The Unexpected Wood Delivery

After a few months off, Steven and Alex are back—and committing to every two weeks. This episode opens with what's on their benches: Alex's discovery of green-wood carving with a freshly fallen cedar, Steven's big spring of selling the family home and moving closer to the shop, and the major relayout of The Joinery. They tease the summer class lineup and four new fall classes, including serving trays, a craftsman-style bench, and a chairmaking class on the modern slat-back.

The main conversation tackles a question every woodworker faces: a tree comes down in your yard—is it worth milling? Steven walks through the real economics (hauling, portable mills, board-foot math, and when sentimental value trumps cost), the case for an Alaskan chainsaw mill, and why air-dried wood has a character kiln-dried lumber just can't match. Then a new segment debuts—"The Real Take"—where they cut through the YouTube hype on epoxy: where it actually earns its place, why the river-table dream usually ends in a shop covered in plastic, and when bar-top finish is the right call.

Transcript

Welcome back to the show

SPEAKER_01 0:17

All right, hello, and welcome back to the Joiners Bench. I'm Steven. I'm here with Alex, and we're back for another recording. If you've been following us for the past, I think the last one was the eighth podcast we had. And it's been a few months since we got back together again, but now we're both committed, and we're gonna be every two weeks you're gonna we're gonna record one of these things and hopefully we'll get a few people to listen to us and see how it goes. But yeah, we're gonna try out some different formats and different things and just have a good chat about woodworking and craft and our lives in general, and we'll see how it goes.

Carving and shop projects

SPEAKER_01 0:51

So the first thing on my agenda is what's been on our bench. And you've been up to some things, I think, or you've had some things be up to you, I think.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

I have a lot of house projects that I've been working on. So a lot of working with like two eyes, and it's I I kind of miss working with the nice wood and milling up and having stuff be actually square.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

And stay square, probably. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

And also I've been kind of getting into whittling, carving, so just little things, you know, palm of my hand kind of thing. I had a in uh one of the first storms of the season, I had like an Arbor V Dae fall down and I guess it's cedar. That's what my AI on my phone said, just pointing the picture. I love that. It said it was cedar. I had heard way back when somewhere on YouTube of with carving the ideal time is to get it fresh off the tree. You want that like nice wet wood, and that's the best for it being soft and carving and whatnot. So I was like, all right, I have all this wood here. It's free. I'll try carving. And it was a lot of fun just sitting out at night, kind of after the kids go to bed, having my me time and just making stuff for a fairy garden or whatever I wanted. Sometimes, some nights it was literally just making wood chips because it felt good.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

It's like and it probably smells great. Oh yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Oh, it was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Yeah, it's it's when I was a kid, I whittled a lot because you know, you get that first knife and you think that's what I'll do. But I haven't really done it since then. But I have been watching, and and I remember that during COVID, I started watching Silva Spoons, which is on YouTube, and he's a local spoon carver, and he was doing a lot back then. And recently he's kind of come back on YouTube, and I've been watching some more of that. And I actually contacted him a week or so ago, and he's gonna probably start teaching some classes here at the joinery, which is gonna be awesome because he does a lot of really nice spoons and and just utensils and things like that. And but yeah, I mean, now you're you're wetting my appetite for that too. I kind of really wanna, you know, it is I always do appreciate projects that you can just get get done or almost done in an evening, not feel like you have to prove anything to anybody.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

So exactly. And be a little creative with it. And for me, I've always been like a 2D artist. So this shift to 3D has been really interesting of just getting my head to work in that way.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Yeah, and that's my biggest problem, is that I have no I say that I have but I have no artistic talent whatsoever. Um but I tend to make some things that look okay, that at least surpass.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

So yeah, yeah. You say that you say that as we're sitting at this table. That's beautiful. You well, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

But yeah, it's it's and that's the thing is I can do that. I just don't think of that as the artistic as like drawing a face or carving a face or carving a leaf or something like that. But yeah, it it takes it's all types of creativity, which is what we what we strive for. Yeah, anything else you've been up

Firewood shelter and cedar

SPEAKER_01 4:09

to?

