[isbjorn16]

Woodworking has probably been one of the most important things to add during my career. I went from being and feeling like I knew how to do most everything to being forced into confronting the fact that just because I'm experienced, I don't know everything. I make so many fucking mistakes when I'm woodworking that, when people ask about what I make in my woodshop, I just respond "sawdust and mistakes, mostly".

I'm not comfortable not knowing what to do; I've been building on a really stellar foundation for so long that when I need to do something outside of that universe - not situated over that foundation - I tend to flounder, get frustrated, and feel like the dumbest man alive.

Woodworking made me confront the fact that while I may be really good at building scalable systems and high quality code, that doesn't mean I'm the master at everything, and I'm *going* to find things I need to stretch to learn. It's made me get comfortable with making mistakes again (well, as comfortable as I can be, I reckon). It's also made me comfortable with realizing when I'm hitting my patience limit and walking away instead of banging my head against the wall for hours. A bit of distance, let my subconscious chew on it for a while, and revisit it later, rather than just trying to put my head down and shove my way through.

Long story short, you should all pick up woodworking, or metal working, or throw some pottery or paint or something. Get comfortable with being a rank amateur fuckup and revel in the process of learning instead of fabricating without a hitch. I know that I, for one, really needed it.

[digitalsushi]

I have a woodshop and I develop software for a day job. The best piece of tooling I can suggest for a wood shop is a wood stove for heating it. I have reached 100% efficiency with my materials usage and it brings me a great satisfaction to so easily maintain such an impossibly high result.

[semireg]

I admire this comment in the many dimensions it was intended.

Likewise, I heat the home office with the burning cycles of an intel Mac constantly compiling an electron app.

[jader201]

Shows how much I know about woodworking.

Until I read your comment, I hadn’t realized the parent comment was satire. Instead, I was amazed at some new technique I hadn’t heard of before of heating wood that would make woodworking easier.

[m463]

As winter gets colder, you could try a G5 PPC :)

[wtfmcgrill]

Burn the evidence eh?

[oakashes]

Just be very careful when you are applying finish, volatile solvents and flames are a bad mix!

[dekhn]

And here I have been throwing away my failures in shame.

[gjvc]

Long story short, you should all pick up woodworking, or metal working, or throw some pottery or paint or something. Get comfortable with being a rank amateur fuckup and revel in the process of learning instead of fabricating without a hitch. I know that I, for one, really needed it.

Learning a trade, even if it doesn't become a profession is something which is very under-rated.

[Pr0ject217]

>Get comfortable with being a rank amateur fuckup and revel in the process of learning instead of fabricating without a hitch

There's still a long road ahead for me to coming even close to mastering software engineering. Perhaps one day ^_^

[mytdi]

>"sawdust and mistakes, mostly" Love that phrase. Will share it with my father who has a woodshop. Also agree with your thoughts about woodworking.

I also started doing some wood work, I got myself a desktop CNC and some other basic woodworking tools.

[tharkun__]

I would go as far (as I did) and recommend not buying any expensive power tools at all.

Hand tools!

CNC? Table saw? What's that?

A basic woodworking tool is a good 50+ year old hand saw that can sharpened by hand. I have like four. I actually ground the teeth off completely on some of them and created a new set of teeth from a completely smooth straight metal edge. Very satisfying!

This is what I learned it from (well this and a many of the other videos on his channel): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTqZTGPPRj0&list=PLqyeNiM0BJ...

What's a planer? Who's got money to buy that or space to put it. Or the dust extraction you'd want?

Buy an actual 50+ year old hand plane or two! I have 3 and each one has something that's broken. Be it a handle, a screw that's not original etc.

Dunno about the US or other countries, but here in Canada https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/tools/hand-tools can also be good to buy new if you are so inclined. I have a mix of new tools from them and old tools from Ebay that I restored.

[logical_proof]

Don’t act like re-toothing a crosscut saw is some easy process and everyone has all the tools available :) at a minimum you need the correct needle files, a saw set, a bastard file, some kind of vice preferably a saw vice, and the skill on what pitch and yaw to file at. Hand saw sharpening like most woodworking is a lovely ‘rabbet’ hole.

Edit: this was meant as a bit of tip of the hat to anyone who can sharpen a crosscut panel saw, not snark.

