(rock music)
Marc: We've got a very special guest with us today,
the one and only Kaleo Kala, in the flesh.
He's a real person, I verified myself.
He has come to visit The Wood Whisperer shop.
How long have you been in the States now?
Kaleo: I've been in the States for going on,
about a week, and it's great to be here.
Marc: For those of you who don't know,
first of all Kaleo is a student of,
what's the official name of the school?
Kaleo: The official name of the school is The Australian
School of Fine Furniture at the University of Tasmania.
Marc: Exactly, that's what I was going to say. Kaleo: This gigantic, long name.
Marc: It was what, a two year program?
Kaleo: Yeah, a two year program in furniture design,
furniture making, hand skills, stuff like that.
You graduate which, I don't think it really matters
but you graduate with a degree in furniture design.
Marc: You're a college grad, you've got a degree now.
You're going to put it up on the wall?
Kaleo: Yeah, post it up next to there.
Marc: I have my biology degree right
over there, it's very useful.
Kaleo: Everybody comes to my shop and goes,
"Wow, this guy is certified," like it matters.
Marc: Tell us about, because it's interesting,
you've been in to school, now you're coming out.
What kind of shop you have at home, what kind of equipment.
I'm sure going in to school you focused a lot on hand tools,
so what do you think you're going to do in terms of your
functional shop where now you need to make money,
and if a hand tool isn't the easiest way to get from point a
to point b you're going to go back to a power tool.
I'm curious, what is your shop, what do you have
in terms of tooling, and what might you change
now that you've been through this class?
Kaleo: My shop is pretty basic.
I've got a UNISAW, Delta, mostly Delta stuff.
Six inch jointer, drill press, things like that.
I've got a basic shop that I think I can produce
things with, but honestly it's going to be really
hard to produce a lot of work, or a lot of something.
I really see being more production oriented.
My thoughts on hand tools, I love hand tools,
I love using them, but as soon as I have
to pick up this hand tool I lose money,
because it takes me more time to use this than it
does to use the jointer or use the thicknesser.
They have their place, at least in my view,
they have their place in any shop,
but in a commercial shop I think they're used for fine tuning,
they're not used for the bulk of the work.
Marc: Then how do you foresee, because this is a little bit
different than the way that I ran my business initially.
I was just waiting until commissions came along.
I might fill the extra time by building
some stupid little thing for the house,
but for the most part I waited until I got a phone call and
someone said, "I want this piece made," and then I make it.
It sounds like in terms of production,
and you're building things on spec, but maybe building
multiples at the same time and trying to sell them?
How is that strategy going to work?
Kaleo: I foresee it more as in trying to,
because I don't want to rely solely on commissions,
because I don't think there's many commissions out there.
Marc: Yeah, it's not as reliable.
Kaleo: But at the same time I don't want
to be just a gallery guy, because I don't
like the fact that galleries can take
up to 60, 70 percent of commissions,
of what you sell, it's kind of nuts.
I think to start out it will be one of those things,
I look out for any exhibition or competition I can enter and
I send work in there trying to get accepted, trying to
spread my name out there so that people see what I do.
Then hopefully commissions would roll in.
I also really want to make, I like
to design production-oriented things.
If I make a table, say a hall table or sofa table,
I could make multiples of them rather quickly so that
the cost per item comes down, is what I want to do.
And hopefully be able to sell them.
As much as I hate galleries I think that's where,
in the beginning at least, is where
I'm going to have to go to get a customer.
Marc: Let me ask you. I think a lot of people are probably
completely, the concept of going away for two years
to learn woodworking is a completely foreign concept.
In just a real fast snapshot, how would
you describe the path of those two years,
what you learned and what kind of things
they were teaching you during that timeframe.
Kaleo: I decided about three years ago that I wanted
to venture in to woodworking as a full time job.
I'd always done it my whole life,
my dad was a carpenter, a cabinet maker,
and I knew I needed to be classically trained.
I figured if I was going to do it myself, I was going
to train myself, it was to take me a decade to do.
Marc: It's a lot of work. Kaleo: Yeah, it's a lot of work.
I didn't have the facilities at the time.
I had a shop at mom's house and I was living an hour away.
It just couldn't be done.
I figured if I go to school I can
cram 10 years of experience in two years.
It really was like that. It was full on.
We worked from 8:30 to 5:30 every day.
Marc: Like a full-time job then.
Kaleo: It was a full time job, that I'm paying to do.
Marc: Yeah, you're paying for the privilege to work.
Kaleo: It was good. Really quickly we buzzed through,
the first semester of my schooling was all hand tool work.
We didn't get to touch a machine until,
we got to tour the machine shop and go, "Ooh, Ah,
"look at that table saw. Look at that 20 inch jointer."
Marc: Does that kill you?
Kaleo: Yeah.
You're like, "I'm not a kid, I know what to do with that."
Kaleo: It was hell, it was hell because- Can I say hell?
Marc: You can say whatever you want.
Kaleo: I guess we're out on the Internet, huh.
You had this beautifully set up machine
shop that we couldn't do anything.
We had to be signed off on a machine,
for insurance purposes of course, and all these things.
You have to realize that when you're going into a class
like this not everybody comes in at the same level.
Some people have a lot of experience,
some people had absolutely none, so they can't just let
you go in willy nilly and just work on the machines.
Marc: How long did it take before you really got
to the point that you were just building stuff?
Kaleo: After the first semester.
We'd built little things in the first semester.
We built a little waterstone box to hold our waterstones in,
just little tiny things like that all out of hand tools.
Then you cut hundreds of sets of dovetails
just to practice hand cut dovetails,
and that's all we did for the first semester.
Then after that it was just straight building.
In the first year we were given all our projects.
They just handed us, "Okay, you are going to build this,"
so they handed us pretty much plans,
for a little chest of drawers and stuff like that.
Then the second year was all about
custom designing your own stuff.
There was four major projects.
It throws you in the deep end,
which I know you've said before is the best
place to be, because it makes you learn.
You have to adapt or you drown.
Marc: Sure, absolutely. Very cool.
It just sounds like an awesome experience, I think it's
something you can draw on for the rest of your life.
Kaleo: I'd recommend it to anybody.
We went to Australia, just because we wanted to go
to Australia, was the only reason we went to Australia.
My wife really wanted to go to
Australia, so that's why we went.
We didn't go for any specific reason.
Marc: You need her to be on board,
I would think, to get any of this off the ground.
Kaleo: Yeah, had appease her to let me go to school.
Marc: Yeah, no kidding.
(acoustic guitar music)