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Well, I guess a little bit of foreshadowing. I had a project where I needed to store firewood. So I started building a little shelter for the firewood just with whatever scraps I had laying around, two buys and just whatever plywood. And I wanted to do something on the sides. I'd heard that cedar is good for outdoor kind of things.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

So I went, I bought like two planks, came here, milled it up all nice, and then as I was driving home, the car smelled so amazing. I was like, I can't put this on this trash project that I was doing. That that just no, I gotta so I made that with some other stuff that I found, and now I have a bunch of cedar that I gotta figure out what to do with.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Wow. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah. And it does smell so good. I love it when it comes into the shop because the shop then smells like somebody's closet for of clean clothes with cedar smelling, yeah. Yeah, well, that's very

Steven's busy spring move

SPEAKER_01 5:18

cool. Yeah, and we'll we've got more to talk about that on in a minute, too, because there's some bigger stories I understand from that whole process. But yeah, for me, you know, it's been really busy. It's been a busy spring, which is part of the reason why we haven't been able to do this. We tend to do everything all together in my family. So we had our youngest son who's graduating from high school. He graduated a week ago, and we also decided to, you know, take a house that we've lived in for 16 years and sell it, and then move down here closer to the shop and my day job. And so that's all over with. As of a week ago, we closed on both houses, the move's over. We're kind of settled in. But now all the projects are creeping in of all the things that has to be uh built and and made, which is kind of good because I the reason I started the joinery was because my wife was like, enough furniture. We we can't take any more wood in the house. And now she's kind of like, you know, we have some room and we have some empty spaces we need to fill. So let's build something. So one of the things I have to build is uh and I'm working on is a recreation of this table we're sitting at, which was a design that I did. I don't even know what you'd call it. It's a modern interpretation of a trestle table, I think. It's got like splayed 30-degree feet and arms and cross members, and then it's kind of curvy on the top, but we needed it in cherry. So I'm gonna remake it in cherry and and see how that goes. So I've been working with drawing that up. But I think the big thing has been just kind of we've gone through a major, I call it a renovation. I don't sure if it qualifies as that, but a relay out of the shop here at the joiner. Oh, yeah. Now that we've been here for almost two years, we see how people work, we see what's needed, and I don't know what you think about it, but it's it's man, it's so wide open and incredible.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

And yeah, it's unfortunately I haven't been able to spend a ton of time down there other than milling up that cedar, like I said, but it did flow really nice. It looks great. Uh again, lots of room. It feels like it's sectioned off a little better, too, of to be able to control dust and the just the air pollution stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's been a lot better.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

It's it's it's really nice. I love this time of year at the shop because we're looking at a TV monitor view of it. It's empty. It's a Friday afternoon, there's nobody here. The weather's beautiful here in Wisconsin today. It is perfect. So I'm sure it will be empty. And those are the times that I like to go out and work on that. Other than that, uh, the other thing that I've been doing is writing more. I've if you haven't checked it out, the blog post on the joinery, thejoinery.club, has a couple new blog posts from me, and there's more coming out every week. I'm gonna try to be more prolific at it. It's something that I really, really enjoy. I stopped writing it because it stopped being fun. It started to become a job because I was trying to use it as a marketing angle for the joinery. And now I'm just writing for me. So maybe you'll get something entertainment out of it, or maybe you'll just laugh at my mistakes or whatever I'm doing. But I'm having fun with it, and I don't care if you like it. That's and I think that's gonna go well.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

So you had a post that was saying essentially that of that you're getting back to it, and it is what it is. And I found that very uh inspiring. I guess it was cool to see that mindset, to be see the it takes some vulnerability really to admit that. And yeah, again, I was I'm inspired. I like it.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Good, good. Well, I hope that that continues on and that I can that I can come up with enough stories to tell. Or I'm sure owning a shared shop, there's gonna be stories to tell for everything.