[tharkun__]

I never said it's easy if you have nothing yet. But it's satisfying ;)

And yes, I started by building Paul's workbench actually. I built the version that uses regular old 2x4s and 2x6x glued together. He also has a version using plywood. I built it using only hand tools I bought off Ebay and the "work bench" I used to build that was just some old Ikea table I had. You might use a couple of cheap saw horses and a sheet of plywood. Heck you can make the saw horses using just 2x4s and hand tools without any "bench" and go from there. https://paulsellers.com/paul-sellers-workbench-plans/ and his first video literally starts with "How do you make a work bench when you don't have a work bench to make it on. Here you are on your knees ...". But there's also a video on his channel where he actually makes on of these in his back yard like I mentioned.

And yes, I bought files, both to get rid of the existing, bad, teeth and cut in the new teeth. Also a tooth setting tool for the left/right 'bending'. I only did that once I had his work bench finished and a vise mounted to it. No "saw vice" (whatever that is) needed. FWIW, I've only had to sharpen my rip cut saws so far though. Cross cut will be harder, yes. Looking forward to it!

Also I see you meant your reply in a good way, i.e. yes, I'm way down the rabbet hole. I do have a manual router from Lee Valley ;)

[mono_tagic]

I've been taking woodworking classes from a fine furniture for about 6 months total now (2 different classes, just finishing it up). There's a lot of value in having power tools, but some hand tools just do a better job in so many areas. I love mixing both, and there is something very satisfying of doing a rabbit plane or using a low angle block plane that isn't felt when sanding. Smoother surface and better cuts too if you sharpen 'em.

[tharkun__]

If you're in it for quick results, absolutely agreed. If I had to earn a living making furniture or any kind of carpentry, I'd definitely use power tools. Even Paul uses them. I.e. as far as I know he does the rough cutting and planing for projects using machines but finishing is done using hand tools.

Something I totally forgot until your reply made me remember. Paul Sellers actually made a piece for the president of the USA. He used to live in Texas.

https://paulsellers.com/2020/11/a-white-house-design/

That's not what we're talking about here tho if you ask me ;) The point is to to do something that is not easy. Something that takes time. Skill. Mastery. And do it badly lol! I sympathize a lot with the OP here, i.e. in software, I make a boo boo and I force push a `git commit -a --amend` and (almost) nobody is gonna notice. In any case I squash it all before merging, whatever may have happened "in between" in the course of "getting there". This is quite different when physical things are concerned. It's much, much harder to hide your mistakes when woodworking. It needs more knowledge and skill to hide the mishap when cutting that dove tail :)

[ltbarcly3]

Stop gate-keeping woodworking. It doesn't take any more skill to use hand tools, but it does take more time and physical exertion. It's not more pure, it's not better in any way. Wood is not a material you can treat with precision, it changes and moves with the seasons, with power tools or hand tools you can make cuts that far exceed the precision that can be maintained with wood.

It's not even cheaper, a router and a table saw can do cuts that would take hundreds of hand tools to accomplish. You can't tell in the end how a cut was made or how a board was processed, you are going to eliminate any evidence with a scraper or by sanding!

Unless you are making very square hyper-modern furniture out of planks you need so many specialized hand tools. Even doing something as simple as jointing and planing a board requires hundreds and hundreds of dollars of hand planes, or else months of searching for them in very rough condition and then the know how to refurbish planes. A Stanley hand plane costs about $150 each if bought new, and will probably still be almost unusable without a few hours of setup. A knockoff Indian plane will cost $70, but it's quite possible that no amount of effort or setup will make it usable. You need at least 3 different hand planes to plane a rough board. An electric planer costs $300 to $500, it makes absolutely no sense to buy $500 of hand planes unless you specifically want to spend 500x the effort and time.

At that point, why do you even allow yourself a set of planes? Why not literally sand the board like they did in Mesopotamia with another board and a bucket of sand? Why allow yourself a Stanley type cast iron plane, why not limit yourself to a 1700's style wood plane and a poor iron that can barely keep an edge? Why not limit yourself to a bronze hatchet? It's beyond arbitrary to decide that there is some kind of magic in choosing the most modern thing you possibly can that isn't motorized, something that can only be manufactured using the same sorts of technology that you are avoiding by using it. They were never flattening cast iron planes by hand, they aren't rolling the steel for the plane irons by hand, and they never did. They do it with giant machines in giant mechanized factories. These planes were only ever bought because the kinds of mechanization they had available in the factory wasn't available in the locations people needed to shape wood at that time.

