Contributor
Norm helped a lot to set the hook for me. He is genuine and engaging. I speculate that Delta would have abandoned the sponsorship in one of their numerous cost-cutting moves that has removed them from serious consideration of most tool buyers these days. Ah, the good ole days.
Rustic? Well, no. That was not my intention!
Contributor
Patrick .....Was the last response directed at me?
Guest
Nope no one specific person. And for sure not you, now just looking back at your input. You dont seem all safety freakish at least not in the context of this thread and if you are I actually really don’t care so long as I don’t have to work with you. And as it seems you also are on both sides of this as well so.. Well at least we can agree on the tv shows. I largely share your perspective on that.
Just adding my perspective and experience to the conversation.
I should add that I get the importance of us all being able to do what we need to do for ourself. If being hyper aware of safety is your thing so be it. That not directed at any one person.
I dont want to be told how and not to do my work and I’m not about to tell others.
I learnt long ago you dont direct comments at any one person on a forum. That goes without saying.
Just my opinions and the original poster asked for conversation. I’m just adding my perspective..
Originally Posted by jack duren
Last edited by Patrick Walsh; 01-04-2020 at 12:27 PM.
Contributor
Norm is the reason I got into woodworking. Well, maybe not the "reason", but he certainly greased the ways. I did a show with Bob Villa and a couple with ToH, on Rich Trethewy's side of things. rich would always say of Norm that Norm never changed router bits. He just changed routers.
I also recall the hue and cry from the editorials in FWW when they put Norm on the cover. Sacriledge, but it sure worked out for Delta, PC, Makita, etc, etc
Last edited by Jack Frederick; 01-04-2020 at 12:09 PM.
Contributor
I lost the end of two fingers in 1985 at a cabinet shop in Alabama... I'm very aware of safety these days but on the tube I may agree or disagree with safety used but started ignoring it just to get to the point.. I just get all twisted on the forums when they say..."I stand to the left"....
Last edited by jack duren; 01-04-2020 at 12:43 PM.
Guest
Years ago in my early twenties and well on my way as a carpenter I was living in Tucson Arizona and staying with a extended relative. I had taken a break from the trades at the time questioning if I really wanted to spend the rest of my life making a living what I still see as the hard road.
Anyway my gracious host was in his late 70’s a polio survivor and had the will of a bull. This guy was impressive. Very very impressive, nothing was gonna stop him from doing the things he wanted. He had decades of experience working with power tools. We where building a green house in his back yard. He was ripping 2x4 down into strapping on a job site saw.
Suddenly I heard him yell for me “Patrick Patrick” I came running around the house and calm as could be he told me I needed to take him to the the hospital. I asked what happened and he told me he had cut two of his dam fingers off. I believed him but didn’t get to it till he instructed me to go in the house and get a bag of ice and come back pick up his two fingers put them on ice and drive him to the hospital. I didn’t even know where the hospital was. I was mortified at the time but also stayed calm.
Anyway the next summer I helped him build another green house. Both fingers were successfully sewn back on but with limited to no mobility.
I have since seen a few more accidents.
I feel after years spent working on machines you develop a sense for machines and materials and how they will and will not react. Non the less every once and while a piece of lumber going through the table saw or whatever machine will release tension and or split a chunk off and what it does and does not do can be predicted and counteracted to a extent by gut instinct reactions served by years of experience. But once and a while that circumstance will get you and bite you in the rear regardless of all precautions and prior experience.
I guess I’m just not a very fearful person. That’s not to say I’m not safe or smart and don’t think about the potential risks with everything I do. I actually do and it’s this awareness I use to make decisions regarding risk vrs reward.
I am pretty fearless and I do accept probably the consequence of higher risk taking than most. Be it Woodworking, scaling ice or rock cliffs with or without ropes, jumping my BMX bike out of the equivalent of second story building onto payment without pads fully knowing it will probably take 50 tries before I land the trick and I ma or may not end up at the hospital or racing down say the auto road of mount Lemmon in the pouring rain just to win a bike race. My relationship with fear and reward are probably a bit different than some. Not all but some.
Last edited by Patrick Walsh; 01-04-2020 at 12:49 PM.
Contributor
He was lucky.... I went into 3/4 dado blades. No sewing them back on...
Guest
Holly crap,
That’s a freaking mess. I’m sorry.
No denying one would be very motivated toward safety after something like that.
Yet again some would get over it and return to their old ways.
Years ago my climbing partner dropped me 30’ uninterrupted straight to the ground. I landed smack on a rock ledge another 15’ off the actual ground. I shattered my ankle and spent the next six months on my mother’s couch non weight bearing.
The previous week I was up in northern Vermont climbing this without ropes and nobody in site mid week. Had I fallen I would had lay there and frozen to death. If your a good climber relatively easy climbing. But still you stick a pick into ice or a cramp on and like wood it releases tension and can just chinches off, sometimes a small piece Otherti,es a piece the size of a small car. I did this weekly for years as people had jobs and were at work and I wanted to climb that bad.
https://www.mountainproject.com/rout...e-tablets-left
Well in that six months even this guy got scared and adapted his behavior. So much so I have never climbed again. I knew full well that with my understanding of risk vrs reward and ultimately my lack of attachment to this particular life I would leave my dear single mother without her only child. Maybe worse her caring for me brain injured or cripple for the rest of her life. I miss climbing like I can’t communicate but you know it’s not that I’m not scared of power tools and don’t respect them “I do” it’s just that risk vrs reward thing. Sometimes there is always a risk..
at e
Last edited by Patrick Walsh; 01-04-2020 at 1:25 PM.
