(upbeat music)
- Dan! - Hey.
- It's been a coupla years.
- Yeah, like two or three, anyways.
- Like two or three. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Not long enough or too long?
- Oh, it's all good. (chuckles)
- It's all good, great.
Hey, thank you so much for having us out here.
- Sure. - Your amazing workshop.
- Well, thank you. - It even has
solar panels on it.
- Yeah. - Yeah it's wonderful.
Thank you so much for having us out.
- Sure. - We're excited to see
what you've done and what you've created,
and of course, how you're heating it.
So, what made you build it in the first place?
- Well, I've been a woodworker for 50 years.
And, so a coupla years ago I designed this
and built most of it myself,
and I'm finally in it now, I just re-tooled it.
So, I've got brand new tools, which are pretty exciting.
- Yeah! And I'm just kind of
getting back into that groove again,
- Good. - And, yah, it's been great.
I find myself there looking at the watch and going,
"Oh wow, it's 5:30, dinner.
"Oh, Jen, she's probably, okay."
I have to shut her down (laughing)
because I kind of get lost in here.
- Sure, that's great.
- So, it's a great space and it's comfortable.
It's warm when I need to be warm.
And, there's enough room for me to do what I need to do.
I'm not building any new big cabinets or anything.
I'm tinkering around with little artsy craftsy stuff
and some bookcases and stuff.
So, anyway it's working great. - Yeah, well we can probably
learn something about woodworking and some other things.
We're excited to see what you've made.
- Sure. - Thank you.
- You bet.
- Yeah, this could be in a magazine.
(chuckles)
- All right. - Thank you, sir.
- You bet.
- This is like craftsman style.
- Well, you know it's funny because
I have this natural fir floor.
Vertical grain fir on the floor.
You don't see this very often.
It was kinda like,
this is kind of a dream where I can just throw in
what I want and make it how I want it
even though it's not really practical for a shop.
There's lots of dents and dings in it now.
So, anyway that was kind of one of the splurges.
And people actually, for a while,
before I filled it up with stuff, you know,
it was all perfect, and people would
take their shoes off. (laughing)
- [Jeff] So, this is about 20 by 20, 400 square feet?
- Yup, yup. - When it came to like,
time for heating what were your options?
- So, the first thing I thought,
well, I'm gonna put a little corner stove in here.
I started looking at the costs of a tank,
'cause it's propane up here, the tubing,
and then how much room is it gonna take?
And with 400 square feet, if you lose you know,
10 or 12 square feet, that's a lot.
- Right. - That's this whole corner.
So, then I started, what else can I do?
And I went online I think,
and I don't know how I came up with Heating Green,
but I saw you guys, looked at your things,
and then went ahead talked to you, and it was perfect.
I mean look at it,
you can't even see that they're really there.
You don't notice them. - And white on white.
(laughing) - It's kind of cool.
I've taken pictures of just the ceiling with the lights.
Anyways, it's a pretty trick just looking at them.
- Yeah, yeah. - And they work great.
I can come in, well as you know,
it's not warm in here when you get here,
but once, half an hour later you start getting warmed up,
start turning the heat down.
It's like, it just heats so evenly,
and there's no fan going.
Sawdust isn't a problem as far as combustion or anything.
And they're just so clean.
I really like how just, they just blend.
And you don't really know what they are
unless somebody tells you what they are.
So, anyway, it's worked great.
- Good.
- It's been perfect for this application.
- [Jeff] So the benches are warm, the tools are warmer.
Like you said, no noise. - Yeah, it's just,
it's so different.
It's like you can if you stand under it
you can feel the heat.
It's like standing in the sunshine.
- [Jeff] Right.
How hot do you think that is right now?
- Ah, (chuckles)
- You win a prize.
- Yeah.
- So, those are two by four 750 watts,
about 250 degrees a piece. - 250 degrees, yeah.
- [Jeff] That's gonna warm up the
weight under them and everything and surrounding them, so.