If you want to fetishize the process or experience the history of woodworking like a worker at Colonial Williamsburg, or you are Amish, then by all means concentrate on the tools and the process, and by all means your personal experience and the value you find is fine, but don't tell people there is something lesser about the tools they use to build the things they want to build. I promise you, all those thousands of workers who spent their days sweating over their work without air conditioning or power tools would throw those hand tools directly into the trash if they had a choice to use modern tools. Which they largely did when those more modern tools became available. I am certain they would find it funny and ridiculous, if not unbelievable, that anyone would ever decide there is something spiritual and desirable in doing the sorts of physical labor they went to great lengths to minimize and which over time wore out their bodies. It's no different than insisting on digging a ditch for fiber optic cable by hand because it requires so much more time, skill, and mastery of various kinds of shovels.

[endominus]

> It's not even cheaper, a router and a table saw can do cuts that would take hundreds of hand tools to accomplish... Unless you are making very square hyper-modern furniture out of planks you need so many specialized hand tools. Even doing something as simple as jointing and planing a board requires hundreds and hundreds of dollars of hand planes, or else months of searching for them in very rough condition and then the know how to refurbish planes.

This is not true. The YouTuber Rex Kreuger[0] has a series where he explains how to get started woodworking with mostly hand tools, making very much not-modern furniture with relatively cheap tools. While he does advocate buying and restoring tools from second-hand sellers, he also does a lot of his work with relatively new tools (such as this video[1] about using a disposable DeWalt saw for joinery) and shows how to use limited tools in historical ways to make a large variety of cuts, applicable to any woodworking you'd want to do. In fact, he specifically says that he only uses 3 planes for the vast majority of the work he does, and that should be enough to make fine furniture.

> Stop gate-keeping woodworking.

I would argue that demanding an investment of many hundreds of dollars and large amounts of floor space (that a router and table saw would require) is more gatekeeping than recommending hand tools.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/@RexKrueger [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQBz4QHn7u4

[tharkun__]

Whoa, that's quite a bit of text but it all went off the rails in the first sentence already and you go on a tirade from there that's wholly uncalled for:

    Stop gate-keeping woodworking

I don't see where I "gate-keep" woodworking. My first sentence specifically said:

    If you're in it for quick results, absolutely agreed. If I had to earn a living making furniture or any kind of carpentry, I'd definitely use power tools.

That's the opposite of gate-keeping. I'm saying, power to you if you want to use power tools, like one of the other replies says they do because it's just an enabler of other hobbies to them. And I say even I would if I had to make a living being a carpenter for example.

I'm saying what I love about woodworking and why I use hand tools:

    The point is to to do something that is not easy. Something that takes time. Skill. Mastery. And do it badly lol!

For me the fun is in the process and seeing that these results can be achieved with just these hand tools. I find that amazing. It was a lot of fun scouring EBay for cheap, in-enough-shape-to-be-useable planes and saws. Why do I choose one arbitrary limit over another? Well because it's arbitrary and I chose it and I'm having fun with it!

[organsnyder]

I love Paul Sellers’ videos. He has such a calm, confident demeanor. My kids love watching them with me, too.

[weaksauce]

paul sellers is a treasure. quite the treat. he makes dovetails look like anyone can do them

[ilyt]

Sure, in most cases the power tools are strictly time savers and not "do the job better". But router or orbital sander (hell, anything powered related to sanding) is gonna save so much time they are worth every penny

[tharkun__]

Depends if you ask me.

Sanding the deck to repaint? Absolutely! That said, I did use a hand scraper last time actually. The time before I used an orbital sander.

Of course you're gonna get the tree house done faster if you use the circular saw!

That's not the point. Not even the quality for me. For me, as a software developer, it's about doing things the slow way. Not necessarily the "better" way. I.e. using my hands. Meaning I built our tree house using only hand tools, save for the battery powered drill. Driving all those screws by hand, no thank you. Yes I did buy a hand crank drill as well and some drill bits to go with it. But I only use it to bore holes, not to drive screws, though you could too. Like this one https://img0.etsystatic.com/006/0/6916650/il_fullxfull.35811...

