Woodworking has probably been one of the most important things to add during my career. I went from being and feeling like I knew how to do most everything to being forced into confronting the fact that just because I'm experienced, I don't know everything. I make so many fucking mistakes when I'm woodworking that, when people ask about what I make in my woodshop, I just respond "sawdust and mistakes, mostly".

I'm not comfortable not knowing what to do; I've been building on a really stellar foundation for so long that when I need to do something outside of that universe - not situated over that foundation - I tend to flounder, get frustrated, and feel like the dumbest man alive.

Woodworking made me confront the fact that while I may be really good at building scalable systems and high quality code, that doesn't mean I'm the master at everything, and I'm *going* to find things I need to stretch to learn. It's made me get comfortable with making mistakes again (well, as comfortable as I can be, I reckon). It's also made me comfortable with realizing when I'm hitting my patience limit and walking away instead of banging my head against the wall for hours. A bit of distance, let my subconscious chew on it for a while, and revisit it later, rather than just trying to put my head down and shove my way through.

Long story short, you should all pick up woodworking, or metal working, or throw some pottery or paint or something. Get comfortable with being a rank amateur fuckup and revel in the process of learning instead of fabricating without a hitch. I know that I, for one, really needed it.

About 17 years ago I was an intern at RIM/Blackberry and even then Matthias was a legend in the company, built the communication/foundation layer for the device.

Engineers like woodworking because they spend so much time often building intangible things (like software engineers), that it satisfies an unmet need to hold, feel, or experience their creations in a tactile way.

Thus said a therapist I had ages ago.

I have a buddy who retired around the same time I did who turned his hobby into a retirement project on YouTube. Like Matthias, he also worked on low level code for devices (Philippe Kahn's Fullpower.) In this regard I think YouTube is great for providing retired people a good way to share the knowledge they've accumulated over a life time and make a little money in the process.

Ward's electrical and electronic repair

https://www.youtube.com/@WardCo

Wandel is really cool. Highly recommend his woodworking channel. Some of my favorite things he's made cluster around making high precision things with tools that are usually easy to use imprecisely.

Copy Carver - kind of a manually run 3D CNC, lets the user 'trace' in 3 dimensions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyNu8lpQI1g

Pantorouter - build an oversized template, then end-cut a piece in a way that scales down that template (effectively multiplying precision of the template to achieve precision you wouldn't be able to get otherwise)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_72hOY2vPg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJzuM3PRAI

I'm following him on and off for years. He's the most engineer minded woodworker I met on youtube and what stands out for me is the precision he does his stuff. Most other woodworker goes by gut feeling or well established tricks or jigs to make stuff easier. This guy goes by raw precision.

I don't know how but he manages to cut stuff by the hair of a millimeter on purpose.

Wandel is doing something right, that's for sure. But for me he goes a little too far in ignoring established wisdom in his attempts to reinvent the wheel. While I admire the idea of going back to first principles, debunking myths and applying new perspectives, sometimes you need to acknowledge that things are done this way for a very good reason so let's use that as a foundation, instead of going further back and eventually, painfully concluding that you have not been able to reinvent the wheel.

Here is a particularly egregious example that simply causes harm to those trying to refinish wooden floors: https://youtu.be/mHiF8xwjRGI?t=357

I remember when I was getting into woodworking and found Wandel's channel.

I had so many 'unusual' questions in my mind, and watching Wandel's videos answered about 90% of them.

I'd also highly recommend Paul Sellers channel. He's a traditional woodworker. Watch for example his mortice and tenons how-to video. He's an old school master craftsman.

If Bob Ross would have been a woodworker, he'd have been quite like Paul Sellers.

Well, that's not a very round number in any counting base I can think of...

He makes interesting videos. And he says "mohse" many times, which is always fun.

But one common fact of the most successful Youtubers is that they have been putting out content fairly consistently for years.

There definitely seems to be something about time and consistency in the equation of success.

My biggest regret about college is not taking that workshop training lab that the Architecture department offered, which was open for any student to join, for free. With a lot of free scraps that can be practiced on. It would have been a great experience.

Now, wood working courses around me cost a thousand bucks, are at least 10 miles away, and are completely full. They only train for power tools, which I don’t have the space for at home.

Woodworking can be a good hobby for an engineer as there's a lot of problem solving - both design problems or construction problems (like how to set up a particular cut to make it more accurate or efficient).

Combining those worlds is even more fun. I had a simple project involving an Arduino board and built a nice housing for it out of wood that managed to combine my interest in software, electronics and woodworking all in one!

Started woodworking when I started a little back yard farm and built all of the housing for the animals. Learned a lot. Built everything with my wife, who outside of comfort operating power tools, is a much better builder than I am.

Forced me to confront a lot of my shortcomings as a developer because iteration is a lot more expensive in woodworking than it is in programming.

I’ve always been curious to learn more about Matthias’s RIM days. I might have read somewhere he was responsible for low level radio design / engineering, as a very very early employee. Every once in awhile his electronics knowledge kinda sneaks out in a video and you know it’s the tip of an iceberg of knowledge he has no interest in revealing.

Years ago, I thought that 3D printing would be an interesting hobby … until I realized that the frustration was aligned with my software dev day job frustrations. The lathe, the chisel, the saw - crucially the opposite of additive manufacturing. What are the analogs (er digilogs?) in software dev? Tree shaking? Ah, so many metaphors!

Holy cow, when you go to his channel and look at his video catalog, it just keeps scrolling! That in and of itself is super impressive - I don't think I've ever seen a quality personal channel with this many videos.

He kinda bootstrapped my desire to make wood based mechanical devices.

ps: https://archive.ph/5bdae just in case

He must love video editing. Surely he could afford to hire a few video editors with this many subscribers if he wanted to focus more on woodworking.

Article didn't mention his website woodgears.ca .

I love his videos about making his own bandsaws, belt sanders, etc. I've heard/read of people doing this sort of thing, but his videos documenting the process are really fascinating.

Also his website is well worth a peruse: https://woodgears.ca/

I wish he bought a CNC machine because a lot of what he’s doing can be done so easily with a relatively cheap $1500 dollar system.