price is on it, but it's like you buy just the materials. come basically roughed to size, but then you have to do all the cutting. Or you can buy the entire shave horse kit where it's like you open it up and you like...
The screws are there, you just screw and bolt it together and it's ready to go. which is kind of cool. And I want to say it was like 400 bucks, 450 bucks for the Shave Horse kit ready to go. To me, I'm like, that's a great price for what it is. Yeah. But, and it's nice Southern yellow pine. So, yeah, that's what I was shooting.
Phil (42:16.086) They have a she have links for that up already for that saw horse or the shave horse. I think so. Right. If, if he does, I'll put a link to it in the show notes page for this episode, then we can keep that updated and then keep an eye on it for next issue of pop wood.
Logan Wittmer (42:21.017) I think he does. I think he does. Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (42:36.247) Yep, so the pine kit with all parts pre-cut and the hardware is 475 bucks. Material kit with hardware pack, so this is non-cut. is just yellow pine boards is 235 bucks. And then you can buy just the hardware pack which has all the nuts, hanger bolts, stuff like that. Or...
the leather kit for just the jaws.
Phil (43:11.362) Choose your own adventure.
Logan Wittmer (43:13.217) Kind of,
Phil (43:20.482) All right, are you done traveling for the year now?
Logan Wittmer (43:23.403) Yeah, for business, yes. So, yeah, I have one trip that is kind of penciled on the calendar for like February, I think, to actually, with a gentleman in Chattanooga.
Rossi Chattanooga, Tennessee. That is a, I did not know this until this last week when I was with Shay and Jeff. He's a friend of Shay and Jeff's. Cause I was picking Jeff's brain on his artwork that he does in his plans. Like, how do you like, you know, just from a professional standpoint, how do you do this? Because this is very similar to what we do with Woodsmith illustrations, but different.
weird hybrid of CAD drawings plus what we do with Wood Smith and he was was kind of telling me about it and he's like yeah he's like I trained this guy Matt I'm like this Matt and he's like yeah I was like I'm supposed to be going up to his place to shoot photos in February which was really cool and it all makes sense because Matt's a graphic designer and stuff like that so yeah but nope
I'm done with business travel for the year, thank God. I love it, but man, it gets exhausting. Sometimes I just wanna be a shop hermit and just sit in my shop next to the fireplace.
Phil (45:00.064) Although speaking of trips, we're going to put this out there for folk. You'll get, if you're on our email list, you will be getting something within the next couple of weeks here. But, Logan and I will be doing a tour to Denmark and Sweden in September, October of 2026. So you want to put that on the, put that on your list.
for things to ask Santa for this year.
Logan Wittmer (45:32.671) Yeah, it'll be cool. The dates are getting finalized hopefully this week, this week coming up. Yeah, it'll be an exciting one. So Phil and Mike did the London trip last year. We were trying to figure out where to do the ones for 2026. The initial thought was to do Japan, but we realized with...
the scale that that trip will be.
we need a little bit longer lead time to get everything set up. We have a company that we work with in the Netherlands that helps put together these European trips for us and our gardening cohorts. So we don't have that in Asia currently. So there's a little bit longer lead time. So we were looking at, okay, where can we go? That's not London. That also has really good woodworking for us to see. it was brought up. We looked at two different
Routes, know Denmark being the starting point and it's either you go south into Like Amsterdam and Germany or you go north into Sweden We chose to go north there are some very cool There's a Viking ship Museum tool museum. There's an axe manufacturer that we're gonna visit like there's a lot of things like which
Makes me feel a little bit better that we're going in the fall on this trip because my wife and I happen to be going to Sweden here in a couple weeks. I could not drag her to see any woodworking sites to save my life. like having the chance to go back, you know, within the year is pretty cool. And I'm excited. So come hang out with these two fools for 10 days or eight days, whatever it is. So it'll be fun.
Phil (47:30.85) It'll be really cool. I like the idea. You did a lot of the work on coming up with stuff for us to see, but there's like museums that we're going to see. There's the Viking stuff. There's the Viking ship where they're building one, and you can actually make some chips on your own with this to contribute to it.
Logan Wittmer (47:44.714) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you get to grab an ad and go to town.
Phil (47:52.899) Plus there's the Danish modern design aesthetic. We're going to see a couple of... There's a furniture factory we're going to do a tour of and then some of the carving greenwood working kind of stuff in Sweden. So it's a nice mix of a lot of fun stuff. So I'm really looking forward to it. Plus being able to see that part of the world in the fall. It'll be a delight.
