hpr_transcripts/hpr2202.txt

Episode: 2202
Title: HPR2202: Makers on YouTube
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2202/hpr2202.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 15:42:21

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This in HPR episode 2,202 entitled Make A On You Tube.
It is hosted by May Morris and in about 25 minutes long and carry an explicit flag.
The summary is, I am trying to learn to make various things and I'm watching you tube to find information.
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Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio. This is Dave Morris and I'm going to talk to you about
my interest in making things and makers on YouTube.
Now we're a bit short on shows just now so this is basically a list which I guess is a slight cheat but hopefully it'll be of interest to some people.
So I've prepared some long notes where I've gone into a bit of detail about the various YouTube channels and stuff.
But I'm not going to read the whole stuff just talk briefly about things.
If you want to drill down more you can look at my notes or you can go and have a look at the channels themselves if you want to.
So I guess I've been a maker of some sort that I probably prefer watching other people make things to be honest.
I've been doing this stuff all my life. I was born and brought up in the 1940s and 50s
when the UK was recovering from World War II and most of the people in my family and friends and children of my parents, friends and stuff
made stuff and repaired stuff. Everybody probably anyway had clothes where there were patches on them because clothes were expensive.
I was still rationing when I was small. My dad was very much into shoe repair. He was quite good at being a DIY cobbler.
And most people grew their own food as well. Most people had enough garden space to do it and if they didn't they had access to allotments and so on and so forth.
So it was a different time though since that time is coming back.
To say my notes I've not been that good at making stuff. I'm not exactly a skilled craftsman.
But I have made some basic things like I made myself an easy chair some time ago.
I've built cupboards and wardrobes and storage solutions for the house.
I built the kids a hutch for their pet rabbit and guinea pig and also an outdoor run for it.
And now all that sort of thing. I'm sure lots of people know what I'm talking about and probably have done the same sort of thing.
When I went to school and I went to a grammar school it was in the days when the UK had a 3-tier system.
Grammar school was the highest level. Secondary modern was the next level down which you were sent to if you didn't get the exam for grammar school.
And then there were technical schools and colleges where you went to learn metalwork and woodwork I guess and all sorts of other things.
Which seems it was a bizarre system and it folded not too long after I finished.
I came through it. But anyway at the grammar school it was mandatory that all the boys learned metalwork and woodwork.
We'd have end years of woodwork and end years of metalwork. Can't remember how many now.
But we learned how to use hand tools, power tools to a limited extent.
They weren't hand-pailed power tools much. It was all things like drill presses and automatic sores and things like that.
We knew how to make joints in wood. We could do basic metalwork like a little bit of blacksmithing not much so.
We learnt to solder big things. We braised things and so on and so forth.
So that was all fine and great. It was good to have. I don't know that kids in the UK today get as much as that.
All of these obviously do get some technical skill.
But mostly I've used the woodworking stuff rather than metalworking. I've done a lot of do quite a lot of soldering these days.
So myself I stopped watching TV in 2013 and found that I preferred listening to podcasts and reading and so on.
Never been much of a YouTube user until fairly recent times.
Then I discovered various YouTube channels that cover making things of various sorts.
The sort of people that I follow are those who are makers in the sense of woodworkers and metalworkers.
Often artists who have broadened their skills and that sort of thing.
So I thought I'd go through my list of some of my favourite channels just to maybe see if anybody else is interested in the subject.
So a lot of the makers that I've subscribed to nowadays earn their living on YouTube. Not all of them.
There are a few hobbyist people.
And what I've done in my list is I've grabbed the channel description of their channels and put that into the list.
At least a subset of it. Sometimes they're quite long. So I've grabbed the first sort of paragraph.
And I've also added my own small summary of things.
So what I'll do is I'll go through these fairly quickly for fear of making a long boring list and leave you to dig deeper if you want to.
So my first channel that I subscribe to with an interest in people making things I guess was Paul Sellers channel.
And he seems to be quite an old guy's similar age to me in his 60s.
And he makes all manner of wooden items. I guess he's been a teacher at various times in his life.
