Here's the main thing: We'd love for you to come to Woodworking In America this October.
Transcript
Phil Huber (00:02.69) Hey, hey, everybody. It is the ShopNotes Podcast. It's episode number 280. We've sent Logan out on assignment. Probably he's at an auction right now. We're not entirely sure. But it's just John and I and checking in on the happenings here at Woodsmith and wrapping up our e-learning course, talking about events and more. we'll also get into viewer and listener comments.
As always, if you wanna join in with us, you can. You can send us an email, woodsmith at woodsmith.com, or subscribe to the Shop Notes Podcast YouTube channel and get every episode and then be able to put a comment in the comment section. But right now, we're gonna check in with a word from this week's sponsor.
Phil Huber (01:05.56) All right, let's dive into comments. last week's episode was primarily about Logan's auction hall, which we finally saw the photos of, which was frankly amazing.
John Doyle (01:26.062) Yeah. Yeah, we'll let him probably tell the full story when he gets back, but I think he ended up taking two trips of get get everything back and but
John Doyle (01:41.368) Pretty amazing.
Phil Huber (01:41.728) Unbelievable.
Eric writes, Why do we read your magazines and listen to your podcasts? This episode is a good example. Obviously, you all have various talents and experiences that you professionally share with us. That's the whole point. But this episode where Logan explains the auction experience was fascinating, even though I doubt I will ever partake in it. Further, the amount of knowledge Logan shares regarding the machining and associated factors are so enlightening.
Even though again, I'll not use them specifically. Lots of respect for what everyone involved brings to share and the personal way in which you do it. I do love that one. Appreciate that. Puppy Doc responds, he goes, That seems like a great topic for discussion for the show. What keeps us coming back for more shop notes? For me, other than liking the abuse, I keep coming back for the humor. And oddly, yeah.
I never know what I might learn from the crew. I also like checking out the pictures that sometimes get posted to the Shop Notes website. It's always fun to see the tools and projects discussed.
Phil Huber (02:57.559) Feel like that's a backhanded way of Bob saying that I don't often get the show notes page up right away, which is fair. I'll admit that this last one was up a couple of days late, but it's there. I usually put something up with every episode. you'll check that out at woodsmith.com slash shop notes and you'll be able to find that.
John Doyle (03:06.819) That's fair.
John Doyle (03:23.812) I think part of it is not only do the listeners and readers not know what's coming, we don't know what's coming. So it it takes a day or two just to kind of regroup and figure out what we actually talked about and gather all the information. So
Phil Huber (03:44.321) That's true. So it's a surprise and a delight for us as we're doing the episode because who knows what's gonna happen. It would be really great sometimes, I think, if we had a little bit more
Maybe a calendar of the things that we would talk about, but then maybe we'd lose the spontaneity of it too. So
John Doyle (04:05.424) That's true. That's true.
Phil Huber (04:11.168) And here's a little dive into the workflow part of it is that ordinarily we try and record podcast episode usually on like a Tuesday or a Wednesday for that week's Friday posting. this one is being recorded Friday of the Friday that it should post. So my dad's probably already known that we're not dropping one right away this morning. So
We'll see once when this one gets posted.
I feel like I should be able to do the show notes page or I should do the show notes page like right after we record. I I'm usually taking notes of things to talk about or photos to have, but a lot of times
Something else gets in the way, another meeting or two or filming or something, so they'll come back to it a couple of days later and then be like, I don't really remember what we were doing. And then I have to like watch the episode again or listen to it partway.
So there you go.
Phil Huber (05:28.256) Ono Coffee says, I seem to be listening to the podcast in multiple episode spurts, but I had to comment about the hardwood lumber thing. While my first reaction is that I would not buy from a supplier that did not let me rummage around the piles for the boards that I prefer, I do realize that not all suppliers are like the ones in my area. I cannot think of one dealer, sawmill, or sawyer within two hours drive where I would have to accept whatever they gave me.