Member
I think Norm would do well today. The key thing about his show was his choice of projects, showing the origins, showing the prototype and the finished project. The woodworking was of course about his sponsors and selling tools. Today the tools would be different, the safety attitudes would be different, and I think it could be a great show. Thanks Norm.
Contributor
I would look forward to watching it. But it wouldn't take but minutes for someone to find something negative to say about the show on the internet.
Personally I like David Marks
Last edited by jack duren; 01-04-2020 at 1:54 PM.
Member
Those old shows would be a good candidate for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. It was the original "reality tv", like so many other such at the time. Mister Rogers, now that was genuine. As was Roy Underwood, when he bled you saw it.
Contributor
I wonder if society is now generically ADHD. I personally can't sit and watch one of those shows all the way thru, even on rerun. I use youtube to get a quick look at a tool or technique. I think the whole regular "channel" thing is sort of weird. In any case there seems so much duplication and over simplification, and not much new light, at least for the problems I'm trying to solve. I last tuned my bandsaw in 2008, seems to still be in good shape. How many 'build a cross-cut sled' vids does the world need? I stopped using my crosscut sled a good while ago. My Kreg Miter gauge was so much better, more adaptable, and has me sliding my material easily across a very lovingly cared for piece of machined steel - dust collection works better that way too. Now I just build another MDF sacrificial face, most days I can reuse part of the prior one for something.
Member
What I remember from NYWS was that, in the first season or two, he made do with the basic power tools: table saw, router, drill, etc. I liked that a lot, because that was what I had access to, and he showed some jigs and stuff to make those basic power tools more flexible.
But in later seasons, he seemed to become a demonstrator for whatever new (and expensive) power tool that would make the job easier (or whose manufacturer would donate it for product exposure), but was beyond the budget (and shop space) available to amateur wood workers like me.
I had taken wood shop class in high school for a couple of semesters, and we had more machine tools that would do more specialized things (we had to cross cut on the RASs, we could only rip or dado on the table saws, etc.) In the beginning seasons of NYWS, Norm showed how to use the table saw for much more than I had learned, and I appreciated it. We always started from rough-sawn stock (unless it was plywood).
Now I am a recently retired electrical engineer, and am rekindling my latent woodworking hobby. But I kinda like using my unisaw for a lot more functions than we did in shop class. I also don't have the room for all the extra machines in my garage/shop that still has to share space at night with an SUV!
Andy
Contributor
As with all things in life, every dog has its day.
Norm in his day, was great to watch.... he had virtually no competition. If you like ww, u would prob. watch the show. He had a great run, demonstrating how people loved ww content.
But like all things educational in the last 50 yrs, they get trumped quickly. While books were the primary source of education for the prior two hundred years, video took a heavy bite from the book market. And now, youtube took a huge bite out of the tv market.
I agree with many posters above, youtube videos vary from horrible to remarkable. Some authors do such a great job with editing, they speed through parts which are sensless to watch, add written comments where something might have been confusing, and demonstrate a process, or use of a tool like no book could match. OTOH, some videos are an elementary attempt of seeking 5 minutes of fame. What is incredible to me about these videos, is just how many people have the time, and the strong desire to be an instructor.
Unlike a book, or a purchased video content, with youtube, if you get a dud, u wasted a minute of your time, u move on. I can only assume, its the advent of these youtube videos which is greatly reducing the ww tv content we will see in the future. On my PBS, they seem to play the Classic Woodworking episodes over and over. I would guess there is maybe 7 episodes total. I fear it will be the end of tv ww shows.
Also, many of the streaming services have the full catalogs of many ww shows, you can binge watch them at your leisure. I even saw the WoodWhisperer on Amazon Prime. So the content will never die, it lives on through mostly free streaming services. I have not noticed fee based yet, but it might exist.
Remarkably, I still like a good book, it serves well as a handy reference for certain subject matter.
Contributor
The other thing about YT compared to Norm or ToH is that YT has provided the platform for anyone who wants to get their topic out there to do so. If you think back to the early days of ToH, when Bob Villa ran it and Norm was just starting, how many of us watched and thought, "I could do that show..." I used to watch Villa and be put off with how curt and abrupt he was with the folks he had on the show. I was then invited to film a segment with them on Rinnai Tankless water heaters, which I represented. I got there and there was a crew and basic run throughs were done on a number of segments, standing seam metal roofing, mine, trim, fireplace, paint, etc. Once they began filming I had a much greater appreciation for the production process and Bob's...drive! Yes, it was slam bang but I had to appreciate the production process and how much got done in a day, and that is what BV did. He produced. I had the same opportunities on a couple ToH segments which I expected to be in, but as a competitor in the P&H Rep business in the New England market, Rich T wasn't letting me anywhere near a camera. It was pretty funny really. Having had a look at how those shows were put together I have great respect for the people who do this.
You tube has given everyone the opportunity to take a shot.
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