WWGOA LIVE! November 2018

Oh. All right, I think we're here, man. Oh, this is it? I think, I don't know. Okay. It's always a little nebulous. Sam does a great job of running the boards and Sam just texted me that we're live, so that's the highly technical-- So apparently, we're live. Yeah, yeah, so if you haven't already noticed, we're not in my shop tonight, we're in Matt's shop and we're gonna jump into this in just a second. As always, I'm gonna start out by thanking Titebond, who sponsors our live events and underwrites 'em. Look at you! Very good. To keep these events free for you. And now that I was gonna introduce you, you're wandering around. Oh, I we're putting up, you know, your sponsor's stuff. All right, very nice. I'm a team player! Team player, great job. So Matt and I live, I don't know, an hour apart. And Matt, why don't you get a little Matt background. A little Mattground about yourself. Mattground? Yeah. That's a thing now? Now it is, I just made it a thing. Yup, I'm Matt Cremona. I make woodworking videos here in a two car garage workshop. I have been working for about 10 years, kind of pursuing, I guess, lovely fine furniture. That kind of stuff, I really enjoyed the challenge. I like more interesting, joinery situations and I like to use more... different woods, I guess? Things you don't normally see, like that you probably wouldn't go down to the lumberyard and buy a lot of things that had a lot of distress or maybe, some kind of weird figure or some knots here and there. I enjoy incorporating that into my furniture as opposed to-- You're not considering a defect to feature ir. Yes, I praise the defects. The defects, I like a lot, so that's kinda my style as far as the furniture making goes. And the other thing that I do a lot of is making it my own lumber. So all of the furnitures that I make, they'll all come from the trees that I've harvested myself. And a lot of it's from the Minneapolis/St. Paul/Metro area. A lot of newer trees, urban lumber, things like that. Have it all here in my backyard and dry it and bring it here and make it a piece of furniture. So well first, do this before I forget. So if people wanna see her videos, your web page is? Mattcremona.com. And your YouTube channel? Matt Cremona, what is it? Youtube.com/mcremona, I think, but you can just-- But if you google Matt Cremona, not google, if you search YouTube, Matt Cremona-- Yeah. They'll find your stuff. Well the website has a link to the YouTube channel there and my social media's there, as well. Okay, and Instagram, Matt Cremona? Yup, and Facebook and Twitter. So lots of places to-- Pinterest. If you Google Matt Cremona, it's spelled right there, you will find Matt in a variety of places. So then, with the furniture and the milling, is it safe to say, is it every stick of furniture you build comes out of stuff you cut? Have you ever in your life bought a sheet of plywood with money? I did, when I built L-shaped edge table over there. I bought-- The live edge saw, table saw, L-shaped table that's over there. Beautiful live edge slab table saw. Yeah, that was the last time. That was in spring, yeah, it was like in April. That was the first I had bought plywood in like, I don't know, four years maybe. So primarily, the stuff, there's a beautiful piece of walnut furniture on the other side of the shot, and that whole piece is from stuff that you cut, right? That is from Matonka. Nice, which is suburb not too far from where we are here. Yes, the drawers, all of it's fir and spruce. Came from my next door neighbor's front yard. Wow. So it's traveled pretty far to be here. So in addition to . "In addition to Matt bein' a cut up," is what I was gonna say, I was trying to make a joke there and my brain wasn't spinning fast enough. In addition to him cutting his own stuff, he built his own sawmill, so-- I did that, yeah. One of the doors we should open up here, is this is a great opportunity af you've got questions about milling lumber, drying lumber. Unfortunately, Matt's backyard is too dark this time of year for us to shoot outside, and it's also 21 degrees and snowing, so it'd be a really bad show for you folks. But there are stickered stacks everywhere. It's really amazing, so great opportunity to ask Matt about any wood questions you have. Let me do one other promotional type thing. Well a couple of things. One, if you're watching on YouTube, keep in mind that I don't monitor those questions 'cause it's too hard to go back and forth all the time from one. Could you bring one of those panel pieces, as well? They're amazing. So if you're watching on YouTube and you wanna post a question, go to wwgoa.com and to the live video drop down menu, and you'll find November there and post your question there. We won't see your questions on the YouTube. The other thing on the goa.com page, the landing page where you're watching, toward the bottom, there is a thing that says handmade for the holidays. We've isolated a bunch of gift ideas that we think you might wanna make in your shop. And we've got those as downloadable plans that you can grab. So if you scroll down and oddly enough, click where it says download now, you can download those plans and get 'em for yourself. And we've got some questions queued up here already. But what a great, what an amazing piece of wood if I can get this without much lens flare here. So fill us in on this one. Crotch walnut, right? Double crotch. And this is gonna end up being the panel. Is it a credenza, is that what you're calling it? A piece of furniture, or what do you-- I call it a sideboard. But a credenza, buffet. A cyborg? Doesn't look like a robot at all. Cyborg. Oh sideboard, okay, I get. I got your funny joke. Thanks for calling it funny, don't encourage me. It's a wide piece of furniture, it's a cabinet. Two doors or two sets of doors and some drawers on top. Its intention is to go in the dining room, you store your tablecloths and your-- You know, your China, things like that. And there's a whole set of these door panels. They're absolutely beautiful. They're all sequential, so the case side, the two case sides and the four doors are all sequential from this section of the tree. So one of the cool things about cutting the wood yourself, is you can keep it sequenced couple like that. So when you're ready to use it, you know, if you're familiar with book matching on a really big scale, you can do this on a saw mill where when we take out this slab and the next one and the next one, every one of those pieces is book matched butt matched to the one lane below it or above it, so cool feature. Oops. Come on. Breakin' stuff. Can we mention the chainsaw of all chainsaws here? I'm guessing this is not the saw that you would take to the neighbor's yard to cut down the spruce tree. I mean, you could if they had a big one. If there were eight of us. And you hold that end, please. It's got the knobs for the second handle, so I can doit for you. This is off your chain saw mill, right? Yup, this was my chainsaw mill chainsaw for a little while. And you're setting the bar pretty high here. How long has the bar on this saw? This one's five and a half feet. Five and a half feet, all right. So let's jump in 'cause there aren't actually a boatload of questions here. All right, , one says, "Wife loves tables with epoxy centers." Okay. "Done some smaller proxy projects. Think I'm ready to step up my game. I have a log." This is your part of the question. "I have a log." "That came out of a river. About 12 inches in diameter, five to six feet long." About as long as that