I feel for those of you who are in those situations, but I do like the idea of having delivery. So do we. I do have a question for the podcast, and this is one that I asked Logan about while we were at Hand Toolhaven. A tool dealer and I were chatting about hand tools, and he remarked that one of the differences, generally speaking, between fine woodworking and pop woodworking readers is
Is that the popwood reader is more inclined to seek out and fix up vintage user hand planes, while the fine woodworking reader is more inclined to simply purchasing a modern high-end tool such as Lee Nielsen, HNT Gordon, Veritas, or something ex esoteric like the Sauer and Steiner. I'd be interested to hear everyone's take on this evaluation.
John Doyle (06:55.524) I'd say the other difference between the groups might be that the popular woodworkers have their own table at lunch too that they don't let anybody else sit at. So they only let the popular woodworkers sit there. But I don't know. Maybe that's just a stereotype. Yeah.
Phil Huber (07:11.756) Right. Yeah. The like non popular woodworkers. Yeah, yeah. That's yeah, that could be. Who knows?
John Doyle (07:21.136) Who knows?
Phil Huber (07:25.6) I've heard something similar to that in various guises over the years, like that the fine woodworking readership in the projects that they feature in there are super complex things that people would never really wanna build.
Whereas as a compliment to Woodsmith, you know, the projects that we design and build and show are more approachable. And it would almost be interesting to have like a focus group as to what they mean by that. Is it because we have more drawings and step by step instruction in it? Or is it the style of projects?
John Doyle (08:13.538) I've just being here and like going through the projects and plans, it feels like we do a good job of I don't want to say dumbing it down, but like explaining or do or explaining in a way that is approachable.
Like I d I think some of the our projects, you know, are you know, might look complicated from the first photo, but then we kind of break it down. It's like, hey, you just do this step and then do this step and pretty soon you're there. So so I don't know if it's the project or the way we explain it or yeah. It'd be interesting to see kind of like a focus group of because I know there are a lot of of people that subscribe to
multiple woodworking magazines and how they would kind of compare and and contrast the the styles. So I don't know.
Phil Huber (09:09.164) Yeah. but going back to the original question about the hand tools, I
Phil Huber (09:18.188) I see where he's coming from, but I also wonder to me, sometimes I feel like the pop maybe it's because I conflate Logan with the Popwood reader. Is that I could see Logan also being the kind of person who just goes out of the way to find the like little bespoke maker.
John Doyle (09:29.519) Mm-hmm.
Phil Huber (09:45.74) Making hand planes, and that's the hand planes he has and uses.
John Doyle (09:51.919) Yeah, he is kind of an enigma that way, because he is both, that he will find the artisan made expensive tools, but he will also buy the old rusty dusty rehab tools. So he's a little bit of both.
Phil Huber (10:16.152) Maybe because we're primarily woodsmith people, that it's our ability since the guy asking the questions was contrasting fine woodworking and popular woodworking, we can stand outside of it and be like the you know, maybe the pop wood reader is like the hipster that has those tools but doesn't necessarily use them.
Phil Huber (10:45.558) Or is the hipster that goes to a different town, finds the local microbrew place, drinks the beer there, but at home, at parties, he's drinking the PBR.
John Doyle (11:06.787) Unironic.
Phil Huber (11:09.708) Yeah.
Phil Huber (11:17.016) Yeah. I'm excited to have Logan back and be able to talk about what he thinks on there and how he gave that answer at Hantoolhaven. So fine woodworking readers, I don't know what to say about them. They're a different animal altogether. Or maybe the same. Like you said, John, I think there is a lot of crossover and it would be interesting to see like what the check with our circulation department and see what that overlap is on the Venn diagram.
John Doyle (11:18.4) So
Phil Huber (11:54.895) All right, Kevin Thomas says Philip Morley uses a stroke sander. That's where I've seen one in a video.
Phil Huber (12:05.144) Phil Morley is a woodworker based in Texas. And I think, or did he recently move now? Anyway, primarily was based out of Texas, an English transplant, much like our own Mark Hopkins.
And yes, I think he has a stroke sander, which is funny because when Logan was talking about a stroke sander and then the one
Logan has two stroke sanders now. Let's just put that out there. I always feel like stroke sanders are things that I've seen in old vintage English woodworking production shops. And I haven't seen them in other places.
