Old thread.
For current episodes, visit Stumpynubs.com.
THANKS!
For current episodes, visit Stumpynubs.com.
THANKS!
Hey, Stumpy, when I was in the working world (the real one, the one I used to get paid for) we used to call those that used to just stand around the 'Safety Committee'. The premise was, and likely still is, if no one moves, no one gets hurt… it was true, they didn't but not much work got done either!Safety week? We don't need no stinking safety week! (Stumpy's Safety Poster)
It's woodworking safety week. I know, I've been planning for months. This morning I finished decorating the safety tree, I hung the red halogen safety lights all over the outside of the shop. My wife is wearing her safety dress and I am drinking decaffeinated coffee this morning, because someone said it was safer.
These days there's a "week" for everything. We just wrapped up "earth week", already the third or fourth one this year it seems, which used to be just a day until NBC decided they liked the green peacock logo so much it never goes away. There's a week to remember every good or bad thing that has ever happened, a week to build awareness of everyone's favorite causes… Major sporting events are now week long affairs with names like "Speed Week" and "Naked Skeet Shooting Week".
We only get 50-some weeks in a year and it seems like more than that are now set aside by someone to build our awareness of something, and it's growing fast. I have a calendar that's 36 pages long because there are now more weeks than there is year.
Not that they aren't all worthy causes. I mean, someone has to take a week off to think about the ozone hole. And anybody who's watched Blue Collar Woodworking knows we are very concerned with chlorofluorocarbons. (I make my wife put a trash bag over her head while she applies harispray.)
The point I'm making is that safety is a way of life, we think about it every minute of every day while we're in the shop. Do we really have to take a week now and think about it harder?
What's his name from the Discovery Channel show "Dirty Jobs" just released a video where he makes the case for saying "safety third" instead of "first", not because he thinks it isn't important, but because he wants to further complicate things with a new slogan. His point is that we can over think things and then they lose their meaning. We become complacent.
But, since this is "Safety week" and I don't want to run the risk of being ostracized by my fellow woodworking activists, I'll make a contribution to the growing list of safety related posts on the internet…
At the Stumpy Nubs Workshop we like to keep things simple. We have a sign that reminds us of basic safety rules, prominently displayed so that anyone who feels a blade cutting into their flesh can look up and see where they went wrong.
Stumpy's 5 Basic Safety Rules:
1. Beer can leave stains on the cast iron tools, and blood can leave stains on the wood. So no drinking.
2. We laugh at you for all sorts of things, how you look in safety glasses doesn't matter.
3. If you wear ear plugs, you can pretend you don't hear the boss. So, win-win…
4. If you leave something where someone will trip over it, that person will be allowed to poke you in the eye.
5. Keep your eyes on the spinning blade or bit at all times. Chicks dig scars, but shredded fingers… not so much.
Anyone who wants a higher resolution copy of our poster, just send me your email address via Personal Message, Twitter or Facebook and I'll send you one! Then sit back and have a cold (safe) one, because it's safety week, my friend!
(Check out the safest woodworking show on earth, a new episode of Blue Collar Woodworking is now online!)
Oh.. and here's that Mike Rowe video I mentioned.
Ahh, I can sleep better at night knowing that stumpy has once again surfaced (stinky pit and all)Did you hear Stumpy was in the Witness Protection Program?
Did you ever notice that one of your armpits smells a lot worse than the other? That little bit of info will clue you on two things. First, you're a disgusting pig who likes to sniff his sweaty armpits. And second, that the long, hot days of summer are here. Actually, they've been here for a while now. And woodworkers the world over are grabbing a cold one and fireing up the computer machine for some Blue Collar Woodworking goodness. Problem is, there's been no new episode for a couple weeks. What gives?
That's been the subject of countless emails in the Stumpy Nubs inbox. (No, not the armpit thing… the "where's Stumpy" part.) Some have let their imaginations get the better of them, speculating about what's happened to everybody's favorite internet woodworker. (Nobody calls me that, but it has a nice ring to it. A lot better than the terms I usually get like "embarrassment" and "rodeo clown"...) Here are a few examples:
- He's dead. One of his shop inventions took off a hand and he bled out.
- He ran out of good ideas. The first 20 episodes were so fantastic; you couldn't have expected him to keep that up!
- Charles Neil got tired of everybody asking him to tell the story of how he almost lost to Stumpy in their box making contest, so he called in a favor.
- Stumpy who?
- He got vetted… hard. He may never recover.
- Roy Underhill hired him to be his sidekick on his show; like Paul Schaffer without the guitar and stupidity.
- He's been gone? I didn't notice.
- He's out shopping for tight shirts with Tommy MacDonald.
- He's working on a new podcast under the name "The Wood Lisper".
- McNugget the shop chicken pecked his eyes out.