Joinery updates and classes

SPEAKER_01 8:48

And speaking of that, we'll kind of move into like what's going on at the joinery. Just a couple of standard things. Uh, we talked about the the relay out and the renovation, and we've got that going on now. We actually have this weekend, we've got the CNC router is gonna have a major upgrade to it, which I'm kind of excited about it, even though I'm not one that uses the CNC router, but they came up with new systems and new automations for it. So that's going in. We're also gonna try to hook up our wide belt sander so that it's finally up and running. And so that'll be a nice addition for people to doing cutting boards and tabletops and things like that. We are also about to start posting our summer classes, and so those will be on the website here in the next couple. Probably by the time this podcast comes out, they'll probably already be up. And yeah, we're just kind of settling in the summer, and I'm gonna spend that time to build some projects on my own. We're also developing for the fall. This is actually probably the most exciting thing. I think we've got about four new classes that Eric, our lead instructor, and I are developing. I'll go ahead and tease them a little bit. One of them is a serving tray class that will kind of be a shorter class, but it kind of gets you on all the all the major tools and learns some new techniques and things. I'm working on a design for a craftsman style bench, it would be like something you could put in your front hallway to sit and untie your shoes, or you could make a version of it, depending on the wood you use, that could go outside as a setting bench, but it's kind of in that craftsman style of, or maybe even slightly green and green type of style. And then for those of you that have been in the joinery and seen my dining room chairs that have been uncompleted for longer than I want to admit to, those are what some of the things we need for the new house. I'm gonna finish that set. And I've been finally, my arm has been twisted enough. I'm gonna do a class on this. Oh, yeah. This fall, we will do a chairmaking class on the more modern slat-back chair, as it's called. So that will be a very fun advanced class with wood bending and forming and weird shapes and all kinds of fun stuff. So, yeah, those are some just a taste of some of the classes that we're working on. So that is exciting. Yeah. I think it's gonna there's gonna be a lot for a lot of people. All right. I'm excited about this because I've seen the picture and we've talked a little bit about it, but

The fallen oak tree

SPEAKER_01 11:08

we've also we've had a lot of weather here in Wisconsin. We have. Yep. It's been crazy, just the the severity of the things we're getting. I grew up in Texas, I know what severe weather is like. I have not seen a pattern like this where it's like every day and then a couple days break and then every day again. But during that, you had things happen.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Yeah, it was maybe a little over a month ago now. We had a storm come through, and I didn't think it was a particularly bad storm uh as far as warnings and whatnot. But and it came like middle of the night. I slept through it, my wife woke up a little bit and heard it. But then the next morning she was looking out on our back deck and was like, Hey, come check this out. And an oak in our backyard had fallen. I should say most of it. Right. There's a a piece that is still standing. But it yeah, it came down, it hit our deck and our other trees, and it was like, Alright, well, I guess I should do something about this now. And I'd been thinking for a while, there are a couple other trees on our property that we're planning on getting rid of. They're in bad shape, or there is one hickory that's like just this tall, skinny thing that there's no point to it there. And I've been procrastinating on calling an arborist, and so this yeah, this falling was a little bit of like gotta take some action.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Exactly. And then as obviously as a woodworker, your first thought was can I use this? Probably, right? It was like an oak.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

It wasn't can I, it's how can I?

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Uh-huh. There you go. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Yeah, so I I did take a little some little bits and was playing with carving it up, and it's not quite as nice as the the cedar, but it has its uses.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

But yeah, the rest of it, I'm like, ooh. This yeah, I'm I'm trying to like add up of how how much would it be to buy all this wood from from a hardwood dealer, or like what is this going to end up as? But I I also know that every woodworker thinks that they have a tree go down and it's not very realistic of just milling the tree and that you're going to get it. I mean, it can be.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

It can be. There are times when it works out just perfectly, but those are kind of rare. Let me ask you a few questions about it. Yeah. Because I did I saw the picture, but I didn't really study it. How big of a trunk was it?