Phil Huber (13:06.126) there's another one here f questioned from Logan or for Logan about his Windsor Chair style saw horses that we're obviously just gonna have to wait for him on
Harold McDonald says, Someone teach old man Phil how to use the new sort by feature on YouTube. Puts the comments so he can see them all. I had a sick burn on last week's show that went unread, and it wasn't even because it was highly inappropriate, which is usually the reasons my comments go unread.
John Doyle (13:39.224) And we love a good sick burn too, so that's disappointing that we missed that. Keep coming.
Phil Huber (13:44.129) Right.
Phil Huber (13:48.034) Yeah. Yeah, I hadn't seen a comment from Harold MacDonald in a while, so
John Doyle (13:55.406) If we've filtered him out.
Phil Huber (13:57.123) Normally they're all on here. well. Yeah, right.
Puppy Doc says I try to avoid auctions and Facebook Marketplace. It's the ultimate rabbit hole of no return. In what seems like only a few minutes I can spend hours looking at things I don't need.
John Doyle (14:19.258) Yeah. Auctions are they're easy to get caught up in. It's a it's a it is a rabbit hole, so
Stay away, everyone. Let Logan do his thing.
Phil Huber (14:31.938) Yeah. Yeah. My grandpa went to a lot of auctions back in the day. He doesn't anymore for various reasons. Mostly because he's not alive. but when he did, he would just he would kind of get a little bit of a fever too and would come back with
Boxes of stuff, and it was always kind of interesting going to visit and then finding out like what he ended up finding at an auction. Sometimes it was really cool stuff, and other times it would just end up, I don't know, getting recycled into another auction. I don't know how that whole thing works necessarily. my wife's brother's father-in-law is kind of an auction fiend.
And he's almost turned it into a retirement job. In fact, I think he really has turned it into a second career in that he goes to auctions, buys a bunch of stuff, use it as a way to like give some really cool stuff to friends and family, but then also has enough that he can flip or repackage or whatever and sell that he's just
middle auction middleman, maybe of buying and then reselling stuff?
John Doyle (16:03.47) Yeah. Yeah, it's a amazing that some people just have an an eye or a knowledge for just all like 'cause I'll like go to antique stores or like occlus like I don't see anything of value or like I you know, it's like, that's cool stuff, but like who's gonna want it? But there are for every everything out there, there is somebody that wants it, it seems like, and you just have to con kinda connect the two things.
And some people have that and other people just like, meh, it's all junk. I don't want it. So so good for them.
Phil Huber (16:46.328) To me, going through going through an antique mall, which I know is not the same as an auction, but related enough, has an it's more of like looking through a cabinet of curiosities of just the oddball things that have been produced by American ingenuity over the years. And you just think to yourself, why how why? Why did we get into that?
Like McDonald's happy meal glasses. The antique mall around here, brass armadillo, when you go through the stalls, I believe there are enough McDonald's Happy Meal glasses, like legit glass glasses that we could make a greenhouse to cover the entire city of Des Moines. Just dome it.
John Doyle (17:16.016) Mm-hmm.
John Doyle (17:36.186) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
John Doyle (17:41.435) Yep. Yeah. That's that's funny because I remember in the eighties as a young child, my parents getting like Smurf glasses and Star Wars glasses and then packing them away and be like, we'll give these back to you guys. You can take them to college. Which they never did, but they gave us back they gave them to us after college. So we still have
Phil Huber (18:03.278) All right.
John Doyle (18:08.292) some Smurf glasses and Star Wars glasses in are covered. I don't remember if they were from Burger King or McDonald's or Pizza Hut or whatever, but yeah, I see those everywhere and like yeah, we still have them and it's crazy.
Phil Huber (18:28.696) Super funny. But yeah, it I it is interesting to see the different types of people like Logan or my brother in law's father in law. I don't know what that makes him to me. Br father in law twice removed, maybe. It's almost like the art vendal of auctions. If you couldn't do importing or exporting and could do auctions, that's what that's what art would be involved.
