Creative Culture

This week on the podcast I wanted to mix things up a bit and talk to someone who is a member of The Weekend Woodworker and a super creative individual.

Neil Patrick Harris has a long resume going back several decades in the entertainment industry and in the past couple years he's gotten into woodworking, so I thought it would be fun to talk to him about his experience so far and how…and if… he's able to juggle this hobby with his career and family.

We also talked about his awesome new newsletter, Wondercade. It's free at https://www.wondercade.com/

Wanna learn woodworking? Join Neil and thousands of others in The Weekend Woodworker, my online courses at https://www.weekendwoodworkercourse.com/

Start your woodworking hobby today! https://www.weekendwoodworkercourse.com

This week, Jimmy Diresta is back to talk about his latest project, a new series on Netflix called Making Fun. The setup is a group of kids brainstorm crazy ideas of things they'd like to see made, and then watch Jimmy and 4 other really bearded guys build them. The hook is that Jimmy doesn't like children, which leads to a lot of sassy interactions. It's corny and fun, and I think kids will really enjoy it.

Follow Jimmy on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/jimmydiresta

Keith Johnson has been creating high-end furniture on his YouTube channel, Keith Johnson Custom Woodworking, for the past few years. In this episode I talked to Keith about fine woodworking and what it takes to produce high quality furniture. And we talked about his cats.

Follow Keith on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KeithJohnsonCustomWoodworking

Get started in woodworking for less than $1000. Download my free guide: https://mytoollist.com

Laura Kampf is a maker who's been sharing an eclectic mix of projects and crazy ideas on her YouTube channel since 2015.

Her projects range from fabricating barbecue grills to making unique bicycles and furniture to building her own tiny house. She recently purchased a 120 year old house that she will be restoring as her channel begins a new era.

Visit Laura on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/laurakampf

Start woodworking this weekend! Check out my step-by-step online course: https://www.weekendwoodworkercourse.com

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Rural Renovators is a custom contracting company specializing in post frame construction, building everything from basic storage buildings, to insulated workshops, and even residential homes.

Seven years ago Kyle started posting videos of the building process on his YouTube channel, RR Buildings. But in mid 2021, the channel exploded, accumulating 80,000 subscribers in October alone.

So what happened? Kyle started posting YouTube Shorts. In June, he posted a video showing how he leveraged a board into position which garnered 24 million views. Immediately, he followed it up with a series of Shorts, each gaining crazy views. The most popular one now has 68 million views. In fact all of the most watched videos on Kyle's channel are shorts, a format he is definitely leaning into. To date, all of his Shorts combined total over 300 million views.

In addition to short form content, Kyle documents the entire construction process of various buildings he is working on. Currently he's building a house he calls the Barndominum. These long videos are often longer than 30 minutes, offering a stark contrast to the Shorts. These videos are extremely well shot and edited and show all the interesting details that go into building construction.

Visit RR Buildings on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RRBuildings

Blake McFarland is an artist who specializes in mixed media sculptures using wood, steel, epoxy, foam, fiberglass, crayons, even ramen noodles. Since 2019 he's been filming these creations and showing the process on his YouTube channel, BM Sculptures.

His highly detailed sculptures can take up to eight weeks to create for clients such as Hyundai, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Golden State Warriors and many more. His multiple collaborations with Goodyear has led him to create multiple sports team mascot sculptures out of recycled tires, a medium he seems especially skilled with.

Before becoming a full time artist, Blake was a professional baseball player, who spent 8 years pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays. Recently Blake was a contestant on the TV show Making It, and even more recently he became a dad for the second time.

BM Sculptures on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BMSculptures

Steve Ramsey: https://www.youtube.com/c/stevinmarin

I'm pleased to have Cam Anderson join me again on the podcast so we can dive a little deeper into the world of epoxy, big slabs and the insane growth of his YouTube channel, Blacktail Studio.

And we'll try to figure out why epoxy seems to drive some people bonkers!

Visit Blacktail Studio on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BlacktailStudio

In August 2015 Simone Giertz posted an 8-second long, toothbrush machine video, showing a machine she designed to remove the drudgery of manual tooth brushing. It was funny, ridiculous, and got shared just about everywhere.

That video would come to define much of what Simone's videos would be about: making machines that sort of make sense. Like an alarm clock that slaps you awake or a breakfast machine that ensures you will be cleaning up a bunch of Cheerios.

It wouldn't be long before fans had dubbed her the Queen of Shitty Robots, a title that she embraced, but has kind of moved away from in the past couple years as she has expanded to building an even wider range of projects.

Things like remodeling a trailer, making a coffee table out of burnt matches, and converting a Tesla into a pickup, all presented in her casual, conversational style and wry humor. And sometimes her videos aren't projects, but experiences, like when she got weightless in the Vomit Comet or talked candidly about her brain surgery.

Simone has a beautiful workshop in LA where she uses all kinds of materials and techniques to create all kinds of projects limited only by her imagination.

Watch Simone on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/simonegiertz

Robert Dunn has two of the most entertaining channels on youtube. His main channel is Aging Wheels, a channel he started in 2014 mainly about weird and obscure cars, and how he fixes them up and drives them around. If you love cars, you need to check it out, and if you're like me, and don't know anything about cars, you will definitely love Aging Wheels. It's a car channel for the rest of us.

But he started his second channel, a woodworking channel called Under Dunn in 2019 and as it approaches 100,000 subscribers and another silver play button, it has become its own thing and just as entertaining as Aging Wheels.

Robert brings a natural humor to all of his videos and has found a different and unique take on the YouTube woodworking genre.

Aging Wheels: https://www.youtube.com/user/agingwheels

Under Dunn: https://www.youtube.com/c/UnderDunnOfficial

Matt Cremona is unusual in the world of woodworking because he not only builds high end furniture, but he cuts down the trees and mills the lumber from those trees to make that furniture.

In 2016 Matt built his own bandsaw mill which allows him to make lumber out of really big logs. Amazingly, Matt's most popular video is 42 minutes long and shows how he used his bandsaw mill to make slabs. It's a fascinating look at all the labor that goes into milling lumber and gives viewers insight into the finer details of a process most of us have never seen before. Let alone, the impact of seeing that it's just one guy doing this in his yard.

Most recently, Matt moved into a huge new home that he's renovating and making even huger by building an addition to the space, which he's documenting and sharing on YouTube.

Visit Matt Cremona on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/mcremona