SPEAKER_00 13:48

I want to say it might be like three foot diameter at the bottom. Maybe even a little bigger. I and that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

That's fine. So it's big. It's your hand, your hand showed me what it, you know. So you were about two and a half, three feet. And how long is it kind of clear? Or few branches anyway?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

It was maybe eight feet. I'm trying to think of it standing. Yeah, it was maybe six to eight feet before it it started to branch out. But even those were pretty big. Right. Um, those were a good foot and a half. Oh wow. Those branches off. So I there's potential there too, I think. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

So yeah, you've you've got a tree that I think would qualify for this. So usually what they look for is like how much is the board foot able to sustain. Sorry, I looked away. How much, how much board foot can you get out of it to justify the cost of all the machinery to do it, right? And so there's a couple of ways that it works. One is that you haul it somewhere, but that means you've got to get it down and you've got to get it trimmed and you gotta get it on a trailer and get it somewhere. The other is that you the more common one is that you pay someone who's got a mill that either has a portable mill that comes to you or they have equipment that comes and gets it. So I'll give you a quick story. We had I had a friend where I worked that came to me and he said, Hey, I've got this hickory tree and it's big and beautiful. And he was saying, you know, it's it's like, you know, 36 inches, you know, for 20 feet. And he was like, Do you want it? It's gotta come down. And I'm like, uh maybe. And so there were like three or four of us that were woodworkers there, and we said, Well, why don't we look at actually hiring somebody to come out and do this? And we did, and and when I described the tree to him, based on what I had been told and the work, he estimated, you know, that he it would cost us about a buck fifty aboard foot to get to get the wood without the drying or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

And we thought, yeah, that's it's you know, same thing. It's like a tree. Great. This is it's almost free. We'll pay that.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Well, then he went to survey it and he called me up and he said, I don't know what he was thinking. This thing's about 16 inches round. It is pretty tall. He said, But to be honest with you, it's not going to be worth it to you because what it'll end up being then, because my costs are the same. I have to get the the the skid loader, I have to get it there, I have to get it to the mill, I have to cut it. So that all the labor is the same, no matter what size the tree is, which means now you're probably paying nine to ten dollars a board foot. Uh, and for hickory, that's not that's just not worth it, unless there's something special about that tree. And that's where I pivot a little bit, is that sometimes there's a tree that just means something to you. It's the tree your crit, your kids, you know, had the the swing on that they, you know, or it was a tree that you grew up playing around, or you know, something one of the people that I learned from was a woodworker in Utah, and they had a big storm that came through, and a big oak tree at the statehouse came down.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

And his wife was the governor's executive assistant. And the governor was like, Hey, would your husband make a desk out of this tree? And so he he did, it would cost a lot of money to get harvested, and but he made he made a desk. And that's that's an area where it doesn't really matter what the wood cost because it has a meaning. That tree was one of the oldest trees at the Capitol, and and so there's always that aspect of it, as in everything that we do is kind of woodworkers. So yeah, it starts to be a judgment call of what it's gonna be. And you know, and it's like all things, some millers are cheaper than others, some some do a better job than others. I think as woodworkers, we're usually lucky we don't we're not really trying to get the big timbers out of them, so it you get a little bit more usage out of it. Oh, yeah. But yeah, it's it's a dilemma. And I would say your first inclination is right that most of the time our backyard trees probably just aren't worth it. If you pay, let's say you pay an arborist to come get it, and then you're gonna pay them, you know, a thousand dollars to take the tree out, you may have to pay a miller, you know, the same or twice as much to come mill it for you. And now you've got to store it, you've got to dry it, you've got to do all of that. So uh it's it's a coin toss. And I would say the very first thing is is is is is there a sentimental value of it, and is it is does that make it worth it or not? Then do you have any questions on that? I keep I'm just talking. Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