- Yeah, it's a very unique heat.
I mean, it's like nothing that I've,
literally it's like you go over
and stand by that window and you get warm.
- 'Cause of the sun. - Same thing here.
- Right. - Only different for those.
Which is kind of why I put them how I did,
'cause then no matter where,
'cause you can see that this is like the pathway
where all the tools and working goes,
- Right. - and so you're always not,
never too far from some sunshine.
And I turn it down about 55 degrees at night,
- Okay. - And then I come back in
when again I turn it to 60 usually
and within 15, 20 minutes I peel off my coat,
and, in the summer of course,
we don't need all of it.
It has been very surprisingly comfortable
and I like them because you don't know they're there.
- [Jeff] Right.
- [Dan] They don't make any noise.
Anyway, they're great. - Yeah.
So you have a total of four
that's a couple of 250 watt space heaters,
but they're not taking up any usable space,
- No. - There's no chance
of anything tipping over, - Yeah.
- [Jeff] And consuming dust or any,
have you spent any money on maintenance?
- On these? - Yes.
- No. (chuckles) - Okay, great.
So, pointing out the obvious, - Yeah, yeah.
- (mutters) it goes against the notion that
people can think that heat rises,
well, warm air rises, so a little science for you.
- Yeah. - And so, yeah,
we're really grateful that it's been a great way to
condition it, and that you use it often.
- And your kind of, never even knowing
the technology was there,
much less that it was made dumb again.
And, electricians installed them
and they've been great. - Fantastic.
- They haven't, no worries. - Good, well let's
take a look at the things that you've made.
Thanks. - Okay, you bet.
- So, I don't do much wood working.
What is this beautiful wood?
It looks like it's got character and even like--
- Yeah, little worm holes. - Worm holes.
- And this is called spalting,
it's basically kind of the start of rotting thing
but it hasn't softened yet. - Got it.
- [Dan] This is cherry, wild cherry,
that grew up the road here about six miles,
and I cut this down, I used to cut this up for firewood,
then my mom came and visited one year and she said,
"Cherry, Dan!
"What are you burning that for?
"You oughta make something out of that."
So, I had it slabbed into like this.
- Wow. - And you can see,
this is the live edge.
These are the band saw marks. - Okay, yeah.
- And you can see they all...
You know, trees are circular so
they tend to warp one way or the other,
so there's a bit of a crown here and a bit of a,
anyways, so to build something out of this
you need to work on it.
So, this wood has been here, I don't know,
40 years or something.
- Okay, wow!
- Well, not here, I've been packing it around
(laughing) four or five places.
And you can see this one is pretty well,
most of the cut marks, the saw marks are gone.
You need to joint this still.
- That's straight as an arrow.
- Yeah, it's pretty good.
This was a piece that,
this was obviously a bigger piece,
but this is a duck, you know, well.
But you can see it has some of the spalting in it,
- Oh, sure.
- And that was one of the first things that I got,
I've been hanging onto him for,
you can see his feet have already broken off,
for 30, 40 years and just one of those things
that you just kept carrying around with you.
- Does he have a name?
- The duck (laughing). - The duck?
- It's nice having wood and then you make the project,
rather than saying, "Oh, I'm gonna build this thing,
"what do I have to do it with?
"Can I do it with this?"
- Excellent.
- Here's the dominoes.
I did the blank of the dominoes first.
- Wow.
What kind of wood is all this?
- This would be maple which is what this is,
and you can see how the oil just pops a bit.
And then we've got black walnut for half.
All the even dots - All the even dots
- [Dan] Are the black ones.
All the odd are red oak. - Right.
- [Dan] So, we've got black walnut, red oak,
maple, all local woods.
You know, here's the set right here.
There's all the dominoes set up, I did those first.
- [Jeff] How many dominoes in a set, just curious?
- 55, double 12, - 55, okay.
- Or double nine, sorry.
And about 495 holes.