bar. "Not sure how long it was floating, but was dripping wet with no bark on it. I painted the ends, it's been air drying all summer." So in log form, I think that's probably an important part, "With only slight checking so far. It appears to be highly figured maple. It did some research, I believe it's silver maple," which is what we call soft maple, right? It's one of the soft maples, yup. "I've got a 14 inch bandsaw with a five-inch riser." So I think that's-- Like 11 inches then? Probably, most risers are six inch on a 14 saw, but okay. "I think this would be too much for my saw to handle. Considering slamming it out with my chainsaw or hauling it to a nearby mill and paying to have it cut. Thinking two slabs from either side of the pith." So let's come back to that. "Making a nearly bookmatch coffee table, leaving the debarred light edges. Any tips or suggestions?" So I wanna touch on that pith part. Okay. So when you're milling, do you use the pith, do you cut around the pith, what happens there? It depends what you're trying to do. I guess if you're trying to get one board that's gonna stay connected and not split on you, you wanna remove the pith. So the best way to do it is to align your cuts, so as you're coming through, your curve ends up straight down the pith and you actually cut the pith out and turn it into sawdust. So you're cutting right smack through the center of the log. Yeah, smack through the center. So the pith becomes sawdust, it becomes a waste. And then, you don't have to worry about the pith being in there, because he pith is the most unstable part of the tree. Just because of the way the tree dries, it's gonna crack or split along that longitudinal axis of the pith. So depending on how much you care, I guess, and what the slab is gonna become. In this case, you're looking for a whole tabletop. So you don't want the board to split. And a pretty small log too. Yeah. 12 inch log. On the bigger stuff, I kind of honestly, don't really care a whole lot because a lot of the times, even if the pits is still in there and you get that longitudinal split down the middle, because that board came from the center of the log, you essentially get two quarter sawed boards out of it. Self has splits later on, you just cut it in half and whatever or you can cut this pith out before it dries. And you have two boards that are drawing independently, or is it even connected? Chances are it's gonna split straight down the middle anyway, and you can just connect them later on. Just depends on how you handle materials. So for this one, 12 inch log. So I'm gonna say, I mean, a 12 inch log, six feet long, I know when I do logs when I'm on the bandsaw, I'll do a 12 inch log, but about a three footer is about as much as I can arm wrestle out. It's not that light, no. Yeah. So yeah, I don't think a bandsaw is the answer. I think getting it professionally cut is a good way to go. And then I'm gonna read this again. "Two slabs from either side of the pith." So I guess he didn't say how thick he wants to cut him, but working over under on the pith, two slabs from there, nearly bookmatched. All right, so he said, "Are there any other tips?" I feel like, I mean it's laying there wet now, but he needs to cut this, right? Yeah, you need to cut it and get it drying. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can use it. It's not gonna dry in log form like that. And if it does, way more propensity for check-ends. Absolutely. As a full round. And actual splits, you'll actually see splits. Instead of checks on the ends, you'll see splits along the whole length of the log, as well. As that log is trying to dry and shrinken, it basically self-destructs. So get the log cut as fast as you can. And then, you've got a lot of stuff, air drying out here. He doesn't say anything about the drying process, but what do you allow for air drying in this part of the world? Depends how fast they wanna go. So if I wanna kinda speed things up, and how thick it is gonna be, I guess. So for a four quarter lumber or one inch thick lumber that I wanna kind of get dried and get done with, I can just bring that right inside. I do a lot of my file drying inside to get down to final moisture content. So I can take wet lumber from the sawmill at one inch thick and bring it inside, and I try and get a targeted to three to four months of drying time inside to probably get it fully dry. Oh, that's pretty fast. I really try hard to slow it down too because otherwise, it drives too fast inside. You could probably dry it like two months, but then, it's way too brittle and you get a lot more drying stress that way. So I find three or four months-- You have drying stress or the wood has drying stress? Both of them. Or both? When it's both, it's really bad. I have so much time invested in it at that point, I'm like . And air dry final moisture content, you think could be what? Indoors, so whatever your indoor equilibrium is. That's the nice thing about drawing inside, is your furniture you make is gonna go back into the house. So it's gonna come to whatever the equilibrium moisture content of your house is. If you take your lumber and you stick it in your house to dry and you wait for it to be fully dry in your house, it's at equilibrium with whatever your furniture is gonna be when it's done anyway. So basically, your recommendation is people who wanna solder on wood should turn their living room into an air drying environment. Hey, I know a few people who have done that and it is quite funny looking and it makes me proud. All right, Granville asks, "What's a good way to get glue into eighth inch finger joints for glue up?" Q-tip, popsicle stick? I don't do many finger joints. I don't know, acid brush? Acid brush would probably get it. When I'm doing fine stuff with a acid brush or a flux brush, which everybody sells now as glue brushes. But if you take a pair of scissors, you can cut the end. You don't have to keep them in the shape they are and you could make it into more of a chisel tip and that'll let you get into finer spots. So that might be a solution for that. Here's another question. How to sharpen a wood scraper. "I can't get a bird no matter how hard I try. It seems that the steel is too hard." Are you much of a scraper guy? I have a variety of scrapers. And you use a burnisher to put your edge on? I do. The scraper is one of those really weird, like the day you figure out how to get the burr on there in the way that works for you, it'll be the happiest day of your life and you'll live forever in bliss. That's the biggest problem, I think, with the scrapers is that you gotta try a lot of different techniques. And a lot of times, what I've found, honestly, was watching people try and honestly struggle to sharpen it is they're applying too much pressure with the burnisher and they're completely rolling the edge over. Yeah, I agree. So you're not actually gonna get a cutting hook. You're just rolling. If you think of the burr coming off the end. Oh, you have this piece of paper here. Here, let me move this big honking saw that you insisted on putting on the work floor. It was on the floor, you wanted to put it up there. You needed more props. All right, can you see yourself? Do I need to Vanna White for you here? Hey, can you? Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. So let's say looking at a scraper from the end. Let me grab one here. So let's say this is this view of the scraper from the end. So as your first prep thing and getting the edges actually squared up and polished. And yeah, you can see that. And then, the next thing you'd be doing is, kind of, mushing the corners over to give yourself some kind of thing. I don't know, this drawing is terrible, but something like that. The corners are kind of mushed over. That's your first thing. That's when you run the burnisher across your square. And the next step after that is to angle it and then, roll that burr over. So much you could be doing on the end is something like that where your hook angle is so far down that in order for that hook to actually cut the wood, the scraper needs to be laying down flat against the wood and pulled this way. You're never gonna get an actual cut from that. So what you're looking for for the burring to be is something more like that. So that you can actually get a hook. Otherwise, you roll this thing over with too much pressure, it's rolling it back into itself and-- So there's a burr, it just can't cut. Yeah 'cause the hook, the actual end of the burr, has rolled back up and is touching the body of the scraper again. So for me, the biggest pivotal moment was when I figured out that I need almost no pressure on the burnisher to put an actual hook on here, as opposed to really bearing down on that thing and rolling that thing as far and as hard as possible. And I'm gonna say, 'cause he says, or Grandville, he or she says, "It seems that the steel is too hard." So you're probably onto something here 'cause that would give the feeling that I can't generate a burr. Yeah. Because the steel's too hard. And actually, you are generating a burr. It's just not a burr that you can use. Too big. So I tell people, if your scraper is in a vice and this is zero, you only need to come down a couple of degrees, but no more than five. 'Cause like Matt said too, the more aggressive you get this way, you have to tilt that scraper so far to get it cut, it's impossible to use. All right. Don't give up, keep trying. It's a great tool to master and we've got look on. So when you're here on wwgoa.com or you are now watching us, upper right hand corner, there's a search window. And I know that I've done a couple videos and/or articles on how to sharpen a scraper. So that information is on there. Do you have anything, a technique based on your-- Yup, I have a video on sharpening rectangular scrapers, as well as sharping whatever, like-- Goosenecks? Goosenecks and curves, things that are rectangular. Okay, that'll be good 'cause I don't have any on the curved ones 'cause that's above my pay grade. I don't know how to help. "Any Minnesota meetups plan during your stay?" Well, this isn't really a stay. We're both here. We both live here, but there's the one at Matt Collins. Yeah, that's in what, two weeks? The 17th, yeah I thought I was gonna be out of town, but I'm not. Okay. So if you're on Instagram, Matt Collins designs. Well no, who actually posted about that though was not Matt, but someone else. I follow too many people. Was it Jake? Maybe JaKe of all Trades? Yeah, so he probably is. So do two things. On Instagram, look for Matt Collins Designs. Matthew, Matthew Collins Designs. Matthew Collins Designs. Yeah. Or Jake of all Trades. Some numbers. And it's January 17th is the date at Matt Collins' place. In November. Or November 17th at Matt Collins' place, and he's kinda close to Lakeville, sort of, Earth. He's in like Northfield/Castle Rock area. All right, so yes is the answer. Around the 17th of November. John says, "When gluing up panels using three clamps, is there a proper order in tightening the clamps?" I don't know. I usually do the center one first. Yeah, I guess I don't really think about it like this. Because then, I can jig jag with the ends as I'm tightening them, where I feel like if I start on the outside and come in, then I have to shift those boards a little to get 'em aligned. It's impossible. But if I started in the middle, I can align those and then work to my right, get alignment, tighten. Work to my right, alignment, tighten. Do you care, does that make sense? Yeah, I mean I guess I never thought about it. I just, whatever I'm closest to, at the time, is the one I started with. 'Kay. Two distinctly different answers. Start it started in the middle is the right one. No, I don't know. If I happen to be standing in the middle at that time, . Then it's the right one. Yes. Okay. So my answer is start in the center, work your way up. "I have a chance to get reclaimed eight by eight beams from a 1906 barn. The north side of sags, two feet on one end, but the beams appear to be fine. I'm taking the beams and 50% of the siding. Any idea of projects I can do? With a beam? You can always resaw it. Yeah. And you can make anything you can make with smaller stuff or you can do, I don't know, big stuff. You can do timber frame style furniture, like a bed. Arm table, farmstead table. Yeah. Yeah, big ol' famstead table base kind of thing. If you have enough of the beam, you can use some for the base and then resaw some for the top, for instance. That would be cool. Or if you wanted to, 'cause it's eight by eight, you could resaw it into four by fours and you did that way, too. So you don't have like an eight by eight layer. You got a four by four layer. Yeah, that'd be a pretty massive one. You could put it one the levee and make a cool pedestal or something like that. Like a trestle table or-- This is a great thing for Pinterest and just scrolling through other people's ideas and so as a search word, you could use barn board furniture, barn board projects, and look for some inspiration that way. You knoon't try to reinvent the wheel. I'm big on stealing, borrowing ideas whenever I can. So yeah, I'd do a little googling around. How long is the chainsaw? Well, I think we hit that five foot, no, five and a half foot bar. Five and a half foot bar. So with the power head on there, it's like seven feet long. That is a large and in charge chainsaw. Okay, question for you. "Does it matter what would I use for stickers? Some seem to stain the slab," which I'm gonna jump right in here and say when that happens, you get sticker shock. You do. All right. You are the master of bad jokes. Yes, that's true. So we're about to sticker our lumber. What's the best stuff to use for stickering? The absolute best is to use a species that you cut. So let's jump back, Jack. And just for people who don't know what stickers, do you wanna describe it, or do you wanna sketch it? I can describe it. Okay. So when you have a bunch of boards you sawed, you don't wanna be touching together, so like an actually air dry. Get some airflow in there, get the moisture out of there. So you want to be spaced apart. At a certain distance, the stickers are just a little boars that are run perpendicular to the length of the boards to kind of just create a little sandwich, a little lasagna kinda thing and it gives you some airflow. So airflow. Yup. All right, so best choice of sticker material is whatever you're cutting. Yeah, well the best material, like an absolute guarantee is to use whatever species you're stickering. So whatever boards you had just cut, same species, that's the best way to go. But honestly, I have never had a problem mixing species or mixing things around. I've never had one species stay in another one. And I think the biggest thing, at least from my experience, is the stickers need to come from dried stock. Oh, that's a great point. That way, if you're using wet lumber, touching wet lumber is just a good way for more moisture to just be stuck in there, more mold to develop. Just things can kinda stain because there's no