He makes his living that way. And he had a series on his channel talking about how you could make your own woodworking workbench using the sort of pretty nasty wood that you can buy in UK DIY stores.
Getting a hold of good wood in UK is difficult. It's possible but it's amazingly expensive.
And you will not find it to any great degree in the DIY stores.
It's hard even to come across sheet goods of any quality either in my experience anyway.
MDF, yeah sure. Chipboard which is what you call it in America.
But it's made of wood chips stuck together with glue.
Fly wood to some extent but it's not very good mostly in my experience anyway.
Maybe it's a local thing I don't know. His episodes are long and detailed.
He talks about all manner of things, fixing up tools, sharpening things, making basic woodworking joints etc etc.
They are long and very detailed. But if you want to learn how to do stuff rather than just be entertained then there's nothing wrong with being entertained.
But if you really want to learn the stuff then he's the place to go to I think.
Next is Frank Howarth. He runs his channel as a hobby. Doesn't make his living with it.
But he is trained as an architect. But he's woodworking and design skills are brilliant.
Which I guess is something that might follow on from the architecture.
He is also amazingly good at making videos. He is good at making stop motion things.
So he has his project self assemble in stop motion which is I still find enormously amusing.
But then I guess I'm easily amused. He has and here's the thing that makes him stand out to me anyway.
He's probably got the best workshop of any of the various makers. Certainly the best I've ever seen.
And he bought his wife bought a house with building a workshop or obtaining a workshop very very high on their agenda.
And he has built the most superb shop and he has populated it with his other hobby which seems to be collecting old workshop machinery.
So he's got multiple radio alarm sores which he has brought back from the dead in many cases and built them into his workshop.
It's just amazing if you're at all interested in this type of thing.
I was strongly recommend you go and look at his workshop build video series.
Jimmy DeRest is my third choice. He is an artist and a maker.
He started as a graphic artist graphic designer not quite sure. But anyway he's incredibly skilled.
He's been at it for quite some time. He's based in New York. He has a strange workshop down some stairs from the pavement somewhere.
He also has a place in upstate New York where he does quite a lot of other work.
He seems to be able to make stuff in any medium and solve pretty much any problem.
And he does some brilliant videos about what he's doing.
He's one of the few makers I've found to have a Wikipedia page. So he does rank pretty high.
I think he's had several TV shows in the past though he's walked away from TV now.
Apart from Paul Sellers, people have mentioned so far all in the States.
Matthias, I think he pronounced his name as the next one. Matthias Wondell. He's based in Canada.
His name is German. His German ancestry.
He, I believe, trains an engineer and worked for RIM, who now called Blackberry for sometimes.
So he's a programmer and an engineer. But now he does a lot of wood work.
And I think he makes his living on YouTube. His particular thing is that he builds his own workshop machinery.
I think a lot of other people do this now but in many cases they point at Matthias' original stuff as a...
an inspiration or indeed they've used his plans that he sells.
One of the particular machines he invented was think called a Panther router.
Which is a router router, we'd say in the UK.
Which is mounted sideways on a pantograph, which is a hinged structure.
Which you can make move in various directions.
So he's created this device in wood. His machines are often made primarily in wood.
Except where it's completely inappropriate to do so.
But his design has been turned into a metal device, which is pretty expensive but amazingly good.
It's great for making mortise and tenon joints and all that other things.
He particularly designs and makes gears out of wood using plywood.
And he's written his own software which will generate plans for these gears.
It's a Windows-based thing I think.
But still pretty damned impressive that he can do this.
And then he cuts them out on his bandsaw and stuff like that.
Yes, very advanced. It sings somebody who's doing engineering in wood.
It's fairly rare I'd thought.
Next we have a channel called I Like to Make Stuff.
Bob Claggett is the owner.
And he makes things in all manner of materials.
He's originally a programmer.
So he does quite a lot of projects involving Arduino's and it's got a 3D printer and that type of stuff.
He's got a CNC as well.
Well these guys have CNC's these days.
It's fairly small table top devices but still.
But he's got into welding and makes some interesting stuff out of metal.