Some of you may appreciate this: http://www.supertool.com/forsale/2022nberslist.html (see main page and newsletter as well if you really want to buy - he's got already restored/more ready to use material than what you may find on ebay and the like, if you want to pay the price)

[ilyt]

My perspective is a bit different because woodworking is a bit of a hobby that I use in other hobbies. I enjoyed making a stand for my synthesizers or various shelving and cases for my electronic things, and I didn't rush it or anything, but in the end getting a tool that just does the skill I already learned ("cutting the board straight") just leaves more time for my other hobbies.

[switchbak]

I don't see the need to choose just hand tools or not. Buy some of both, make good investments where it matters and buy what you need for what you're making.

If you appreciate the feel and quiet of hand tools (like a nice hand plane!) that's great, otherwise if you like the accuracy and efficiency of a nice router, more power to you (rimshot!).

[dekhn]

I would recommend everybody get a small table saw and chopsaw. Neither is expensive and both are transformative, especially for clumsy people like me who can't saw a straight line.

That said both chisels and planes are wonderful hand tools to work with and greatly reward even the most basic experimentation.

[NegativeLatency]

I’ve found these videos to be really helpful, especially the ones one sharpening plane irons https://woodschool.org/video-index/

[isbjorn16]

my other pithy statement that I stand behind is my poorly routed sign that says "Glasses and Mask, Jackass" and sits right in front of the door entry to my workshop.

haste makes waste, but even worse, it can make for blind people with breathing problems

[otikik]

The gate drug to woodworking is doing small repairs around the house. Hey I changed a lightbulb, let me replace that door knob, oh I need a chisel for that? Bam

[alonmower]

The added benefit of arriving it via this path is that getting really handy teaches you a lot of valuable lessons applicable everywhere else in your life (ones that extend far beyond knowing when contractors are taking advantage of you).

e.g. things in the world aren't as permanent as they appear to be, you have agency to change and improve things, taking a step back to take two steps forward is sometimes the right path, etc...

[manv1]

Agreed.

It's fun and frustrating how ridiculously hard it is to measure and mark wood for cutting consistently.

I've been off by 1mm because I accidentally cut on the left side of the mark instead of the right side of the mark. Or I have a table leg that's not quite square to the floor because I forgot to square the table saw blade. Arrgh!

[Animats]

> that doesn't mean I'm the master at everything

And then you see someone who is the master at everything in construction.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKYFdwWx2QU

[juhanima]

The way she goes about it, using power tools without goggles and gloves is just horrifying. It's a lovely concept, showing what can be done with the materials and tools available. But I wouldn't recommend such a cavalier approach to anyone in real life. This seems very staged to me anyway, with the result not matching to the process shown. Also the structural integrity and endurance of those constructs seems a bit questionable.

[shitloadofbooks]

Wearing gloves when using most power tools is so unbelievably dangerous.

If your gloves get caught by anything rotating at several thousand RPM, there's a huge chance that the material of the glove will catch on the working edge/face and continue to pull your hand/arms/whole body deeper and deeper.

You also don't have any sense of proprioception or kinesthesia with the glove itself, so it's even easier to accidentally do this, whilst thinking that you're well clear.

[bruckie]

Yes, please don't wear gloves when working around (most) power tools.

My mom was wearing gloves when using the table saw one day. She nicked a finger in the blade and it caught on the fabric and pulled her hand in, mangling her fingers pretty badly. Plastic surgeon did a pretty good job reassembling her, but one finger (the one that ended up with a severed tendon) still can't bend properly.

[ilyt]

Table saws generally come with whole slew of "just please fucking don't"[1]. My grand-grandpa lost a part of the thumb to it, which is still probably low price for a man working in construction most of his life in now-post-communist country where OSHA-equivalent didn't exist.

Like, preferably don't even use hands at all to push it in the first place

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN_w0OD6oIs

[Animats]

There's a solution - SawStop. Works fine, industry reaction to it was a long, sad tale.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SawStop

[buzzerbetrayed]

Except you don’t want to wear gloves with most power tools as it makes them more dangerous.