John Doyle (18:53.2) Mm-hmm.
Phil Huber (19:00.494) Tree of Life Woodworking says Japan twenty twenty seven. I gotta begin sweet talking my wife for this one way in advance. It would be an epic trip.
Phil Huber (19:15.158) And I always feel like I'm gonna keep answering this by like, we're this close to launching it, but I I don't know that because I just feel like I've been in a couple of meetings about it that we wanna get the schedule for twenty twenty seven trips out there and then just haven't heard any more
John Doyle (19:20.544) Yeah.
Phil Huber (19:36.224) Anymore about it. So
It's coming. We will do it.
John Doyle (19:40.57) Just key? Yeah.
John Doyle (19:46.171) Yeah, it seems like when you we first got into the idea of travel and woodworking trips, that Japan was the first thing that came up and everybody was kind of excited about. It didn't happen the first year because I think it was a little bit more work to put together, but yes. Keep getting half as close to putting it out there each week, so hopefully we can
take the next big step to get all the details out there and get people signed up.
Phil Huber (20:24.908) Yep. All right. So that's it for questions, comments, and smart remarks for this episode. As always, the email address is woodsmith at woodsmith.com or put them in the YouTube comments section where apparently everyone but Harold McDonald's will get read. So we'll just check in on that. So and then we'll hear from
John Doyle (20:48.216) Mm-hmm.
Phil Huber (20:54.346) Logan next week, he's in North Carolina this week doing some articles for upcoming issues of popular woodworking.
Phil Huber (21:08.664) All right. Next up we were this week, we've talked about it in the past, I think, filming e learning course on finishing, which was kind of fun here last two weeks of bringing in
several folk from the Woodsmithers to do some presentations and it's gonna to sound so totally self promotional, but I think it's gonna be a really cool course.
John Doyle (21:40.89) Yeah, I think so too.
Phil Huber (21:42.19) We've got people like Mark has been really deep on understanding spray finishing and so he was able to go into that quite a bit, which I thought was really cool.
Phil Huber (22:01.854) and then I think you've seen Mark on the shop update videos that we've been doing weekly. He's taken those over. John, you're the camera guy on that one. it's really cool to see how much Mark has improved on his stage presence for doing videos.
John Doyle (22:24.708) Yeah, he does a really good job. He he's his English is really coming along. So we're able to understand him and it's it's great to see. No, but yeah, it's it always seemed like just projects for the magazine was were like, Okay, do you want it stained or not stained? Okay, now do you want or if it's stained or not stained, now just spray it with lacquer. But
It seems like Mark has really taken initiative to kind of try different things and different finishes and really kind of master this different spraying and paint and now he's gotten into the tongue oil finishes and really taken a lot to like that. But yeah, it's it's cool to see.
different finishes on the projects than what we've done in the past and see how those look and and how they're applied and all that.
Phil Huber (23:34.702) Yeah, super cool. Then we had Rob Petrie, our newest editor, although he's been here since twenty twenty, talking about outdoor finishes and then also setting up finishing space in your shop and what are the elements to include with that. And
Then a big part of what we do at Woodsmith is projects. So we couldn't really help ourselves and ended up including a few shop built projects. And you did one of those. You wanna talk about the one you chose and why?