- Nobody cares.
- Some crazy guy is keeping him in a dried up well, threatening to wear his skin.
- He got hired full time to groom Christopher Schwarz' beard.
- His real name was leaked and the witness protection program had to relocate him. He's doing a new show called "Ring-around-the-collar Laundering".
- The bad joke police hauled him away. It's the chair for him to be sure!
The mystery has gone on long enough. Time to end all the speculation and break the silence. Time to let you all in on what's really going on, the big news everybody has been waiting for. So, without further ado… no more delays… here's the unvarnished truth. The real deal, the whole enchilada…
It's freaking hot!!! Not just a "let me dab my forehead with my monogramed hanky" kind of heat. It's a full on, swamp in my shorts heat wave! We've melted three cameras already, which is two more than melted last year from my stunning good looks! How are we supposed to film with heatstroke? You tell me. I'm slurring my words and one side is numb!
This is why television shows play reruns during the summertime. Can you imagine how hot Don Johnson's white blazer would have been in Miami, even with the sleeves pushed up like he always did? If Miami Vice didn't have to film in July, Blue Collar Woodworking shouldn't have to either!
And seriously… "he ran out of ideas"? Give me a break. I have ideas up the wazoo! It's uncomfortable, I can tell you that. But they will never run out. Not as long as I have a breath in my chubby little body!
Truth be told, we're taking the opportunity this heat wave has presented to get caught up on some way overdue projects and we'll be back to filming shortly. Actually, the cameras start rolling again tomorrow, so new episodes of Blue Collar Woodworking are only days away.
So, to all the fans out there who have suffered from Blue Collar Woodworking withdrawal these past couple weeks… have another cold one. Help in on the way!
Stumpy you sir, are a Real American fighting for the (woodworking) rights of every man. Say your prayers and eat you vitamins Brother!What Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant taught me about dust collection...
Recently we did a series of episodes on dust collection, discussing everything from filtration through mustache cultivation to industrial sounding words like "cyclones" and "pipe". We spent four episodes on it, and how those long winter weekends flew by as you gathered the family in front of the computer screen with cups of hot coco and excited giggles of anticipation.
But I'll be the first one to admit, this stuff all gets a little confusing. Dust collection is a lot like professional wrestling. (Stick with me on this…) Everybody wants to show off their muscle, scream a lot, and maybe throw a folding chair or two. But it's mostly a lot of hype. I grew up thinking Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan were both good guys who always teamed up to fight the evil forces of Jake the Snake Roberts and the Junkyard Dog. But then the Hulkster fought the Giant in WrestleMania III and the next think I knew Hogan was wearing a black bandana and Andre was the retarded giant in The Princess Bride. My whole world was turned upside down!
What were we talking about? Oh, yah… dust collection. You see, I started woodworking with a dust collection system that included a broom and an air gun on my compressor. That kept the chips from piling up around my ankles and the fine dust was collected at the end of the day in a tissue when I blew my nose.
From there I upgraded state of the art system that included a shop vac and a series of 2" tubes with blast gates to hook up my machines. Fine dust? Who cared, it was harmless as long as you didn't breath. Next thing I know I'm told I need to go bigger, and bigger, and louder and bigger. One group is screaming about cubic feet per minute, the other shouts back about micron filtration. It's enough to make me turn that air gun on myself and end it all.
The "chippies" are on the one extreme. They say you don't need any dust collection as long as you can keep your head above the sawdust pile. Their ideal system is a snow shovel to clear the woodchip drifts out of the way once a year.
On the other extreme are the "dusties". These are the guys who believe the tiniest spec of dust will kill you faster than an anthrax scratch-n-sniff sticker. Their ideal system includes an F-5 tornado encased in a giant steel cone with ducts that a child can crawl through hooked to every machine, and the dog just in case it sheds.
As the mad woodworking scientist who brought the wooden "Franken-cyclone" to life (Episode #31), I take great pride in my dust collection prowess. I've studied the subject from every angle: upside down, right side up, backwards and the other way too. I have tried everything, spent a small fortune and a good part of my woodworking career trying to achieve the perfect solution. Besides the broom and the shop vac system mentioned above, I've tried a series of four shop vacs, a trash can cyclone, a single stage dust collector (Harbor Freight), TWO single stage collectors, a homemade cyclone, and a state of the art, five horse, super sucking machine. I've used vacuum hoses, plastic pipe, four inch PVC and six inch wooden ductwork. I've had furnace filters, Hepa filters, bag filters and five feet tall cartridge filters. You name it, I've bought it, tore the shop up installing it, and ripped it back out to try something else. I currently have TWO full sized, ultra efficient cyclones powered by a total of eight horses. I have an ambient filtration unit that cleans all of the air in the shop once every two or three seconds. And, you know what? My shop is still dusty.