Logan Wittmer (47:58.315) Yep.
Logan Wittmer (48:14.025) Yeah. Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (48:20.819) Yes, Scandinavia in the fall, come on. know, days will be getting a little shorter, so right now I think we're leaning more towards early October for this trip, is kind of what we're looking at. But like, brisk weather, sweaters, coffee, and a tour bus full of people going to see woodworking stuff, come on.
Phil (48:43.722) Yeah, what's not to love?
Logan Wittmer (48:44.149) There will be a few days, I thought it was kind of funny because we put together this kind of itinerary of where we're going. I remember to get close to my mic because Ben was giving me a hard time last week about my audio.
We got an email from our contacts at this Netherlands travel company and they're like, hey, you guys really, like, are you sure these are the places you guys wanna go? Because there's a couple days where there's lots of driving. And we're like, bro, listen, we're from the Midwest, you know? An eight hour drive's right down the road. Like, this ain't nothing. Like, this is not Europe where an eight hour drive puts you six countries next door. so there will be
be a couple days where there will be you know a good two hour three hour bus ride to as you're traveling into Sweden yeah yeah so but no I think it'll be cool I will be bringing a large suitcase because if we are going to the the Grantsworth Brooks forges I'm bringing home some axes
Phil (49:42.998) Yeah, between sites or something like that. Yeah.
Phil (49:59.745) Yeah, and that stuff you can't put in your carry-on, FYI.
Logan Wittmer (50:03.56) Yeah, yeah, Phil can't go back to jail again. If it's under nine inches.
John Doyle (50:05.026) If it's under nine inches, I think you can.
Phil (50:06.47) You
So for those of you who feel like you missed out on the England tour, we're actually gonna run that one as well. That'll be in early September. John Benson from Fine Woodworking, the guru of all things oddball arts and crafts, will be heading up that one, which is a great fit for him. We're actually also gonna be doing a third one. This one in the US in New England, where we're gonna be...
Logan Wittmer (50:17.577) Yeah.
Phil (50:39.07) launching out from Connecticut and then seeing some places in Maine and New Hampshire. Like I said, all the details will be coming out in emails coming up, but I wanted you to kind of be the first people to know about this. Don't tell those guys over at Fine Woodworking in the Shop Talk Live podcast. They don't, they haven't heard anything about this.
Logan Wittmer (51:00.904) And it's not their business anyways, come on.
Phil (51:02.962) Right. Yeah. Not that we're trying to turn this into like an East Coast Midwest sort of thing. So.
but it already is. John, we're gonna wrap it up with you. What are you working on right now?
John Doyle (51:16.386) I've kind of avoided my intrusive thoughts of starting any crazy Christmas projects after Thanksgiving. So that's been good. Trying to coast coast through the end of the year without getting anything too big. But we just got it's kind of too cold to get out my shop. So I found recently we just got a new dishwasher last week. So then it was like
Okay, we got the dishwasher. Now this this kitchen door looks off a little bit. So then I'm fixing that and that turns into now I got to fix the drawer that that was not working properly. So I found myself just kind of tinkering this time of year of of house projects. So I kind of get into that.
Phil (51:59.842) All right, you know where that's leading. That's leading directly to a major project.
John Doyle (52:06.154) right, easing into it. So, and there are, there are lots of those that it's just kind of like, I'm to put this off. I don't want to get into that yet, but so a lot of tinkering this time of year.
Phil (52:09.121) Yeah.
Phil (52:15.766) Yeah.
Phil (52:19.18) There you go. Stay tuned till next year when John starts a major project of doing built-ins for some part of his house. That's where this is going.
Logan Wittmer (52:25.043) As that this is going into a getting the house ready to sell
Phil (52:31.138) Laughter
John Doyle (52:31.426) Yeah, I don't think I plan on doing that for a while. I move every 15 to 20 years. yeah. Yeah.
Logan Wittmer (52:34.963) You say that. You say that.
Phil (52:38.208) Yeah, not time to migrate. That's it for the shop notes podcast. Thanks for listening, everybody. Always appreciate any questions, comments and smart remarks that you have. You can send those to us by email. woodsmith at woodsmith.com. Better yet, subscribe and ring the bell for notifications on the shop notes podcast YouTube channel. And if you could do us a solid, please rate and review the podcast.
at your local podcastery where it will help spread the word and get us out to more woodworkers and increase the number of people that we can interact with in those comments. Thanks for listening everybody. Bye.
