[321yawaworht]

Where do you guys come from? How do you know all this stuff?

It's so interesting and I'm often surprised at the diversity of knowledge, experience and backgrounds on HN. For even the most esoteric of subjects folks here will have interesting input. I love to try and experiment, and like people who are passionate about things.

Just wanted to get it off my chest. I love this place and it makes me appreciate life and its peculiarities more. When I was in high school I dreaded only observing greasy nerds interested in techy stuff. It's been a while but HN has really shown a different side of the world to me.

Thanks!

[CPLX]

If you're at all into woodworking it's just a matter of time before an evening in the YouTube rabbit hole leads you to riving, or Alaskan chainsaw mills, or Wood Mizer demo videos, or silent Japanese guys that are wickedly good at joinery.

[bachbach]

I'm going to put a plug for the Fine Woodworking and Fine Homebuilding magazines and websites here. They both also run excellent podcasts filled with inspiration and advice.

No connection to either, but they're institutions.

Inspired by Fine Homebuilding I'm setting out this summer or autumn to construct this building:

http://www.rodneydiaz.com/garden-shed/

If you've any desire to build your own house, accomplish a DIY or other wood built project - I have an especially good tip here.

Go to Amazon.com and search for "Fine Homebuilding on" or "Fine Woodworking on". These are incredible repositories of hard won knowledge on a specific topic for often literally $0.01 per issue.

The real benefit of all this wood using culture is though - is that you can say to yourself "I think I could do that" and this is invaluable.

[soperj]

hahaha. I've been down the Alaskan Chainsaw mill & Riving rabbit holes, as well as the Paul Sellers stuff (silent british guy that's wickedly good at joinery), but I'll have to check the other 2 out.

[abakker]

2nd this. Buddy and I are currently building a bandsaw mill out of A motorcycle. All because of YouTube.

[mcenedella]

Links??!?! :)

[shabble]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVcHxw2MHN0SCgxkqsQUg... is a pretty good selection of traditional greenwood skills. The shingles videos contain a fair bit of the riving as described in the article.

[dredmorbius]

Youtube search is actually pretty good. Toss in the terms suggested.

[yellowapple]

I'm having a bit of a difficult time finding relevant results for "silent Japanese guys that are wickedly good at joinery" on YouTube; the results tend to leave out the "silent" part.

[jdietrich]

Most people have a hobby. The kind of people who hang out on HN are the kind of people who'll obsessively learn everything there is to know about their hobby.

[KozmoNau7]

>"How do you know all this stuff?"

I've sometimes been asked this from friends and colleagues, when I've talked about some subject that I happen to know something about, be it electronics or plumbing or bicycle repair or baking or sound mixing.

I absolutely do not claim to be an expert or master in any field, but I do have reasonable knowledge and familiarity, as well as an unceasing desire to learn more.

Being a "knowledge sponge" and constantly curious about the world is a hallmark of geekdom to me. As is the willingness to try, fail and try again, and learn from it.

My parents made sure to instill these values, so I was naturally helped into the geek mindset.

My mom is a teacher and naturally curious about everything, she's a popular science enthusiast, if such a thing exists.

My dad is what used to be called a "radio mechanic", and has never been afraid to take on DIY tasks of any kind, and involve me in them.

In general hobbies have always been important in my family. My uncle assembles his own racing bikes and has hand-built several wooden kayaks, just as an example.

Maybe not everyone has taken the same way into greatly expanded general knowledge, but I like to think a lot of us have this desire to learn new things.

The real trick is to know the limits of your knowledge, and to admit when you hit them ;-)

[analog31]

Well, I'm far from being as knowledgeable as some folks on HN, but have a lot of factual knowledge about odd things. My only advice is curiosity and reading, notably about "real" subjects. That could include well written fiction. I don't plan to read about specific things, just let my brain be filled with lots of stuff.

Also when you see old people doing interesting work, talk to them if they don't mind it. At my current job, I made a point of talking with the old-timers about the technology, and gained a lot of practical knowledge that would otherwise be lost.

