Touring Nick Offerman’s Wood Shop | Ask This Old House

[Music] nick good to see you again hello kevin welcome thank you very much so you have been to our shop and that was a great pleasure for us and uh now we're at yours which is a real pleasure this is really generous yeah you've been here for a while i've been in here about 16 years wow all right big space we can get a look around maybe sure before you can make furniture you need a piece of wood so why don't we start with my woodstock this is a surprise look at all of this wood yeah it's a we have a bit of a bit of stock where did this all come from a lot of it came from northern california i know a few different guys who only take felled trees or trees that come down for construction there's something incredibly magical about having a slab of a table where you can you know if you know your tree you can you can look at the end grain and count the rings and so while you're having dinner you have this this cross section of history you know you're like oh this tree is 140 years old so right about here was the uh you know the invention of the automobile right so you have got the stock the inventory is all here uh care showing me where you guys do your magic sure yeah there's a little more work uh to be done so once we've picked our wood out then we bring it in here and depending on what we're making with it we begin to make it smaller and shorter and flatter those big slabs you know if we're going to make just a table then it's all about making it flat and stable but sometimes we for example if we want to make a big round table like this is going to be then we need to create planks to laminate together and the way we do that is first you knock off the natural edges on a bandsaw and then you use the jointer and planer and table saw to carefully flatten and make square edges and and surface them i've seen a lot of older tools right here is this by necessity or is this by choice that you've picked this eclectic mix i always try to find as old as i can because you've got the most cast iron parts and they're just kind of bulletproof i mean i've got this drill press from 1943 and never required a lick of maintenance it's absolutely incredible okay and what lumber are you using here for this project this is live oak this came down here in los angeles and our friends milled it up yeah and uh live oak was was a very popular naval wood because it grows in crooked ways that were actually ready made for ship parts sure so there's a lot of work to get that flat and ready to be a table again which sort of begs the question why would wood is something we're able to shape with sharpened steel yet it still is sturdy enough to you know you can you can park a pickup truck on one of our tables um right and so rather than stone or glass for my money uh wood is so friendly to work with how does something get started like what do you suggest if they want to get into woodworking and get into their garage do this well it's it's quite easy um it's really just a dial down version of all these machines you know these i this is going to be a a seven foot diameter massive dining table with a with an inlaid lazy susan so that's a massive thick project but if you dial that all the way back to say a tray or a cutting board that you would use to serve on this table that's where you start and it's the same set of steps you need to make your wood flat and square and friendly um with hand tools which i can show you a little bit about so as i mentioned you know you take a look at a chisel and it's just this beautiful sharpened wedge of steel and with a chisel you can you can use it in a couple directions to have different effects you know you can pair and you can kind of carve and every every woodworking tool you know you take it then you look at a plane the plane blade is just a wide chisel that's encased in this clever housing so that it does something much more specific it takes a regular shaving every time and that's that's what really every hand tool is you know a saw is just a bunch of tiny chisels lined up so that they'll cut the wood fibers so when i get people started um i i always suggest that uh the less electricity you can use the more pleasurable your woodworking will be because you don't have the noise and you don't have the dust and you don't have the expense of any power tools so forgo the power tools and stick with the hand tools as much as possible so i i tell people to go to the lumber yard and talk find somebody who knows the wood you know talk to them about their wood and these are these are some pieces of big leaf maple from oregon from a guy that i know and there's some planks that i used in a workshop and i just have my students cut off what looks like a nice size cutting board and a cutting board is a great place to start because look you've made one cut and that you're almost done you strike out strike a line it doesn't even have to be straight but you can use it to teach yourself to cut a straight line and i'm telling you if you get you get a japanese pull saw which cuts on the pull or a classic western cross cut saw if you get one of these these days from from the hardware store they're nice and sharp they last a long time and you'll be amazed at how easy if you take your time and slowly begin to use it you can make a cut yeah that alone will feel like a super power and then i just have people there's different sanding accessories you can get this is a little wedge that takes hook and loop sanding discs and this is like a little nerf handled circle and these are great for our natural edge stuff because it's not flat it allows you to get into all these contours and then i just have them go to town and they usually work up a sweat because they get into it you make all the edges nice you clean it up as nice as you want and then once you oil that all this figure all this color comes out and they say i'm a genius you know this is just making a rectangle now then you make four of those and you start by putting them together maybe with dowels by drilling but you know then you go from a rectangle to a box you go from a box to a set of drawers and then you build a piano and i guess i mean you tell the story of your humble beginnings of things when you were a little kid you weren't doing anything on band saws and jointers no i mean that's something i love to to uh something i love to communicate about woodworking is that if you take a bucket of nails and slap together a bunch of planks into a dog house congratulations you're a woodworker and if you enjoyed it or your dog enjoys it then maybe you make a better dog house or you move on up to a horse house or a cow house and eventually a a person house um and then you find a mate and you have children and you teach them to sand and you're off to the races hakuna matata you're part of the circle of life okay well we very much appreciate the tour of the offerman woodshop and your words of wisdom and getting people into the trade my pleasure [Music] you

Channel: This Old House

Views: 2,875,880

Keywords: this old house, how-to, home improvement, Episode, TV Show, DIY, Ask This Old House, Nick Offerman, Kevin O'Connor, woodworking, wood shop, Los Angeles, Comedian, This Old House, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Kevin o’connor, kevin o'connor house, kevin o'connor this old house, kevin o'connor ask this old house, kevin o'connor interview

Id: Gh6H7Md_L2k

Length: 8min 0sec (480 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 13 2017