[ilyt]

Ah, yes, that belt sander is totally out to get ya if you don't have gloves, and that nail gun is gonna kill you without googles lmao.

> Also the structural integrity and endurance of those constructs seems a bit questionable.

Eh, I've seen shacks built worse in worse climate that are older than me.

Aside from some things being a bit weird (why those protruding concrete blocks for wood beams instead of just digging a hole for concrete + sticking beam deeper ? Humidity maybe ?) I don't really see an issue, it looks like it is in place that won't exactly experience hurricane winds

> This seems very staged to me anyway, with the result not matching to the process shown.

Well, it was probably like a week long build so some things were skipped

[wrycoder]

I wear glasses and consider that to be enough with most portable tools, grinders excepted. She's wearing gloves half the time - it's a personal choice. Gloves don't prevent traumatic injury, just abrasion. You be the judge, if your hands are soft.

These are garden structures in the Japanese idiom. They look fine to me. She's clearly made them before. Why do you say the results don't match the processes?

[VectorLock]

Like those very popular "we built an elaborate swimming pool in the middle of the jungle" videos that were debunked.

[Animats]

Guoer, accused of that, has posted some long videos. Over an hour of Diesel engine overhaul. Start to finish on a motor rewinding job. With this one, though, there was probably some assistance not shown. Somehow, a lot of concrete got up to the top of the mountain. There's no reason she shouldn't have some unskilled laborers lifting and carrying.

While she appears to have started the series herself, it's been covered by Xhihua and promoted by the Party. So it does have propaganda aspects.

Her work has scary aspects. The electrical wiring is unsafe. An uncovered knife switch for 220V? No fuses or circuit breakers? Ordinary wire out in the open, not nonmetallic armored? Generators with no voltage regulation? That's 1980s China, not 2020s China. Wiring accessories are cheap in China; price them on Alibaba.

[ilyt]

Well, the videos are pushing the "genius mountain girl" thingy hard.

But I think showing helpers for target audience might've had reverse problem, people would assume just because some man shows up in the shots that they were the ones doing the hard part, even if they were in the end just "unskilled helpers", which sadly happens in many male-dominated industries where woman is automatically assumed to be less skilled or getting help.

> Generators with no voltage regulation? That's 1980s China, not 2020s China. Wiring accessories are cheap in China; price them on Alibaba.

cheap vs zero coz it was pulled off some junkyard probably

[samplatt]

>That's 1980s China, not 2020s China.

HOOOO, boy. Are you wrong there. Major cities sure, and they're improving as a whole, but SO much of China's heavy-industrial and rural provinces are still run on and over systems that mentally invoke the <internally screaming> meme.

[Animats]

You're probably right, but this is new construction.

Guoer rewinds a lot of motors, most of which have a standard cast iron frame and field windings. She's regularly opening up old motors and finding burned-out windings. Badly burned out windings. Clearly, no motor protection circuit breakers were used.

She does use eye protection when angle grinding. She's a real artist with a angle grinder. She makes parts out of scrap sheet and tube with a angle grinder and a welder. I've seen people do worse with a whole machine shop available.

[1] https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832671094843.html

[monkpit]

What about them was debunked? Were they just made with machines?

[function_seven]

Yeah. I can't find anything right now, but there have been many takedowns that show the excavator tracks in the background. Also videos that show the aftermath of these "hand-dug pools", where you see a bunch of them clustered in an area (again, with evidence of earth moving equipment).

Other absurdities are when the pool is filled with thousands of gallons of water, one bucket trip at a time.

[culopatin]

This has been welding for me. The amount of failures, small and big (like when I get under the car to mount the exhaust and I find that the second turn is actually 90 degrees off) and small (like when I’m using the last piece of stainless with the last c and I have and I forget to turn down the amps and blow a hole right through both).

It always takes me a few days of procrastination and thinking about going in the garage before I finally go and do it, by then the race is too close and I end up rushing. All that because I don’t want to confront the failures.

What’s funny is that when I complete whatever I do, the reward is so good that I don’t know why I can’t remember that feeling when I start the project.

[michelb]

Very much reflects my personal experience with woodworking and pottery/ceramics. The lack of a proper undo/rollback is both frustrating and wonderful.