way for the airflow to get out, or for the moisture to get out. But if you're using stuff has been dried, touching the wet lumber, these stickers are actually pulling moisture from the slab that the lumber is touching, helping to dry the little areas. Makes sense. More chance for a chemical reaction if the sticker is still wet. So then for you on your stickers, is it those first couple of slabs that come off, that are slab wood, are gonna get turned into stickers? I have a lot of 'em. They came from like if you're cutting, I don't know, like a weird log and you had some trimming cuts and some boards aren't full length, then maybe they dried weird, a lot of mine honestly came from the years when I was selling lot of lumber. And he stuff that got culled through and no one bought, they'd either get into cutting boards here in my shop, or I cut up into stickers. So I have a lot, most of my stickers are cherry because I had a lot of boards that just got kinda weird and it was like the last board off the middle that was cut under four quarters. So like seven eights or something. Nobody wanted to buy it. It had a split in the middle, no one wanted it. So then experientially, it's culled, information that for you, dried cherry stickers have, to date, not produced sticker stain. That is true. On any, you've got a variety. And I have other ones too, I have white oak stickers, I have cotton wood stickers, I've got got poplar stickers. I have pretty much a variety, all different kinds of species and just whatever I grab, is the one that goes on that board. 'Kay. I thought I hit something else here, but I lost it. Okay. "If you have a live edge slab, should you remove the bark or can you use epoxy or goose to keep it on?" That's pretty controversial. Yeah. I mean my leaning is when I'm doing a live edge thingy and it's got bark on it, I kinda pick at it a little bit. And if it starts to come off, then if it feels like it's fixing to come off, then I take it off. And this is at a point where it's dry. And if it's bone dry, so air dried to whatever, 12%, if it's dry at that point and the bark is still well stuck on, it's probably gonna stay on. Yes, no, maybe? That was exactly what I was gonna say. I thought you were gonna have some crazy answer like, "I always take the bark off, I hate it!" Or something. 16 penny nail. Right through the bar into the edge, it's gonna stay on. This is that good, though. If the bark is ridiculously attached and it's not going anywhere, it's not gonna come off if it's been dried like that already. I have furniture that I did that on and so many people are like, "Oh, it's gonna fall off." Still on there, still perfect, hasn't changed. But if there's a separation between the wood and a bark, then you gotta start worrying. So what about then if it's just a little punky in one spot and I've never done this, but I know people talk about it. You think you can effectively glue the bark back on if it's kinda starting to come off? Yeah, I've done that. I mean, I guess you're gluing wood, so-- I have done that. Usually, I'd used epoxy since it'll be gap fillings as well. You don't have to worry about any kinda squeeze out stain or whatever. So if you're gonna do that, epoky would be a better choice than yellow glue. Yeah. We're halfway through, so let's hit a couple things here. That's fast. Yeah. That was crazy fast. If you're watching on YouTube, don't post your questions there. 'Cause I don't monitor YouTube. I only monitor questions on wwgoa.com. So if you're on YouTube and you have a question, go to wwgoa.com and look for the lives, drop down menu, look for November, post your question. Second, thanks to Titebond for sponsoring this and keeping it free. Fourth, just seeing who's paying attention. If you go right under where the questions are being posted, there's an opportunity there. You can download some free plans. Right where it says download now, if you click on that, you'll get the plans. It's our gift to you, I guess, for Christmas. We've got some plans isolated there to help you make gifts for the holidays. You wanna throw anything? Oh, let's do a shameless, you do a shameless promotion. For what? Yourself. I am me, that is me, you can find me. Mattcremona.com. Lots of very cool stuff on Matt's website, mattcremona.com. What kind of plans do you guys have in that kit package? Oh, there's a pizza peel. That would be fun. I didn't know there was gonna be a test. So I didn't study. A foosball table. Just make it up and see if anybody checks. A tabletop foosball table. I think I did all of them, but I can't remember all of them. Over the years, it's developed over the years. So I don't remember 'em. A lot of good ones, though. Russell says, "Hello from Emily, Minnesota." It's snowing there and 17 degrees. Oh, and Russell makes fishing rod handles, I've seen them. They're really beautiful. Oh, that's cool. So he's busy turning those. All right, here's a great question. Best application for quarter sawn and plain sawn boards. Well, I don't know, I guess I can think of a few best. So give us a hit on quarter sawn versus plain sawn. Advantages quarter sawn offers. A lot of people will tell you it's the stability of the quarter sawn grade orientation. But in reality, you're plains on lumber, it tends to be just as stable if it's dried well, I guess. So for me, quarter sawn versus plain sawn is more a visual thing than a structural thing, and it depends on the species. You're gonna get different looks. So of course the oak's the most common quarter sawn, or by as popular I guess, quarter sawn. You have a lot of grey fleck. All species have grey fleck, but oak has that really huge, giant, prevalent gray fleck. Giant one. Cherry has gray fleck, but it's like that big and looks kinda cool, so I do doors usually. Like on a cabin, I try to do some kinda straight grain. Quarter side, I think, looks pretty good on those. You gonna draw a picture? You keep talking. Okay. So usually, quarter sawn on the door is just because I like the look of that cleaner doorframe because I'm gonna put something crazy for the panel. And that's gonna be plain sawn and probably gonna be crotched or some kind of wood people would probably burned most of the time. So I want, I guess the most visual aspect to be the panel, and less about the doors. Look at you. All right, so a couple things. Is that a fingerprint? Yeah. He didn't know. You didn't know, there's gonna be a DNA test later. Oh, good. All right, plain sawn, quarter sawn. If you look at the end grain on plain sawn, which is most of the stuff you ended up running across, the annual rings are going this way across the end grain, and the reason I do this, is what Matt was just talking about. That translates into, typically, this big cathedral for a crown like that in the face of the piece. So in quarter sawn when you look at the end, and I always get quarter sawn and rift sawn mixed up. There's some angle here that is one and not the other. 