[samstave]

I'm ready to hear about some of your odd areas of interest that otherwise I may never think of... Please post something for pique my interest, thanks.

[DannyBee]

> Where do you guys come from? How do you know all this stuff?

Same way as anyone else - we found something fun or interesting, we explored it more :)

If you do it long enough, it usually turns out eventually you are the expert.

[scoggs]

I'm not OP but if (s)he's / they're my age or older (young 30's) we grew up in a time where, depending on where you lived and how much money your family had growing up, knowing these non-technical (in a computer / digital sense) skills was more of the norm. Think "handyman" skills.

I grew up in a household where my father worked in the cement industry. He made nearly all of our furniture, made a full deck in the back yard with an overhang out of wood, as well as created an entire 9.5' deep x ~35' long kidney bean shaped cement pool (something similar to this: https://i.imgur.com/i6eW9UM.jpg ) with a few of his buddies. Beside a cement mixer coming to do the initial pouring everything else was done by hand or with hand tools. I'm still in awe when I see the pictures (developed film in a physical album) of the entire process from start to finish. A grassy hill was turned into our family's happiest and most fun spot on our property all while I was an infant still. I would have loved to be old enough to have helped with that and just thinking about it gets my juices flowing!

Often when he wasn't working he'd have This Old House on the television (started in 1979. The VERY BEST wood working / handy man show NO CONTEST including anything that has come out since) and that'd usually spark off a new ideas for projects and after a trip or two to the local hardware store I was always his day laborer-type-helper. I carried boards on my shoulders, many-o-paving stones, dug many holes, held many things in place, wheelbarrow'd heavy things endlessly, carried buckets full of all sorts of materials, learned how to use every hand and power tool, and banged my thumb many times trying to drive in nails.

Any chance he had he avoided calling construction workers or any other type of service industry for help / to hire because he not only had the skills to do most things himself but he truly enjoyed the hobby of wood working and the craft of being a handyman, so to speak.

I'm really and truly grateful (especially these days) that I grew up admiring him and the type of things he did / liked to do. Just having grown up with that kind of role model and being able to soak up the skills, knowledge, and thought process behind a litany of different handy man skill sets come in handy at least once a week in my life. Also, having grown up slightly before the time when computers just started to become something for the average home, I was exposed to that side of things early and often as well.

The reason I bring all of this up is because my first and longest job I ever had (working with elementary school aged children, 5-10 years old, for an after school / summer camp program at the school I went to growing up) I got to see, first hand, how younger generations (through the kids that I took care of and in the later years via my younger co-workers) may have missed the type of exposure I had to "handy man-type things". Many friends I made at college and in my adult life never got into that type of stuff and would need to make a call to some sort of professional every single time anything more complicated than a light bulb burning out happened. I realized that I was lucky to have had that exposure and those skills and I realized that not everyone else was lucky enough to have had the same.

Being handy saves me money, allows me to customize all sorts of things for myself and others, gives me much more wiggle room when it comes to giving gifts since I can create and modify them, allows me to re-purpose all sorts of things to extend their usefulness, and generally be the type of person others can count on when shit goes down. It also allowed me to work part time jobs of the construction variety or similar things when I was in college and just out of college starting my own web development business when I needed to make sure I had enough money to cover my ass.

I find myself feeling really bad for younger generations that didn't have exposure to that type of life before everything became computerized and digital but I was ignorant in thinking it was only people younger than me. Not everyone is interested in that type of thing even when they have the chance to be exposed to it but looking back on it all now I wouldn't change a thing. I feel like I got two lifetimes of skill sets having grown up and come of age at the time where computers hadn't fully taken over yet and having hands on skills was the norm. I put both to use constantly and just having those skills to draw from has helped raise my value in the eyes of my employers and co-workers countless times and in ways I'd never have suspected going into a gig.