And he makes a lot of wood and stuff.
But a lot of other materials as well including 3D printed stuff.
Next is Matthew Karamona.
And he is the most exquisite woodworker I think of them all.
He does some absolutely superb work.
Particularly beautiful dovetail jointed things.
But his particular skill is he has access to forest area owned by a friend where he bells trees.
And he has been using various ways of milling them into boards.
I think he's used to chainsaw mill in the past.
But in recent times he's taught himself to weld and he's been collecting trees from all sorts of sources.
It seems in the states.
I don't think it's quite the same here.
When a tree is felled from maybe storm damage or something like that.
Often people have got nothing to do with them and you can pick them up off craigslist and stuff.
And he's built himself a device for hauling them away.
And also he's currently in the he's got a garden full of massive green tree trunks.
And he's currently building himself a huge bandsaw mill onto which he can place these things.
I'm intrigued to see how.
And he's going to cut them up into boards.
It's nearly ready to go I think.
But it's an electric device.
It's utterly astonishing that somebody could come up with that design and build it from the ground up.
You know with very little in the way of previous knowledge is just amazing.
This is why I like watching these guys because you can you know there's a sort of human angle as well as the informational side of it that I find fascinating.
I also watch Jay Bates.
He's a USA based guy as well.
And he does a lot of interesting woodwork.
And he's been getting into some fine woodworking projects where he does some really high quality joints and that sort of thing.
He's just been making particularly beautiful boxes out of maple and walnut.
It should look really really really good.
And they're you know they're made to a very high standard indeed.
The next guy John Peters, his channel's called John Peters Art and Home.
He's a woodworker primarily but he's also an artist.
So he does painting and that type of stuff he makes his own frames etc etc but he's also turned his hand to metalwork.
So he does some high quality stuff.
He sells his products rather than a lot of these YouTube guys make it to demonstrate, make things to demonstrate them on their channels.
They don't ever sell them but he's certainly in the business of selling his art and his constructions.
There's a lot of stuff on his channel including everything from beekeeping to painting and cooking and making furniture.
Next is make something which is owned by a guy called David Petuto and he's woodworker who has some very interesting and original design ideas.
And he does quite a lot of videos on what he's doing based around a C&C and a laser cutter which is an interesting thing.
And recently a 3D printer has come on the scenes and he makes sort of furniture and other sorts of devices.
He sells stuff at craft fairs so he's often talking about what he's making for that.
This is a guy in Canada who is in the French, I'm not quite sure where exactly where he is but it's in the French speaking area.
There's a la Valancourt and I can hardly understand his French. Canadian French is really really difficult if you only know basic schoolboy French as I do.
Anyway he calls himself the woodpecker which is Gosseur de Bois in French.
I had to say that because he's bilingual and he does videos in French with English subtitles interestingly and also in English with English subtitles in case you don't understand his accent.
I don't think he has much of an accent personally. He's a hobbyist.
He's also built himself a large workshop which is documented on his channel again I quite enjoy watching that one.
He's mainly a woodworker and does quite a lot of different projects for the house and for his presence at Christmas and that type of thing.
One of the things about him is he does sometimes make some pretty normal mistakes trying to do work on a lathe for example and having his project shatter into pieces.
And he just documents them and says look guys don't do this which I think is very brave of him.
Within the past year or so I've been following April Wilkerson who came to woodworking DIY relatively recently, a couple of years I guess.
And she's developing some great skills and making all sorts of domestic projects and that type of stuff.
So it's woodworking and metalworking and she's certainly prepared to take on some very challenging projects.
Nick Ferry is my next one based in the USA. He does some very cool projects in wood and is good with hints and tips about how to do this type of thing.
The next channel is called Darbin Orva which everybody's puzzled about because the channel owner is called Lynn.
She originates from Sweden so her accent is still quite strong but I find it quite nice actually.
She makes a wide variety of projects. She works in wood but also will turn her hand to sewing, making things out of leather.
She's particularly good at electronic devices. She likes making various forms of lighting based around LED strips and that type of thing inside wooden devices.
So I like her from the looking sort of craft angle of making things.