60 and 90 is quarter sawn, I think and then? Between 60 and 90 is quarter sawn. Between 30 and 60 is rift? Basically, it's 45 or 90. They're very similar. Yeah. So quarter sawn and rift sawn, when the end grain looks like this, you have very straight grain up the things. So when I was running a commercial cabinet shop and we did every Banana Republic store in the country, they specke quarter sawn cherry. Everything in there had to be quarter sawn cherry, and it wasn't because of amazing flack or anything, 'cause you don't see it, but it was because when you cover the entire inside of a huge retail store with cherry, they didn't want these big wild plain patterns. They wanted really straight grain in all of the wood. And I'm the same way. I tend to use it more aesthetically than structurally where I wanna get rid of that. I don't wanna have the big plain grain. "How do you weight the ends of your boards above the end stickers to stop twisting that oak wants to do? I was thinking six by sixes on the bottom and then, using D-rings there with truckers straps over two by fours on the top. That works, I've done that in the past. Depends on how big the boards are, how wide they are, how big your stack is, things like that. The more weight, the more pressure you can get on top of the stack to hold and force the boards to be flat, the better off you're gonna be. Drying lumber is kinda like steam bending. So if you put a board down on whatever surface you might put it on, it's gonna conform to whatever the geometry is of that thing that's underneath it. So if you have some kind of twist in your base, you're gonna get twisted lumber 'cause the lumber is gonna be held down and conform to that. And every layer in the lasagna. Yeah, we're gonna have a whole crazy thing. The same thing is kinda true too, the higher up in stack you get, the less weight there is on top of it because there's less wears above it. So adding some weight on top really helps to keep things pressed down, keep it in position. So that as it dries, it doesn't have a tendency to kind of do anything goofy. So for you, I mean, what's the width capacity again on your saw? You just told me and I-- six and a half feet. So you can conceivably cut a six and a half foot wide slab, now you've got these huge slabs stacked. Trucker straps for you, or cinder blocks on top? Or what's your most common weight? A second log would be the best way. That would work. Honestly, I use ratchet straps. Those work pretty well, you can ban the whole stack. I've done the beams with the straps on the ends. That works fine too. When you start getting into some really big stuff, you need a lot more weight and the thing with the straps is you have to be out there tightening them because-- 'Cause as the wood shrinks-- The wood will shrink and you'll lose pressure and you have to keep up with it, well at least for like the first six to eight months or so. But ideally, I think if you can get a thousand pounds on top of each sticker stack, that's kinda where you wanna be. Or more. That's a lot of weight. It's a ton for a two. Yeah. It's a ton of weight. All right. "How long do a couple of oak burls take to dry? They are less than 12 inch diameter and still attached to the trunk." Probably not gonna dry. No. Is the trunk still attached to the ground? Yeah, we don't know if it's still a tree, or if it's a log. I would cut into whatever blank size you wanna use them for and allow them to dry that way. 'Cause just like the first question we answered about the whole log, it's not gonna dry it as a whole burl like that. You really gonna slice it up into something first and then, let those pieces dry independently. Otherwise, you'll be waiting for like a decade. And then, "How long?" Long time if it's a 12 inch diameter. And like for me, if you're looking at bull stock here, I would turn that baby dripping wet green. I'd get it on the lathe fast as I could. And so then if somebody wanted to make something out of that, I would slice it into four quarters slabs or something, which you could probably do on a bandsaw to get it-- You can cut it into whatever you're planning to use it for, so if you wanna use it for, I don't know, turnings, you can do different size-- Different size fiddle blanks. If you wanndo veneer, you can do veneer. But don't cut it to veneer while it's green. Like cut it to-- I mean, you can do you gotta dry it specially 'cause it'll be so thin, it will potato chip on you. So you either cut it, let it potato chip and then, use a veneer softener to get it back in the flat. This is a whole 'nother thing. But basically, you cut your burl to whatever. What'd you wanna make out of the burl? All right, work towards that. So it's just like the log. Don't let it dry as a burl, don't let it dry as a log. Machine it close to what you wanna use it as and then, let it in stickered, still sticker it. "I have a few maple two-inch labs, about six feet long that are somewhat spongy in places." There's a couple typos, I think it says, "I'd like to keep that in the slab. How should I finish the slab?" So I think the real question is, we've got sponginess. How do we overcome punky spots in the wood? Problem that can be solved with a product. This is your friend, yeah. These guys are your friend. Different companies make them, but it's called a clear pantry and epoxy sealer. It's it's epoxy product, but it's like water. It has a viscosity of water, so it will absorb into anything that might be soft and it will restructure realize it, and it's basically a wood hardener. Like you might see that for like a route repair or whatever. So this works great. So the one is TotalBoat brand. This one is a no VOC. It's less viscus. I haven't actually tried it, I bought it to try it, but all of the feedback about us, it's nice because like it won't kill you, which is nice. But it's not as good as a penetrator. This stuff, it will kill you. Quickly. Only if you breathe it. Only if you breathe it for like two seconds, but it works amazingly well. So you kinda pick your poison there. So what do you think about on a real small scale, I've done this with CA glue. Yeah, same kinda thing. So depending on how big a punky spot you're talking about. I would assume for that you're talking about something a little bigger than that, I guess. So small scale, thin viscosity CA glue, cyanoacrylate. Big scale then. I mean, as a product, these are called what again? Penetrating apoxies. Okay. "I've just retired and will soon have the opportunity to get tons of trees that will be cut down to make room for a new housing plan." "Tons of trees." Ton, which is like one tree. Tons is one tree. By pure weight, I'm saying. Yes. "I'd like to start cutting my own lumber. As a novice with such an opportunity to get so many logs, do you think a Wood-Mizer LT 15 would be a good investment? Matt makes it look so easy to be a Sawyer." Tom Sawyer. "But I don't wanna get overwhelmed by my own delusions. Any suggestions?" So let's do a reality check. Just don't sweat the Wood-Mizer question yet. Just the reality of cutting all of your own lumber. Boatload of work? Easy peasy? Where does this fall? It's a lot of work. I mean, it's physically a lot of work. Even if you have the equipment to do it, you're still offloading boards. You're still moving things around, it's a lot of-- And trees are stupid heavy. They are. A two foot diameter 10 foot long cherry log is a couple thousand pounds, right? It would be about two and a half thousand pounds, I think? Somewhere around there. I mean, that's not a small amount of weight at all. So you have to deal with the fact that the logs are heavy, they're big. They can be difficult to move, especially if you're like me and you like things that are not cylindrical. You like weird limby things, which don't roll. So then, you have to go more creative with it, but it is, it's a lot of work. But if you enjoy doing outside, you enjoy a little bit of physical labor, that's why I do it. I absolutely love getting off my butt 'cause I sit around way too much. I think a lot of us do these days. A lot of people have desk jobs. At least when I started making my own lumber here in the yard, the