So

Alaskan mill milling at home

SPEAKER_00 18:43

what I've kind of looked at, and I might be jumping ahead, are like Alaskan mills, I believe they're called. Yeah. Of course, going down it. Yeah, keep going. Doing it myself. Of I mean that honestly, it's kind of why I got into woodworking in the first place, is I can just make this myself. It'll be easy, I said with a grin. And I've seen like Alaskan mills where you get a chainsaw and uh the whatever box kind of thing, and you just go through and cut. Yep. And so I'm that's my most likely course of action, I think.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Oh yeah. Now you now you hit it because now it's now it becomes very economical. It's all about sweat equity at that point. Oh yeah. Yeah, so for people that don't know, an Alaskan mill is basically an attachment that attaches to a chainsaw. Now, the thing about that is is that it your chainsaw has to be as long as your tree is your log is wide. But it's just an attachment that kind of puts a what would you call it, like a rack, you know, adjustable rack that goes anywhere from like an inch to six inches. And usually you take uh an old ladder and you screw it to the top of the tree, that be that becomes your flat. You take your first one off, and then the flat that you just made becomes the next layer, and you just keep going down an inch or two inches, whatever you do. And yeah, then it's almost free wood. Yep. Almost because Alaska Mill, I think, is relatively cheap. Yeah, it seemed realistic. Yeah, the chainsaw, you know, depending on what you get, and I would recommend getting a decent one. It's also a good opportunity to get a good decent chainsaw. That might cost you a little bit of money, but we're still talking 500 bucks maybe max if you if you've spurred splurged on it. So then it becomes, like I said, sweat equity because you've got to push that saw through everyone. And it they make it look so easy on YouTube. Always. And I think it is. I mean, I do I honestly think that it can, it it is if your blade's good and sharp, if you're you know, if you're taking the time to sharpen between cuts. And it's nice too, like if it's in your backyard where once you get all the other crap away, right? It's something you could do one a night or something, right? Yeah. You don't have to bust it all out. And it's it's not like it's a complex system to set up and take down. So yeah, I think you're onto something there. I think that becomes that becomes a very unique proposition, then. Yeah. And I'm I bet like maybe even here at the joinery, you you could probably there's a lot of people that have Alaska Mills that tried it and then don't use it or had that one tree and don't don't need it anymore. Um, but they're not that expensive to begin with. So but sometimes with that you can get some help. Oh yeah. Yeah. So and you know, again, being a member of a shared shop, whether you want this or not, there's a lot of people that would like to experience that for themselves, right? And you might you might be able to tom Sawyer some people into

Benefits of using your own wood

SPEAKER_01 21:46

into to get in the tree split for you. Well, let's talk about the other benefits of of using your own wood. Do you, you know, what's what comes to mind when you think about that?