How is it that I, owner of what I think is the best possible equipment a small shop could ever hope for, have dusty floors? Simple- you have to turn the stuff on.
The fact is, it doesn't matter if you have a cheap shop vac or a $2,000 cyclone. It's useless if you don't use it. Now, don't get me wrong. My collector runs quite a lot. But how many times do we find ourselves making just one quick cut here, boring one quick hole there, without bothering to turn the thing on? It happens all the time, and the dust builds up. Then, you go to rip a couple of boards and you see all the dust already there and you think "what's the point", you may as well just work with the collector off until you get a chance to vacuum this mess up anyway…
Whether you're into dust collection to save your lungs, or to save your broom, it's not really about the equipment as much as it's about the way you work. If you have a routine that includes opening the blast gate, turning on the system, making the cut, turning off the system and closing the blast gate, you're golden. But if you don't discipline yourself to follow each of those steps every time, you're wasting your dust collection dollars.
Just as you must develop the habit of donning safety gear before using a machine, operating the dust collection system must be second nature. Otherwise you should just save your money and buy a good broom. Sound like a hassle? It is… at first. But why'd you go and spend all that money if you're still snorting dust and sweeping up chips? They say it takes forty days to develop a habit. If you're a weekend woodworker, you may need a year to get in your forty days. But, in time, using your dust collection system will become as natural to you as a triple-suflex-body-slam was to Randy "Macho Man" Savage.
CHECK OUT THE NEW WEBSITE- Read more blogs, watch full episodes of Blue Collar Woodworking, see video tool reviews, tips, and a whole lot more!
And now, take a sentimental journey with me to my childhood… 'cause "Hulkamania is runnin' wild!"
Great post, I'm pretty much just a lurker but I see a few of these Trolls on the couple of sites I visit.Stumpy Nubs: Troll Hunter (They taste like chicken)
I am not just an somewhat overrated woodworker with an endless supply of bad jokes and a troubling affinity for blue denim shirts. I am also a naturalist, a man who spends his weekends in the wild observing exotic creatures and documenting their strange habits. My expeditions take me all over the worldwide web, to the lurking places of the most despicable of predators: the Woodworking Trolls. I've spent years among their kind, frequenting their natural habitat on woodworking message boards, blogs, chat rooms; any place where they can slip in through the comment threads to infect the community with their deadly venom.
It's true that no troll has never been photographed in the wild. They are elusive creatures who carefully conceal their true identities with clever avatars and tough-guy sounding knick names. They present themselves as experts in the craft with decades of experience and all the knowledge that you don't have. But I believe I know the truth. For one thing, the reason they are so seldom photographed is because they are among nature's ugliest mistakes of creation. We know this because they are never able to achieve meaningful lives. Men laugh at them, women refuse to mate with them. So they withdraw into their Cheetos littered nests deep within their parents basements where they lay in ambush, hunched over their keyboards waiting for a chance to strike.
Woodworking trolls have big appetites which are only satisfied by the misery of others. They hunt at all hours of the day or night and their strategy has been carefully developed over evenings in chat rooms where they argue among themselves, honing their techniques so as to be ever sharp at any opportunity. When they are on the hunt, they frequent their favorite places, the woodworking message boards where they've found past success. Their reputations have not gone unnoticed, so they must strike quickly and then disappear into the night before a proper defense can be made against them. Typically they roam on the outskirts of the forum, watching and reading. When they spy a herd of woodworkers peacefully frolicking around some interesting subject, the troll slips in among them, sometimes disguised as one of the herd. From this vantage point they can carefully size up the group and choose their victim.
The woodworking troll rarely goes for weakest of the herd because trolls have enormous egoes. The troll believes he can take anyone on, and they often launch themselves headlong into the fray with total abandon. The first strike may be to disagree with something that appears to be the consensus of the herd, even if they have to make a great leap to do so. Facts are not in their bag of tricks, they strive only to be contrary, to make a member of the herd look foolish. Many times this will elicit a reaction from their victim, which plays right into their plan. The troll now launches his most stinging weapon, the unprovoked insult. This is one of their most curious tactics since it makes them appear small and immature. But it inevitably leads to more discord, the entire herd may even be taken aback and adopt a defensive posture.
It is at this point that the troll feels the most confident. He's already achieved his primary goal, to disrupt a peaceful herd of woodworkers and make himself the center of attention. Now he pulls out all the stops, he launches into a long tirade against his target, twisting the victim's words to make himself appear the innocent victim. If he's lucky he can manipulate the conversation so much that he confuses the herd, causing them to begin attacking each other. The original target may now become frustrated and lash out in a way he may never have done before, perhaps hurling his own insult at the troll. This is when the troll employs his master stroke. He reacts to the victim's words as if he's been stabbed to the heart, mortally wounded by an entirely uncalled for attack. He refers to himself in the most innocent of terms, he's just a kindly old woodworker trying to share his knowledge and this mean old "so-and-so" not only rejected his help, but lashed out at him in the most unreasonable of ways! If the troll plays his hand perfectly, he can convince the rest of the herd to abandon the original victim, even cast him out. The woodworking troll, having fed on the misery he's created then disappears, leaving chaos behind on the message board. He slinks back to his lair to pat himself on the back and await his next opportunity to feed.
