Woodworking

When I was a kid, my younger broth­er, Dave, and I would rou­tine­ly watch Norm Abram build hous­es and projects on This Old House and The New Yan­kee Work­shop. Our dad prob­a­bly was­n’t (isn’t) the hand­i­est guy with wood­work­ing tools, but he could cer­tain­ly build some small projects. But wood­work­ing was­n’t a big hob­by around our house as kids. There was just some­thing about Abram’s no-non­sense deliv­ery that appealed to us. Dave and I joked all the time about “cut­ting a dado” even though we real­ly had no clear idea what that was.

As I got old­er, I got into mak­ing things around the house. I built a work­bench in our old base­ment in Rich­mond and did a lot projects around the house there. My old­er broth­er, Stephen, and I even got back in sol­der­ing when we had to fix my old wash­ing machine. When we moved into our cur­rent house here in Ten­nessee, Dave came over and we built a work­bench in my garage.

I also got into watch­ing the DIY net­work, as they had all sorts of low-bud­get (but great) shows on how to use tools and build projects. Over time, though, the shows got replaced with less infor­ma­tion­al and more “real­i­ty tele­vi­sion” style shows. Some of those are ok, but I’m far more inter­est­ed in learn­ing how to actu­al­ly builds some­thing in my shop than watch­ing a Mega Deck get built. There are very few, if any, infor­ma­tion­al shows left on DIY, HGTV, etc.

How­ev­er, there are plen­ty of great builders who teach you on YouTube. My nephew Kei­th, who recent­ly moved to Nashville and brought all his wood­work­ing equip­ment with him, got me watch­ing Steve Ram­sey’s chan­nel Wood­work­ing for Mere Mor­tals. I also found Bob Claget­t’s chan­nel I Like to Make Stuff because of some of his zany projects (like the world’s largest water pis­tol). There are many oth­ers who I’ve also found awe­some to watch: April Wilk­er­son (Wilk­er Do’s), David Pic­ci­u­to (Make Some­thing), and Jay Bates (Jay’s Cus­tom Cre­ations) are some of my favorites.

So, Norm Abram is long-since retired (They New Yan­kee Work­sop went off the air nine years ago), but there are loads of no-nosense mak­ers and wood­work­ers who have great pro­gram­ming avail­able to teach you how to make loads of great projects, no mat­ter your lev­el of experience.