SPEAKER_00 21:58

The the The learning experience is probably number one, the getting creative with it. Of especially with like the smaller parts where it's to me it feels like there's enough wood here to get a project out of, but not necessarily enough to mill. What can I do for little boards? And a lot of carving, even getting into like power carving of something bigger. My friend's neighbor, they have a new neighbor, and I saw something they brought in were these little like maybe two and a half foot tall tiki head, like outdoor little table kind of things. And it was like, oh, that I could do that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Well, yeah, and it's it's liberating because it didn't cost you anything. So you're just like if you ruined it, and it's not gonna be ruined, you're just gonna make it smaller.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Yeah, I think that's great. I think you know air-dried natural wood has a color and look to it that kiln dried wood doesn't have. So even if you did make little bookshelves out of it or things like that, if you play you could play around as you're milling it with quarter sawing it, okay, which is a technique all on its own and kind of makes it a little easier for an Alaska saw because you're only usually cutting, you know, half of it at a time, which means you don't have to have as big of a saw. But you know, this table that we're sitting at, we've mentioned it a couple times. This is a walnut table. It's got a very curious figure to it, is not typically something if I went to a lumber yard, I would not necessarily buy these boards because they look janky. And I mean that in the most beautiful way. Oh, yeah. But as a as a woodworker, we're always looking for that straight grain. Is it gonna cut easy? Is it and when it's free wood, you don't worry about that as much. Exactly. And but the the if you call it a downside, I think on this table I turned it into an upside. Is air-dried wood moves more than kiln dried wood because the kiln drying process hardens the lignant in the wood. It still moves. We talk about that and preach about that all the time. Wood is always gonna move. My famous saying of wood will do what wood wants to do is very true. Even more so with air-dried. I'm gonna say un because usually when we do it ourselves, it's like uncurated, right? It's just we pack we stack it somewhere, we sticker it, maybe we put a cover over it and we just let it sit.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Forget about it for a couple years. Exactly. And they usually say a year per inch of thickness of it. And so this wood that we made this table out of was about an inch thick, most of it. Some of it I've got lower in the feet are, you know, were two-inch boards. But I had it, I had it drying out in my shop for, you know, probably five, six years before I got up the nerve to use any of it for anything. I will say the joinery's held together very, very well, but the table has split in multiple locations. And so I took it back out into the shop and put the little bowtie things in it to hold the splits from going further and made it and kind of accentuated the the cracks. It's got a beautiful burl to it. And it also, it's kind of potato chipped. So if you're looking for dead flat, this is not your table for you. But again, I think it gives it that character, and I like that character. And that's that comes this character, this table is there because of the because of the air-dried and the roughness of the wood, right? This log at a lumber yard would have been scrapped, would have been made in the fire firewood, right? And that's that's the benefit. And so if you like that character and if you're willing to deal with it, and if you're gonna do smaller projects, then it's it's perfect for that. And you cannot beat the look of it. Oh, for sure. And and it finishes well, you know, all air-dried stuff finishes well, it glues well, it works well. It's you know, we talk about the reason why we really like cherry is because it machines well. Just about any air-dried wood is gonna machine well as well. It just has that it has that texture to it. It's the hardness of that lignant, right? And when they shock it with the heat, that hardens up. That's part of the reason why they do it. And you don't get that in the air-dried, it dries naturally, it still hardens, but it's not it's not like a crispy.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Okay, yeah, the crispy is uh sounds like a good really good analogy there of it just yeah, I'm like tensing up almost is how it how it works in my mind. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

So yeah, I man, we it's funny because when we started talking about this, I was like, oh man, I've got to dissuade him from using this thing. I think I think if you end up doing the Alaskan mill, which I totally forgot about, that's the way to go. That's gonna be awesome and it's gonna give you wood to play with. Oh, yeah. And wood that's got a story, which is the other thing is tables, chairs, shelves that have stories are amazing. And that's one way we get it.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

So and turning.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

I'm oh turning.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

I have heard great things on taking like just not very good wood and having it turn into turning projects. So I I'm looking forward to taking one of those classes here at at the journey coming up and seeing what kind of just crazy things I can do with that.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Oh, yeah. That's another whole new world of just fun and enjoyment. Yeah, well, you could get sucked in so badly on this, but well, good. Well, that's gonna give you some stories to tell from from now on. Okay.

Real take on epoxy

SPEAKER_01 27:40

That's gonna be big. All right, let's see if we can do this next part. We we are looking at kind of having a standard segment of this that we'll have to come up with a better name of. I don't know. We're right now I'm calling it the real take, which is you know, there's all these people on YouTube, other podcasts, this podcast probably in the future, articles. There's things that we see all the time as woodworkers that we're kind of like, does that work? Is that is that interesting? And so I wanted to take that as like, is this real or is it myth, or is it, you know, what's the deal with it? I guess the first thing we gotta do is think up what the first one is. Do you have any ideas?