We've all seen the attacks of trolls in our favorite online woodworking communities. Maybe we were chatting with friends about dovetails and the attack come in the form of the old "you should cut pins first unless you're a moron… is that what you are, a moron?" type of comment. Or we were talking table saws and someone launched into a "you're an idiot because you don't own a Sawstop and you want children to lose their hands because you're evil" tirade. I know people who have perhaps never made a woodworking project in their lives. Yet they are top commenters on the woodworking forums. They like to argue about politics, they like to tell you you're wrong, they love to act like they know more than everyone else. But they almost never offer any sincere woodworking based thought to the community. They are constantly negative; if they have anything to say, it's that you didn't do this right, or you should have done that differently. They won't compliment your work because they say that's "not helpful", as if their constant nit picking is. Trolls are not always solitary creatures, they will occasionally team up to strike in tandem or come to one another's defense if an attack goes awry. If you look at the profile of a troll, you are likely to see other trolls make up his "buddies list".
My time among the woodworking herd has taught me something. I have bad days. I get cranky. I may even get mean once in a while. One morning I answered the door with a kick at groin level that still gives my mailman nightmares. I hate those occasions, they make me feel all dirty. But a troll lives that way, spends every day wallowing in the mud and pulling others in with him. I don't believe they realize how sad they seem to the rest of us. I think they are entirely unaware that we all know who they are and what they stand for. They believe they are doing a service for the woodworking community, not "taking any crap" and "calling people out". But in reality, and this is something they will never understand, woodworking trolls have robbed the communities they inhabit of the best and brightest. True craftsman, professionals who work long hours creating woodworking greatness and possess loads of knowledge to share, don't have time to deal with the trolls. So they leave the forums, message boards and chat rooms, taking their treasures elsewhere. I know of some top woodworkers who have entirely abandoned the online communities for just that reason. And the saddest part is, the trolls will never change because it is who they are.
I'm not exactly a celebrity woodworker, but I do deal with trolls every day. They leave their comments on stumpynubs.com, on my YouTube pages, on my Facebook wall. The little success I have achieved makes them angry and they feel like they have to put me down or find fault in something I do. Nothing is ever good enough for a troll. They have no comprehension of the work that others do, the time and effort that is freely given by their fellow woodworkers. They don't understand that while they're searching the internet looking for things to criticize, there are woodworkers trying to improve their skills, building projects and overcome challenges so they can share their solutions with the community. It's easy to comment on message boards, it's hard to actually be a woodworker.
But their demented plan for putting their fellow woodworkers in their place has backfired. Because instead of feeling bad, or changing to suit their preferences, woodworkers I know apply the lessons they teach in a different way. We take note of how arrogant they appear, how silly they look when they find fault in the work of others that took far more effort than they've ever done themselves. And when we see a guy who didn't cut his dovetails right, or who posted a video with poor editing and no sound, we ask ourselves "what would a troll do". Then we do the opposite.
Wanna laugh about woodworking? Read more of Stumpy's blogs or watch the greatest woodworking show since the invention of wood at Stumpynubs.com
(Friend us on facebook, follow us on Twitter, and visit the Stumpy Store to help support the show!)
I may have to resort to free pallet wood….VIDEO BLOG- What makes hardwood hard, softwood soft, and where's it cheap?
As part of our new, greatly expanded 2014 schedule, I'm writing a video-blog called "Dear Stumpy" featuring wise-cracking answers to legitimate woodworking questions. This week: What's the difference between hard and soft woods, and where can I get good deals on lumber.
Watch it here, and enjoy! Then come back and leave a comment so we know what you think!
(Friend us on facebook, follow us on Twitter, and visit the Stumpy Store to help support the show!)
With the recent Mustache Mike video tip & this blog….VIDEO BLOG- Was that Stumpy in the 11/1997 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine?
As part of our new, greatly expanded 2014 schedule, I'm writing a video-blog called "Dear Stumpy" featuring wise-cracking answers to legitimate woodworking questions. This week: Stumpy looks thinner in the November 1997 issue of Popular Woodworking; Who's his favorite woodworking celebrity; and what's the deal with Chip McDowel?
Watch it here, and enjoy! Then come back and leave a comment so we know what you think!
(Friend us on facebook, follow us on Twitter, and visit the Stumpy Store to help support the show!)