- [Jeff] Wow.
- That's 495 drills. - Right.
- And then you have to cut the dowel
out of three foot, so, cutting little plugs.
495 little plugs,
half of them black and half of them oak red.
- See, you learned a ton. - I did some math.
(laughing)
And then this-- - Part of this?
- And this is the box, that I just kind of
created this to...
- Also maple and something
else in here? - Yep, this is all maple.
You can see here some half inch,
inside there's three quarter.
And I did this so that when you put the dominoes in,
you can still grab them to take them out,
- Interesting. - That's why there's space in.
- Right. - Anyway, this box I built
is just a box, it was a solid piece just like this,
(mumbles) and after it's done you come back
and actually cut on the table saw
the top off of it. - Okay, bam!
- And then I've already got it grooved for the hinge,
that's ready to go. - Yep.
So, I'm real close,
getting real close to the end of this.
If you have the tools, you can go from the rough
to make some pretty nice stuff.
- That is great.
That's great, and it'll be an heirloom.
- Well, you know, it's something that, you keep it.
I have a son and maybe he'll keep it and maybe he won't.
But that's okay, I have grandkids, too, so.
- Yeah. - I was always fascinated
with buildings, from ages ago,
the architecture's always fascinated me.
- Okay. - So I just fell into it
that way, you design stuff and you build
probably half a dozen houses, in fact, until that house.
What I meant I built every house
I lived in since I left home.
- Wow.
- And actually on that wall here, you can see,
I have a coupla pictures.
This is the first octagon I ever built.
This is when I moved out as a 20 year old to Washington.
I cut all the logs on the property.
This was a neighbor who had 40 acres.
He said come on up and build a cabin.
- [Jeff] Wow.
- So these are kind of the steps,
and then this was the second one I did.
This was a 20 footer and this was about a 40 footer.
And this I sawed off a cedar tree,
so it's kind of again, a geometric
kind of construction. - That is amazing, right.
- So, I've been building houses for a while,
and that's, just like you said,
this shop might be my last deal
because I'm not 30 anymore. (laughing)
- Right, that is amazing. - But it's fun, you know.
I can still look at the picture and it just looks neat.
- Yeah, this isn't your first rodeo.
- No, this isn't.
- So your space here you said
is about 20 by 20, 400 square feet
and you've got, looks like books,
and you've got, this is like,
I mean, this is like almost too organized.
- Well, yeah. - You got batteries,
chargers, and this little stereo system here,
and a refrigerator. - Oh yeah, you've gotta
keep your juice cold, right? - Your juice cold,
that's right, and you've got bins,
they're even marked so you know what's in,
and clamps. - Yeah.
Well I, the job I did for 20 years before I retired from it,
I was their warehouse guy, so I organized stuff for them.
So, it just came naturally.
- I can tell. - It was interesting,
I thought everyone just had that natural bent.
Not true. - Not true?
- Not true, far and few between.
Anyway, it kinda just,
it's just a natural way that I do things.
And even as I outfitted the shop, you know,
when it was just a building, a blank space,
it's like, "How do I do this," you know?
It's not real big.
A lot of shops are bigger,
because obviously tools take up some room.
But, you can see I actually just
figured out what tools do I buy?
No matter what kind of shop you have
it needed some flat space,
and I built this just like everything else,
and you can see these little, I have castors.
I can step, roll into here,
- Okay, wow. - And then I can just
step on it and it raises it up
and I can actually move this
to wherever. - Make it modular.
- Anyways, so, so that's these three
that were actually used in the domino thing,
as was that, as was that.
So, literally every tool in here,
with the exception of that spindle sander,
I used on the domino project.
- Excellent. - And that's kinda how I
figured out what to start off with.
I mean, I've worked with tools before, but,
I used all these on my project,
- Okay. - So, if you can do dominoes,
you can do anything.
- That's great, that's great. (laughing)
It's definitely inspiring.
- Yeah.
(upbeat music)