SPEAKER_00 28:18

I you know, epoxy is kind of the first thing that comes to mind where you see all the like the big name YouTubers making all these crazy epoxy things and other people using it too. So how do I want to go with this? I haven't really seen it here. And I was curious of like how how what is a more realistic use of epoxy other than like the river style tables or having it be this major factor of the uh of the piece.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Well, one of the things is is again like this table we're sitting at now, I didn't use it, but a good use of epoxy would be to mix up some black and fill these cracks with it and then sand it back down again. It's gonna do a couple of things, it's gonna keep it from splitting more and it's gonna fill that in. One of the problems with this table is this was our dining room table for many, many years, and crumbs get in those cracks, and my wife always complained about it. And but so if you fill that with an epoxy or a brown epoxy or whatever, that's probably that is the use that I see here because there are people that are doing it. We've actually had some people do some smaller epoxy cutting boards as well. Epoxy is first of all, I the thing I gotta say is the YouTubers make it look so easy. Yeah, and like anything, because you're not seeing their outtakes, you're not seeing the mess ups, you're not seeing the explosions. Sometimes you do. I I really do enjoy the ones where they had the blowout on their form and the epoxy's all over their shop. And that's one of the reasons why I've tried to avoid it in those sizes. Now, you talked about turning, where I have used a lot of epoxy is I would cast my own pin blanks. Oh, cool. Because then you have kind of some more control over what you put in it. You can do things like buy old disc or you know, old um watches like Timex watches and take them apart and take the gears out of them and put them in the epoxy. And then when you turn it, you can kind of see the gears in the clear epoxy. You can put different types of coloring into them and do it. So there are there are some very cool things. And that's always worked out very well because they're very small batches. And I think that's that's where I would use it more. Or the other thing that I do see here is people going either using the laser, the CNC router, or maybe even hand routing, and they'll like, you know, I'll make it simple, they'll carve their name in a piece of wood and then pour epoxy in that to make it a different color. And that the that's all really, really easy. And that's where I always recommend people that want to do the the river tables is like start with something small, mix it up in small batches, experiment with it. I had a gentleman here that was doing it, did a CNC router thing, poured it in, let it dry for the 48 hours, came in and it was still tacky and a mess. And that happens when it's not mixed properly. Okay. So yeah, it's fun to play with. I have to admit, coming up with some of those cool colors is kind of neat and it it would be fun. I'm I'm actually kind of glad though we don't see more of it here because I I've seen and had some major blowouts when then you got epoxy all over your shop that it's really hard to get rid of at that point.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Yeah. Like then that's kind of the one of the positives of it is that it's hard to get rid of. Yep. When it works well. Yeah. It's a positive. When it doesn't work well, it's a pretty big negative.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Yeah, exactly. And you can you can buy little, you know, at your big box store, you can buy little tubes of that have the two chambers. Oh, mix like a five-minute epoxy. I see that a lot in here with people filling knot holes and things like that. I'm typically I'm a naturalist. We've talked about that before. I kind of like all the the weird stuff in it, so I don't fill them, but a lot of people really want to fill them and they do. And I have to say, it looks pretty good when they do. So yeah, that was a good one for off the top of your head. Epoxies, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

And I guess like just a little bit more on it is as a finish. Like, okay, because I've noticed it out at restaurants and whatnot. Uh-huh. As I get more, I'm like, oh, look at that wood, that's pretty cool. And then feeling it, it's like, oh, I bet that's I bet they finished that off with epoxy. So I I guess the question is, when is a good time to use epoxy as that that top layer, that finish versus like poly or blanking now on others? Like a monocode or something like that. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