reason I did it was because I sat at my desk for eight hours working for someone else. And then I'm like, "I wanna go outside, I wanna do something, I wanna move around and get some exercise," so I started chainsaw milling. Just to kind of scratch that itch, and it kinda grew from there, but it is. I don't wanna sugar coat it, it's a lot of work. Lot of work and then you're gonna wait for your lumber to dry. If you're air drying it, you're gonna wait to get access to the wood. So first answer is don't underestimate the amount of work it takes. I've got a chainsaw base sawmill, I've got a Logosol sawmill and I don't come anywhere near as much as Matt does. But I'll agree it's crazy rewarding to cut into a log and when you get those first couple slabs off of there and you start looking at grain. I've cut a lot of elm, which grows like crazy in Wisconsin and holy buckets, I had no idea it was such a beautiful-- Yeah, that was-- What an underused, underutilized wood, so that part is really cool. Do you wanna say anything about Wood-Mizer LT 15, or I don't know anything about it. Honestly, I think if you have a lot of trees and you're not really sure what you wanna do yet, hire someone to come in with a hydraulic portable mill. They'll make quick work of all the logs. You'll get a really good understanding of how much work is this gonna be, if it's something I really wanna do? Because the LT 15 is a manual mill, as well. So you'll be flipping logs, rolling 'em, getting 'em on there, manually. Yeah, I don't know, maybe you have a tractor or something to do a lot of work for you, but you will be a lot less productive than some with an actual production mill will have for you. So it might be advantageous to at least hire someone for the day, get through 20 logs or so. You get some lumber stacked, you get a really good understanding of how saw milling works with someone who is there that saws a lot. Heck, maybe they saws all. Yeah, maybe they saws all. Who knows? It really is on point today, just on point. Don't encourage me. I did a project where I turned, a friend of mine, tree service dropped off all these pine logs at my house. And the end goal was to floor the house. So pine logs became 4,000 board feet of planks, which became 2,500 square feet, talking to her flooring. But this does circle back to what Matt was saying, which is I couldn't believe how inexpensive it was to pay a sawyer to come to my house with a sawmill and cut 4,000 board feet of lumber. There's no way it would have been worth me messing with investing in a saw mill, so I like Matt's idea of dip your toe in the water by paying somebody else a little bit of money first and then, seeing what you got. Yeah, you'll learn a lot on that. Donny Carter says, "Howdy." 'Sup, Donny!? What's goin' on? And AJ is advocating the pizza peel, which is one of the gifts we've got available for you guys. "Looking at your Instagram feed, you cut some big logs. How often do you change or sharpen your saw blade?" For the bigger stuff, I'll put a new blade on for every large log 'cause the logs are more valuable than the blade and it's not worth it to me to run a blade that's potentially dull or dulling through a log, and have that blade wander and ruin that one cut. So I don't bother risking it. For me, blades inexpensive and consumable. There a consumable, just like sandpaper would be in the shop. And so I'm sorry, I wasn't listening, you sharpen them or you replace 'em. I'll send them off for sharpening when they're actually dull. For the big logs, I poured a fresh blade on for a big log. And then when I'm done down log, that blade still has life in it. It'll still cut your 12 inch log or 18 inch log just fine. I'd probably cut another four or 500 more feet of that. But when you're talking about cutting four or five feet wide, you need that blade to be absolutely perfect and pistine. Dead straight line from one side of the log to the other. You don't one of these things. You don't want some kinda weird thing going on like that. So on the smaller logs, it doesn't take as much, I don't know, precision I guess with the blade itself. They can be pulled through there. Even if the stent's not proper or anything, they'll still make that cut just fine. But for something that wide, it's very demanding on a blade. Okay. Russ says, "So like in that crotch panel, what do you do to allow movement in crutch pieces like that? How do you treat that?" So like the panel is X smaller than the frame. I treat it the same as any other piece of wood. So that is, I think, a 16th smaller than the frame right now 'cause we're in a transition period as far as most humid to most dry over the year. So that's 12 inches wide, so it'll probably move about, I don't know, 330 seconds or so. From here, it'll probably shrink 'cause we're getting dryer. It'll shrink a little more from here and then, it'll pop back out to probably a little bit bigger than this the summer. But the same, just because it's crotch-- So no special allowances just 'cause it's crotch. Nope. Fred MacIntyre says hi. 'Sup, Fred!? Hey, friend. How ya doin'? "One of my sons and one of my sons-in-laws bought a very old house in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. They tore it down to put up some family vacation homes. Tearing it down, they got hundreds of board feet of over 100 year old old growth pine. Actual one by 12 boards, six feet to 10 feet long. Took it back to Arizona where most of my kids live to sell." I think they're selling the wood, not the kids, but I'm-- not 100% sure. "Any advice for them in selling it?" I don't know, Craigslist? Craigslist's good, now they got the Facebook groups now, too, so that could be a good way to go. Find some wood workers that are interested in it. That's probably-- Hundreds of board feet. How are you gonna find some woodworkers that wanna buy it? It's like selling anything, find your target market. It's cool stuff. And there's a company near here that this is what they do for a living, is they tear down old buildings and then, they resell them. Very similar to what you're talking about here. That ponderosa pine, one by twelves is one of their most common items, beautiful stuff. And it's really cool. I've made a handful of projects with this. And at one point, we took one of the boards, we my kids and I, took one of the boards and looked at the annual rings on the end. And they were crazy tight, crazy tight. So from the pith to the edge of the board, we counted something like 220 rings. And the trees were cut in 1920. So then I'm doing the math like, "So this tree was a baby in 1700, but we're only looking at 12 inch wide out of a ponderosa pine tree." So when the tree went down, it was probably way more than 200 years old. So just that historical aspect of using that older lumber and when that tree was a baby, is a pretty cool part of a project. And since I think I hit on it a little bit there, give us an old growth versus today's lumber kind of thing. Like I mean your stuff, urban growing, it's not old growth, but-- No. Honestly, it's pretty fast growth because there's no competition to those trees. So they get pretty big, pretty fast. So you get that bigger stuff, the grain, but the rings are as close together as an old growth that had to kinda struggle for many years to get to its size. So the mystery or the thing that people seek, like a lot of instrument makers, luthiers and protestants. 