I'm not sure what else I was trying to get at but I'm always thinking about this stuff and rarely find the opportunity to try and explain where my head's at in terms of these topics. But, just like you, I'm in awe of the specific and sometimes very rare skill sets and hobbies HN community members tend to have. I love seeing that passion in general. Something about it reminds me of my passions and I get exactly how they feel even if I don't understand an iota of what they are doing / talking about. It's almost like a shared language of love for a hobby / task / skill / skill set / way of life. Everyone can see and feel that genuine type of love for something and it translates to all corners of the Earth (and now internet ;) )!

[bacon_waffle]

Excellent post!

I'm similar age and had a similar sounding childhood, but maybe a bit less to do with concrete, and more to do with the woods and the peripheral mechanical stuff that seems to go alongside. Some of my fondest memories are around fall arriving; the sap going down in the trees meant it was time for sawing - mainly for heating, and a bit for cooking. Nicer pieces of hardwood would go to dry for a year or so, then to our little sawmill and be turned in to all sorts of things. Dad was particularly known for the shaker-style spinning wheels he made occasionally, and bits to help with Mom's weaving.

Fast forward to a few months ago - my partner and I bought a house in a town that we moved to ~3 years ago, far from where I grew up. I guess I'm known here as a guy who works from home writing code and doing stuff with electronics, not as much someone who might be comfortable handling a chainsaw or a tractor. It raised a few eyebrows when one weekend, a station-wagon load of timber, box of screws, case of beer (to incentivise helpers, of course), and some old roofing steel from a friend's place turned in to a decent little firewood shed, to go with our new fireplace. I didn't shop around first, but would be shocked if the cost of that shed was anywhere near to what a commercial job would've been, and there wasn't much compromise in the fit either. All this with no youtube video nor real plan, beyond basic dimensions of the finished structure.

Not to disparage youtube of course - I use it all the time to gain short term expertise, especially for car problems. My point is more to share the value in a sort of "muscle memory" that comes from long term exposure to doing this sort of stuff.

How to share/learn these skills? Hard to say, but I remember that my Christmas/birthday gifts started coming from the hardware store (or Computer Shopper) instead of the toy store when I was pretty young, maybe 10, and that materially enabled a lot of learning for me. So, when I have the opportunity to get gifts for friends' kids, I usually look for things like soldering irons or good screwdrivers. When something breaks, I like to think about how much worse it could get if I were to fail at fixing it - usually there's minimal real risk. If you make it worse, you're not likely to repeat the same mistake; you've learned something, and there will always be another broken thing to apply that knowledge to.

[cosmon0t]

Great Post! I'm probably a similar age. I grew up learning how to use a bandsaw, compound miter saw and generally learning how to do woodwork that could hold it's own. I grew up with computers and electronics and turned that into a professional career. But after helping my Dad build a wooden spiral staircase with nothing more than his experience/intuition, I have immense respect for people who don't need a reference like Youtube to make something remarkable. As a side note, it really pays to sit down sometimes and assess what I can do personally without the safety net of a reference or guidelines.

[scoggs]

Ah, you know what? I was worried I was off topic and off base telling such a personal story but I'm glad it resonated with you.

I know EXACTLY what you mean about people looking at you and thinking: "This nerdy programmer guy actually thinks he can be the handyman for the apartment he rented from me?!" -Multiple landlords that I saved endless amounts of $ being their live-in handy man.

I've installed ceiling fans, I've installed central air and ducting, I've taken care of all the yard work, shoveling, plowing, and ice breaking. Anything that didn't require a certified professional was in my wheelhouse and where a landlord came to fully understand and trust my skills and judgement we came to a great middle ground where my work would help offset things like bills or rent when there were no more bills to cover the costs of.

>So, when I have the opportunity to get gifts for friends' kids, I usually look for things like soldering irons or good screwdrivers.

THAT IS GREAT ADVICE! I've given relatives and friends books on coding (when they showed interest in my job / career) but I never thought of that. I usually tend to try and give that advice / teach them myself, first person -- but not everyone is always ready right then to be taught. People want to operate on their own and at a pace of their own, especially if they are feeling any sort of anxiety about trying something new or having to "perform" tasks that are out of their wheel house. The thing is, with a little practice, the handy man stuff isn't all that tough!