You know, uh, I mean it's funny because I when you when you go buy it, it's often called bar top. Yeah. And that's what I would kind of say is if if you have a wet location, that's a good place to use it. If you want that high sheen, that that glossy and and depth, right? Okay. A field, because you're building up a layer of plastic on top of that. That's so we in our old house we built the bathroom cabinetry. And I didn't, we had we had bought glass bowls that sit on top of the countertop. Okay. And I we didn't want to use, you know, marble or anything like that. And I just wanted to use wood. So I used cherry, plywood, actually, and edge banded it. And then I used bar top on it, where I just, and bar top is if you have a nice clean environment, which I didn't necessarily did it outside, but if you have a nice clean environment, it's self-leveling. You pull it, it kind of rolls over the edges for you. The bottom looks you have to sand the bottom a little bit because you get these little drip points. Okay. But it it self-levels and it's really kind of nice. It's really easy to do. Then you just got to keep the leaves and bugs from you know dropping it if you're outside, or if you're inside, you gotta get the sawdust out of it. And it's actually probably one of the more simple epoxy things to do. Okay. Um, they've kind of got those kits down to a science. But yeah, I would say a wet location. You know, some people like it on their dining room tables. That's not my speed. I'd rather go with a natural oil finish. But yeah, legit like bar tops, tabletops, especially in like restaurants where you see it, you see it a lot there because it's gonna hold up to anything. Yeah, very durable things, high, high use kind of things. And oftentimes you can repolish them in the future if they've got a thick enough coat, you can repolish and get the scratches and things out of it. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Yeah, that was another good question.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Yeah, thank

Shop goals and sign-off

SPEAKER_00 34:37

you.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

All right. Well, I think we're doing good on time. So I think what we'll talk about now, what I want to do is like, what are we gonna do over the next few weeks to hold ourselves accountable to getting into the shop? And I think one of these times maybe that will be a topic about what keeps us from the shop because it's it's life in general for one, but it's just then there's also times I know I bet you're like me as well, where it's like I could go to the shop right now, but I like sitting here on my phone better. Yeah, yeah. Do you have anything in mind for the next two weeks? You well, you got carving probably you're gonna work.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

Yeah, carving most nights. I actually, when we were done recording here, I'm going to work on my garage and studying out the walls. So dealing with pine again. Yay. Pine is fine, but like the framing mindset is just so different from the I it is woodworking, but like the framing mindset is different from the like a more furniture mindset. There actually, I a project that I want to get done here in the next couple weeks is a headphone stand. So that is I'm committing to that here and now. But a headphone stand.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

Oh, that's right. Now we actually have to not just spit out ideas, we have to commit to it. That's gonna be the yeah. Well, what I should say is I need to get to work on the replacement dining room table because that is something that we need. And I will I will commit to ordering the wood for that. I'll I'll do that. The design is pretty much done. I'll commit to ordering the wood, but what would what I think what I'll actually commit to is I've been working on this George Washington tea table also for months and months and months, and it's so close to being done that I should I should try to make some headway on that table too. One of my goals that I'm actually setting is that I'm gonna kind of put some guardrails about my time here at the joinery and have certain days where I'm here for members and to get the paperwork and all that kind of fun stuff. And then I'm gonna have some days where it's just me coming in and working on stuff. And hopefully over the summer that can happen and and we'll see. We'll see. As I say here in Wisconsin, we'll see once. I don't know where that phrase came from, but okay. Yeah, it's a it's a I don't know. As a southerner, I don't have that. Yeah, we'll we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. All right. Well, that's it for today. Uh, if you enjoyed this podcast, look for some of our other old ones. And again, we are committing also to every two weeks putting out this. I think Thursdays are typically the days I try to put it out, so we'll shoot for that. If you can subscribe at all the places that you get your podcast, also check out the uh joinery.club website where we'll also have links to all the uh podcasts. We'll have any writings and also announcements about new classes and all that kind of fun stuff. And if you're in the neighborhood, remember that every second Saturday of the month from 11 until 2 is open house here to joinery. So you can walk in and see what we do here, even if you just want to snoop around and see. And maybe you'll meet uh Alex and I in the process. We'll see. So enjoy your week, get out in the shop, make something.