John Doyle (24:12.12) Yeah. Yeah. so we have a or what I built was a fold up finishing center. And I always t really took a liking to this project. I think it was set up in the back of our old video studio in that back shop. And I just thought it was really cool because it's it's when you look at it all folded up. It's just this tiny cabinet and it's just kind of unassuming and
Just like, that's just another cabinet. It probably has supplies in it or whatever. But then you start opening it up and it has doors that come out and wings that come down and the work surface that all comes out and it ends up being this kind of huge open finishing station. And then it has a built-in turntable so you can turn your projects and it kind of contains all of all of the finishing and and all that stuff. And then when you're done, it folds back up into this little cabinet. So
it doesn't turn into just another flat surface that gets covered in chips and dust or piled up with all the other things that you have there. So I just always thought it was like a really clever, simple solution to having a dedicated space for finishing without, you know, taking up a whole section of the sh of of the shop. So just thought it was
Cool, clever project. And you know, there's a few steps to it that are kind of tricky as you're assembling it, but other than that, it's you know, it's just plywood, different plywood panels and simple hardware. So it's pretty achievable for just about every woodworker out there and had a had a really good time building it and now it's all done and hung up in the in the shop, and we'll see if it
it sticks around but I think it's a nice addition to the to the to our shop there. So
Phil Huber (26:19.436) Yeah, I'd agree. I now that it's hanging up, because when you first built it and proposed where to put it, I was like, but no, it looks really good. And you're right. It has a it is amazing how wide open it gets when you spread it, transform it into finishing station mode. So yeah, we have that and a couple of other pieces that we'll include that go with the course. sort of makes me want to go back through.
all of our plans for the different finishing carts, stations, cabinets, et cetera, that go through it and almost have like a I don't know, like a mini section of a cornucopia of finishing projects that we could put together. That's
John Doyle (27:11.866) Yeah, there's quite a few hidden gems in there I think 'cause it's yeah, I was kinda going back through a little bit as picking out a project and some pretty cool stuff in there.
Phil Huber (27:23.254) Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, you can look for that course coming up in probably
Probably end of August or into September, depending on how long Nate, our editor, will take to try and figure out how to organize all the blabby blab that we did for that course and assemble it into something that that makes sense. So kudos to Nate and also Godspeed to figure out how that's gonna work.
John Doyle (27:55.93) Yeah.
John Doyle (28:00.389) Yeah, I've I was just thinking this morning, I have a little bit of a I don't know, kind of an embarrassing confession or epiphany that we were I was doing that filming on camera building the project this week and I got done after a a day and a half and just kind of sore and felt like hot and sweaty and just like, man, it's just so hard to be on my feet all day and walk around the shop and we had the air conditioning shut off because, you know, it messed with the the sound.
And I was thinking about that and I was like, wait a second, just walking around the shop and being on your feet all day, no air conditioning, that's probably just average woodworking. And I'm just like most people are in their garages in the summer and I'm just like thinking, I'm just my s like I said earlier, my steak's too juicy, my lobster's too buttery. Just got it too easy around here.
kind of embarrassing to think about. It's like, that's just woodworking. It's not being a baby.
Phil Huber (29:01.35) that's super funny, because it's true.
There is something about being on camera that is both exciting and draining as you're trying to think about what you're saying and what you just said, what you're gonna say, and thinking in your head all the time. I don't none of this makes sense. Also, what did I just talk about?
John Doyle (29:23.088) Yeah, what did I say? Hopefully hopefully Nate can edit that to piece that together and and come up with something that makes sense. And and he always does. So kudos to him. That's a big part of it. So
Phil Huber (29:34.22) Yeah. Yep.
Phil Huber (29:39.757) Yeah. if you want to see what's going on, all the stuff that's happening here in the shop at Woodsmith, you're always welcome to come visit out in Des Moines, Iowa. We're gonna keep harping on this until October, but woodworking in America is coming up too. And for that event, we've done open houses the night the Thursday night before the
event kicks off. So we're going to be doing that again this year. So you can stop by. We'll have some beverages and a great chance to meet other woodsmithers and chit-chat and ask questions and see behind the scenes for all the stuff that we do here. earlier in the afternoon we're also going to be doing the Great Woodsmith garage sale in selling projects and tools and other things that we've just
That just collect here in the course of producing magazine issues and TV show episodes. Stuff just kind of piles up and we're ready to move it along to other woodworkers. I'm also going to throw the call out there again. I got no takers for anybody in the area who's looking for either scrap wood to use or to burn. Got the barrels are filling up here. Don't really want to throw them in the dumpster. So if you wanna
Take those off our hands and put to a use better than what we could, I would love to hear from you. You can send that to an email woodsmith at woodsmith dot com and we'll get you hooked up with being able to pick up that stuff here. So
Would love for you to do that.