'Cause it's got tight rings 'cause when those trees were babies, there were mature trees overshadowing them. So they grew really slowly. So in a year, the tree only grows a tiny, tiny, tiny bit. So when you look at the annual rings and jeez, I think in a ponderosa pine, in an inch, there were like 20 rings. And if you go to home Depot and buy a piece of pine today, in an inch, there's six rings, so that's-- Or less. Or less, so part of what you get out of that is a really cool grain look on the face of the board. Oh yeah, that's tight. In that tight grain, part of what makes a good soundboard on a guitar is having that really tight grain in the soundboard, so that's part of what makes 'em sought after. Gary says he's sitting at Izzy's house, listening to you guys. All right. That's pretty cool. What time do we have? 15 minutes to go. The first half hour went fast. It did and there's 350 people watching. Really? Hello 350 people. We've run 'em out of questions, so-- What!? Yeah. Is that working? I'm scrolling. Let me jump over here. Ah. We're on YouTube. I did jump over to YouTube to see if there's anything here we should get after. Dennis says, "It sounds like the dust collector is on." It's not. Do you have like an air filter or something? It's got a little fan in there. There is a little thing running. It coulda been the heater that on in the beginning. "Matt is the slab king." All right. That's nice. I'll take it. And this guy says, "George is the pun king," sp there you go. That's true. That's two different places. All right, well I don't know, Matt. Give us something else. You got a chunk of wood in here we can look at? Give us a little show and tell for-- What do you wanna look at? We got about 10 minutes to go here I showed you my crotch already. Yeah, that's enough of that. Yeah we're done, I made my one crotch joke. I don't know, here's some curly maple. Got some cool bowl blanks over there too. I have a lot of bowl blanks 'cause turning green is fun, but turning dry is not as much fun. No, nowhere near as much. So I have like a bajillian rough turned bowls because I've turned 'em all green and thye've been sitting for like five years. That's why I turned my green wood, start to finish. My friend, Paul does the set it aside and let it dry thing. I don't have that kind of patience. Wanna take one home with you? Sure. It'd be a nice bowl someday. Turn into a bowl when it grows up. Yeah. Cherry, I think here. That one's cherry, yup. That's a big chunk. What's that one? Kind of light. It could be elm maybe? It is not elm. I don't know. It is butternut. All right. Of course I'm gonna say this, but I was gonna say that, but it felt a little bit too heavy to be butternut. It's got a thick bottom. Who am I? A question did roll in here. "Any advice for harvesting turning blanks, mainly for bowls?" What, like finding them? I think like how to deal with it, I think, is maybe the question. Oh yeah, man, that's the easy part. I don't know, finding them is pretty easy too, 'cause it's like all you need is firewood rounds for turning, which is nice, they're always in abundance. But if you're gonna turn them that day, honestly, I just cut 'em right in half, right through the pith with the bark on. And then, I bandsaw and do the round. And I throw 'em on the late and I shave 'em, right there then and there, instead of trying to cut through the pith, then you cut the bark side off, and then you trim the other bar. I just do it all on the lathe 'cause it's all right there. It's easy. Yeah. If you wanna process for storage, then you wanna make your two facing cuts, just like cutting a slab on the sawmill, pick the bark off, wax it and set it aside is what I would normally do. I'm pretty, a lot, lazier than Matt and I tend to come back from the compost yard with more stuff than I went. There you go. I take brush and I come back with logs, Ss my deal is I'll take a log and get it sort of close to what I think I might want it to be as a bowl. And then I wrap it in stretch film. I get 18 inch stretch film that I order from Amazon 'cause they sell everything and I used to dip stuff in wax. And I had a huge bin full of sealer, and I'd put a screw rye in the blank and I would dip it and then I would hang it on a rack. Yeah, like that's pretty serious. Yup and I find stretch film way easier. So I'll moisture meter it and then wrap it in stretch film, and then I write on the stretch film what the moisture content was, the day I did that and what the specie was. And then I just have this museum. It looks like spiders got in there and wrapped all my stuff in little catacombs of stretch film. But this maple bowl I turned a couple months ago was stretched filmed for three years. And one of the things that was cool is it looked like this when it got wrapped, but there must've been stuff in there and it's spalted in the time it was stored. So it became a beautiful piece of wood. So it's like not even really close to looking like a bowl blank at that point. It really just still looks like a log. And then I just leave 'em to sit there. I like that. Lazy, I like that, very good. Oh, and somebody asked, "Is the stuff that you build for you or for customers?" Pretty much everything ends up in the house. Our house, I have like a museum in there. All right. "Time for a haircut," Russ says. I have no body fat. I gotta keep it heated. Scott says, "Are we drinking vodka or mineral spirits?" Water, 'cause we're doing woodworking sort of. "Where is Matt located?" He's in Minnesota, suburban Minneapolis, St. Paul. "Tell us more about the things he builds." Do you wanna jump on that a little bit? What do you wanna know? Oh I know. Do you have a type of furniture like best? Or you'll do anything, just depending on what you want. I really enjoy doing period pieces every now and then because I find it to be challenging, and it really just opens your eyes to, I guess, like really good building practices. And to me, at least it just has a good challenging aspect to it, which helps me grow as an actual woodworker, which I really enjoy that part. As far as things that I'll design myself, my thing is tend to be more, I don't know, a contemporary-ish vibe. Some curves, things here and there, maybe a little shaker influence, things like that. But with my stuff I do, I just try to bring my own like weird wood stuff into the project, so like my period pieces of wood with knots and cracks in it, which you would normally never see. Which it wouldn't have. Which is very taboo. "Any furniture recommendations for pecan? I cut a log and it is dried, but maybe too punky 'ause it's really light. Can I try a piece of the bowl blank, as well?" I mean, I don't think you have to pick a type of furniture for which you would use pecan. I think if you wanna make something, try the pecan it's pretty similar to this butternut, right? Characteristically. Yeah, I don't know. We don't have it here. That's kind of a disadvantage to cutting your own stuff. It doesn't grow here, I don't have it. I'd love to have some. Someone bring me a pecan log. And then somebody else says, "I have a pecan tree. Is it a good word for woodworking?" So we don't really know, but I-- It is, I mean I've seen people use it. Yeah. It looks nice. I'm reasonably sure it's similar to butternut, characteristically. I had a piece of it somewhere. Someone said a turning bowl at some point in my life. How about, while you're looking, "Is box elder worth sawing into lumber, and what would you use it for? A fellow Minnesotan and it's a tree that grows like a weed." That's true. Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, so box elder does grow like a weed and is very weed like. One of its redeeming characteristics is the wood, it's in a maple family, it's about as white as maple, but it gets these dramatic red stripes. But in my experience, I've got some bowls, I've turned out a box elder where it looked like bloodstains on there the day I turned it and five years later, they're pink. So the red fades to pink pretty dramatically. That also stained a little bit. So the face of my L shaped table was box elder. It's nice wood. I don't know, I like it. I cut a lot of it 'cause the red is just nice and has some really interesting striking grain patterns. It's just basically a soft maple with a fun color. Where I used to live, there were just a boatload of box elder trees and somebody gave me an article about box elder and it said, "Because it's in the maple family, some people tap it for syrup." Oh! I'm like, "Well that's pretty cool." So I made taps on wooden dowels, and went out there and drilled a bunch of trees. So it turns out it's the lowest sugar content of any tree in the family. Oh! So I think I boiled 50 gallons of sap, from which I got like a tablespoon of maple syrup. But at the time, the kids were like-- But was it good? The kids were about as old as your kids. Oh jeez. So it was a great experience. As sap, it tasted gross. It tasted like box elder smells. But as syrup, it was okay, it was all right. It was okay. It was a cool experience. I did it. I bet I did it every year for five or seven years. So that was fun. That's a lot of sap. "Any experience with lee dovetail jigs?" Yup. I'm not sure what you wanna know. So yes, I've used them a lot. "Can we see the rest of the shop?" Unfortunately, with the camera setup the way it is-- We can try and spin it, I don't know. We'll do that at the very end. Yeah. Just in case we blow our set up. That's probably a good idea. I could se you unplugging it by accident. Yeah. James says, "I have a Wood-Mizer 35 Hydraulic. Curious if a saw blade with a missing tooth or two can be salvaged." I still run 'em, yeah. If the rest of it's sharp. If it's was only one or two teeth, yeah, it's not even gonna probably notice that. Okay. Fred wants to know if you're making me pancakes. That's in the morning. Yeah. Somebody says, "Why resaw green wood? I would think resawing dry wood makes more sense." Great question for the miller in the family, which would be you. Oh, you do a little milling. Why do we cut stuff green instead of letting the logs dry? The whole log, or like a thick piece? Basically, the answer is that it dries faster when it's thinner, and dries more evenly. And you have a little more control over the drying process. So if you're gonna use four quarter and you have a piece that's nine quarter, it's gonna dry it a lot faster and it's gonna dry with less stress, so you can kind of turn around a little quicker. If you're resawing those panels, I wouldn't wanna saw this out of a tree. This would potato chips and go all over the place and be very hard to get to be flat. So describe your verb, potato chip. Turn that into what, what happens here? This would be not flat, it would be-- Like a mountain range. It'd be all mountain range, it'd be twisted. It would do all kinds of weird stuff 'cause it's only a quarter inch thick. As losing moisture, it's gonna do all kinds of weird stuff. But as a thicker board, it has a lot more stability. So this started out as a piece that was two inches thick. And I cut, I think, three slices out of this, then three slices out of another piece that was two inches thick and because it was dried as one unit, it was a lot more stable. And you can see this thing, as goofy as it is. It's really flat. I resawed this... Two months ago, beginning of September. It looks great, it's dead flat. Yeah so it's just in general, you want . I guess I'm a little thrown off by resaw, but you wanna process, you wanna turn logs into lumber as close as you can to the time when the tree got cut down while they're still green. "Looking for a slow speed grinder. Do you like the Rikon?" Yeah, it's a lot better than the old one I had, so it's actually pretty well balanced. It works, can't really bog it down. Good value too, I think it's like a hundred bucks when it's on sale, I hink it's like 130 normal price. Donnie says he's got plenty of pecan in the Mississippi. Pecan. Mighty Mississippi. Come on out. Darren is asking, "How long do you think it would take to mill at 12 inch by 10 foot log with a chainsaw mill?" Four quarter stock, it'd be less than an hour. A tank of gas, one tank of gas. I was using my miller is a Husqvarna 385 chainsaw, which is pretty horsey, got pretty good snap. Although that saw, yours. Is it all 90? Yeah. Yeah. That's a big boy. 137. "After Hurricane Michael, there are several Magnolia trees down. Are they good for bowls?" I think. Yeah. I think it's pretty inside, right? I've seen it a couple times, it looks pretty amazing. There's some good color in there. All right, well we have hit 8:01, so you're on overtime. I made it! You're getting paid double now. Oh, good. Somebody asked about just a quick look at your shop. Here's what I think I will do. I'll get out of the way. You handle the camera. Oh, you want me to do that? And I'm gonna gaff the wire, so that we don't disconnect and other than that, we're gonna shut down here ao again, thanks to Titebond. Thanks to Matt for hosting here and letting me come out and see his shop. If you've not already, go down below the chat area and you can download some free plans, so you can run out to the shop and make gifts as soon as we're done here. Let's see, a couple things coming up. If you're in the Minneapolis area, I'm teaching at ACME Tool in Plymouth, November 30th and December 1st, two days back to back. There is a meetup in the Minneapolis area at Matt Collins' place on November 17th, starting at 3:30. You can look up Matthew Collins Designs on Instagram and find him if you're interested in going to that meetup. And the other thing I was gonna mention is Rockler, this Saturday, is doing a pen turning for veterans event. I'm gonna be going to the Minnetonka Rockler store to help out there. If you're interested in being involved with this, again, it's every Rockler store in the country is doing this on Saturday, November 10th, but check with your local store. Don't just show up. I believe that there was sign up needing to be done in advance in order to be involved, but I'm not 100% sure. So either check with the store online, or call the store to see what's going on, all right? I'm ready to bug out. Matt is gonna give us a little 360 tour o the shop here. I'm just wanna watch the cable so we don't disconnect. All right, we're pointing to the workbench end of the shop. What should we turn, clockwise or counterclockwise? Northern hemisphere, so I would do clockwise. It should just pivot on that, without-- Oh yeah, here you go. Here, you can do this, so you can see what you're looking at. Okay, well this is gonna be really-- Interesting? Here's a good idea. Go on my YouTube channel, check out my shop tour. There we go. So behind all this this is my jointer and some stuff over there. This right here is the plainer and that's the scrap in the table saw area. There's my bandsaw. Spin it around here. There's Matt. There's me. There's a piece of furniture we've been talking about. There's a cyborg right there. A cyborg. A cyborg. Where I sharpen stuff, there's the tool cabinet. And we're back to the beginning. There we are, 360 shop tour. Just like that. All right, folks, thanks very much for watching. And we'll see you the second Thursday in December, back at my shop. See ya.