Just watching someone like Adam Savage (Mythbusters) on his Youtube channel and how much fun he has is all the indication that I need that mostly anyone could pick up basic handy man skills. The only difference between him is that he has the most extensive and professional set of tools and machines possible, but if you pay attention to the majority of his builds, a lot of the things he does only require basic tools for the majority of the projects. He gets a lot done with basic tools and tends to only use more rare and specific / heavy duty tools because he can.

I feel that once you get the hang of handy man work and construction stuff and the like, as you said about your firewood shed. You found the dimensions of your finished project and through experience and a bit of mental planning were probably able to come up with a simple diagram if not an entire floor plan / build plan that contained dimensions, materials, and instructions for cobbling it all together.

Once you've done things like that a few times it opens up the possibilities endlessly and so long as you measure twice and cut once you can seriously continue onward and build anything you like.

>When something breaks, I like to think about how much worse it could get if I were to fail at fixing it - usually there's minimal real risk. If you make it worse, you're not likely to repeat the same mistake; you've learned something, and there will always be another broken thing to apply that knowledge to.

AH! I'm so glad I made that post now. You are so right. The big takeaway I get from this last part from you is that -- especially for us computer-types who love to figure out how things work, reverse engineer stuff, take stuff apart and tinker with them -- even if you fail after taking something apart and not being able to fix it you wind up learning lots about the thing / things in general.

I've never walked away from a failure of a hobby project without some sort of epiphany or clue about something that came to help me out in the future. Experimenting with hobby work / handy man work and getting the chance to build things yourself and even fail if you don't succeed still provides enjoyment and education. Those are the types of things I would love to pass on to as many as I can. Those are the things I wish schools were teaching. And those are the things that, these days, I wish more people understood and did on their own free time.

[dfc]

> The VERY BEST wood working / handy man show NO CONTEST

TOH was the best handyman show for sure. But he woodworking content was negligible. The Woodright Shop is the best woodworking show.

[scoggs]

I'll check it out. I was also young when I watched it and just remember being mesmerized even if it wasn't my favorite subject / show to watch. It made me want to construct the SHIT out of things, you know?

[dfc]

I am honestly excited for you. I can't believe you haven't seen The Woodwright Shop. Roy has been doing this for at least 37 years!

Pick an episode that you think sounds interesting. Roy's presentation style can be a little strange at first but give him a chance...

https://www.pbs.org/show/woodwrights-shop/

[mitchell_h]

first up, awesome post! I grew up in much the same way(i'm 35, from lower middle class/upper lower class). If it was at all possible to do it our selves, we did because didn't have much choice.

Today I live on a hobby farm and I still use all the same things I learned back when. i keep a hefty stock pile of "junk" for re-purpose and have rebuilt most of the building, motors, and tools I have.

I've got 2 sons and they both think it's funny watching me fix random stuff with other random stuff. But it's a skill I've watched them pick up. i'm happy knowing they can fix what needs fixed and they're confidence never wavers when they want to build something.

[scoggs]

Haha, that's awesome and a hobby farm sounds fantastic. It's great you get to pass on the skills to your two sons. Just know, they might not understand it now, but one day even if they don't verbalize it and especially in the world we are in today, your boys will really be grateful for the knowledge they got from watching / working with you.

[kbenson]

I think people in general have diverse hobbies, and when combined with what's usually more than a passing knowledge of a lot of their parents' careers and hobbies, you end up with a very wide well of knowledge in any sizable group.

What makes HN special in my view is that people like to share that knowledge, and this is a very welcoming place to do so. I think the average HN user may be more open to learning new things (or at a minimum learning about new things). It's a great place to share that random trivia you know with a good chance someone will be appreciative.

[GlenTheMachine]

I'm a very beginning (you might even say aspiring) woodworker. My hobbies are that, and farming. Which are completely different from what I do at work.