Ferry recent person to appear on YouTube I think is a guy called Marius Hornberger from Germany and he's not sure if he's only appeared or whether I've just only caught up with him recently.
He's only 21 and he's currently a university studying engineering but he's an excellent engineer and problem solver and he documents what he's doing as he makes wooden things and basically building his own equipment for his workshop and tools for his workshop as well.
A lot of his constructions are influenced by Marius Wondell that I mentioned earlier but he's definitely somebody to watch.
It also makes some excellent videos and has quite a sense of humour.
Another person I've recently started to follow is called Laura Kampf.
She's based in Germany in Colne, Cologne as we say and she's only been on YouTube since last year 2015 and I haven't been subscribed to her very long, I only discovered her in the past few months.
She makes a lot of really interesting projects which embody all sorts of design and artistic approaches and she seems to be able to handle any sort of construction.
She welds like there's no tomorrow which I'm very jealous of, seems to be able to make all manner of wooden things and so on.
Definitely worth a check to see whether you like what she's doing. I think she has, her following has grown enormously in the past maybe a year.
Another channel that I've only started to watch relatively recently is called Get Hands Dirty.
It's run by Cristiana who's based in Portugal. She did an FA curiously and mentioned that she was trained as a sculptor but because she wanted, as often the case,
she wanted to solve problems of needing a desk, needing space, needing a bed and this sort of stuff in her apartment.
She turned to woodworking and how did she find out how to do woodworking and stuff?
Well she watched people on YouTube of course so it is the same as the way to do it.
Anyway she's really good and also I think her artistic training has meant that her video making skills are very good so she's well worth a look.
Finally in my YouTube list is John Heiss based in Canada. He is another person who makes devices, machines.
He has handmade devices in his workshop, things like a router table and sanding table and that type of thing.
All of which he's made from motors, he's picked up various places and he's built a wooden structure around those types of things.
If you're interested in that personally I am quite keen on the idea of building my own tools like that.
Then he's got some very interesting solutions to the various problems.
He's got some other channels where he's actually refurbishing his house and he shows what he's doing there.
Check him out, anyway he certainly has some very original and interesting approaches to things.
So finally I was going to, there are four podcasts related to making that I thought I've mentioned just in case there are of interest.
The first one is called Brain Pick and it's actually run by Bob Claggett who runs the I like to make stuff channel.
What he started doing was he was doing an interview series on his YouTube channel called Brain Pick and I think it seemed probably more sensible to turn it into an audio thing which is fine by me.
I have to say so he's turned it into a podcast.
It does seem to be on hiatus at the moment, it's been a while since he's put anything out on it but I thought I'd mention it just in case he restarts.
It was, it's very interesting to hear him talking to various of the makers and to find out what makes them tick and so forth.
The next one is making it with Jimmy DeRest of Bob Claggett and David Pichuto.
So these three YouTube guys get together to do a podcast and they're doing a weekly podcast.
They talk about all manner of things and in fact they've recently met in Boston and with a lot of other makers for an event where they've been talking about the whole business of YouTube and making stuff and so on and so forth.
Which is pretty interesting I thought anyway.
When I've only started recently listening to it's called the reclaimed audio podcast.
The three hosts also have YouTube. I am following them but I haven't put them in my list because I've been following them for very long.
The hosts are Phil Pinsky, Tim Sway and Bill Loots. I haven't referenced them but I'm sure you could find them if you have interested.
It's an interesting and amusing podcast. It's always interesting to hear people of similar interests discussing their interests.
They mainly concentrate on stuff to do with reclaimed materials so that adds another interesting dimension.
The final podcast is called the Woodworking Podcast and this is fairly recent one.
It's fairly new I should say and there are three hosts all of whom I have mentioned in my YouTube list who get together to talk about stuff.
I think on a weekly basis it might be less frequently than that two weeks maybe so that's worth a listen.
I've listed the details of all of these various YouTube channels and podcast feeds at the end of the notes in case you switched off from my ramble already.
Okay, well that's it and that's it. I hope you found that interesting.
Okay, bye.
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