John Doyle (31:21.808) Yeah, I took a bin of f of wood the other day and I was like, we'll burn this, make some s'mores or something. Come back the next day and there's like four times as much. So just cannot keep up. We just keep producing scrap wood. It's what we're good at.
Phil Huber (31:37.942) Yeah. Right. And some of it in there turns into projects. Which if you've been watching on the we know we were talking about the shop updates earlier, Mark was working on that bench project that we made out of Elm that we got from Logan, right?
John Doyle (31:59.569) Mm-hmm. Who he got it from Bob Reynolds. So and then yeah. So three finger Bobby as yeah. So it's and I believe he got it from an elm tree. So it's fourth hand. So
Phil Huber (32:05.609) Okay. So he Bobby Threefingers got us Yeah.
Phil Huber (32:18.031) Yeah, I guess that that makes sense. Connects the dots there. anyway, the elm boards from the tree, not super straight. So Mark took a lot of time in slicing and dicing these boards and turning them into straight grain material. And it was really fun to kind of watch that process happen. So if you go back through a bunch of our shop updates, you can see.
a little bit of how he was working on that, but that definitely generated a certain amount of waste because Elm, when it's in crazy figure mode, is super distracting. It's kind of like the dazzle camouflage paint schemes on Navy ships during World War II. so there was there's a lot of Elm in our scrap barrels, all that to say.
Phil Huber (33:14.415) let's see, what else we got? Handworks is coming up in just over a month here in Iowa. All kinds of fun woodworking stuff happening this year in Iowa. It's over the Labor Day weekend, Friday and Saturday. Logan and I will be there for sure. I think John, you're going out there at one point, right?
John Doyle (33:36.999) yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna be out there. Wouldn't miss it.
Phil Huber (33:43.62) And then there's actually gonna be a booth. We'll have Woodsmith popular woodworking, fine woodworking booth out at handwork. So stop over, say hey, you know, check us out. we'll see if we can bring some swag along with us, give it some handouts for people to see whether they're magazines or some of our books or whatever that are going on, check that out. that would be fun.
To see you out there. I'm gonna be on the lookout for some tools and would love to hear in the comments if you're coming to Handworks, what are some of the things you'd be interested in finding there or who you want to see of all the the vendors that are gonna be there and check them out. So
Phil Huber (34:39.331) John, what are come of some of the things at past hand works that have stood out to you?
John Doyle (34:45.25) It yeah. It it just seems like a lot of woodworking stuff in one place. Tools, demonstrations. It's just all there. Food folks and fun. wait, is that McDonald's? I don't know. I get I get handworks at McDonald's confused. So
Yeah, I don't know. It's just fun like meeting like all the people and seeing all of the stuff. It's just like an event of everyone coming together and so so I I don't know that I could pick out one thing.
Phil Huber (35:27.118) Right.
That's fair because it feels like a woodworking themed county fair in a sense. And that they're especially with the way the venue is kind of all spread out and it's in some barns and you're just kind of walking around to different things and there's some food going on and people coming and going and all sorts of stuff to check out.
John Doyle (35:36.25) Yes.
Phil Huber (35:58.191) Personally, I'm also hoping to pick up a few books while I'm there. Lost Art Press is going to be there. There's a couple of titles that I'd like to get, including one by Fine Woodworkings Mike Pekovich that's coming out. that'll be out by the fall. he's gonna be there at the event, but I want to be able to get his new book. Also wanna get a couple of back issues of Mortis and Tenant.
magazine. They're gonna be out there this year. It'll be fun to see them again and plus some old tools, some vintage tools if I can find something. Looking for a big beating plane. That's one on my list.
Phil Huber (36:52.899) All right, I think that wraps up another episode of the ShopNotes Podcast. Thanks everybody for listening. It's always great fun to do these and to hear from you as well. If you have any questions, comments, or smart remarks, you can send those to Woodsmith at Woodsmith.com or subscribe to our Shop Notes podcast channel on YouTube. The Shop Notes Podcast is a production of active interest media. It's edited by Nate Gruca.
The executive digital editor is Ben Strano. And we'll see you next time, everybody. Bye.
