First impressions, first show In this area. I have never seen or heard of this guy before the controversy about the title Rough Cuts, when FWW started using the same name a few months ago. So I have no axe to grind. The first show shown here in the DC/MD/VA area was on building a trestle table, on Maryland Public TV.
On the plus side: Interesting little road trip to get wood and see a log being flitch cut with a big sideways bandsaw mill. Good production values in the film making without a lot of fancy transitions and effects. Good editing. Fast paced.
On the minus side: Fast paced… maybe too fast p[aced. More on that later. I watched this episode with my wife, no stranger to woodworking because of me, but not a woodworker herself. While I followed everything because I had experience with this particular project, she got lost early on. She didn’t realize that the pre made parts were being used as patterns for the layout of the chalked ruff cuts, he talked too fast and everything was “all right guys, listen up guys, guys this guys that ’till it started to get to me as well. Also annoying was the “Easy sneezy, easy breezy” expressions, it got a bit much.
Other problems: Spring joints… I know they are controversial, he advocates them. Breadboard ends… needed because this is a trestle table with a big overhang but he did not make floating tenons, nor did he peg them with elongated holes. He didn’t peg them at all as far as I could see, it looked like they were all glued in. The segment on finishing was hurried and I got next to nothing out of it.
Overall impression: Not enough time to cover everything they wanted to put in the show. He raced thru everything, talking faster and faster ’till I got out of breath just watching. If you are going to go at that pace you have to have periods that go a bit slower every once in a while to let the audience catch its breath.
All that said, I did enjoy the show, we are set up to record it every week, and I do look forward to watching more episodes and wish them success.
Replies
duration
Is it a 30-minute show like most of the woodworking programs? That length of show forces lots of details to be glossed over. It hasn't arrived in NM yet.
Show length.
Yes, full 30 less a couple of "Sponsored by Woodcraft, we make wood work." PBS standard spots. Still a lot more time than network 30 minute shows which used to be 22:30. I edited a daily 30 minute network TV show for 28 years, so I know about time constraints. I liked the show, didn't want to get too negative, but it seemed kinda frantic. I got input from my wife as we were watching it as well. I know that there are folks out there who either loved or hated his blog, so I was interested to see for myself.
his blog site is great.
I like the way he talks even if he is a yankee. If you ever visit his site (i've been a member since before the show), his blog is cool and he goes into greater detail. His bombay(pardon the sp), is a cool segment. I agree this was always the limitations with Norm, you can't do a lot in an hour. If you want a real detail show go join Charles Neils site. He takes a project from start to finish in weekly hour (aproximately) hour long comercial free segments. and you get all the details, and he talks in a normal pace (he's from Va so what else would you expect). I have not seen his show here in the northeast yet, but if its like his blog vids I'd watch it in a heartbeat, he knows what he's doin.
rough cut - that "new" woodworking show
Watched this new show today... if I want to actually watch it and understand this I'll need to slow the speed down on my DVR. I used to travel the entire country on business and have been exposed to most of America's speech variances, so I have heard people talk this fast before. But this fellow won't be teaching much to the average person if he doesn't learn to speak slower. The rapid fire East Coast diction truly ruins what might have been a fairly good show.
Of course with DVR you can always go back and watch the parts of the show you don't understand. I purposely wrote the above after one straight thru viewing. One of the problems in producing a TV show is that you screen it so many times during post production, as it is being edited and re edited, that you lose sight of some of the flaws that keep a viewer from understanding the subject the first time around. You see the piece so many times that everything seems to make sense and you need to keep finding fresh viewers in the shop to give you fresh input. As the piece gets shorter and shorter, being cut to fill a time slot, you sometimes lose important stuff that doesn't seem as important anymore because you, the producer or editor or writer or correspondent, understand it completely.
RE: Rough Cuts
Agree with Swenson that the little road trip to see lumber milling is cool.
I also agree with him that it’s hard to cover so much in such a short space of time and for a show aimed at such a wide variety of skill levels. It went into some detail on milling rough lumber. I wonder if that’s a step they’ll eliminated in the future and just cover it once in the first episode.
But I think that the first episode of anything is always hard, I’m sure that future episodes will be even smoother once the crew has had more time to work together.
Overall, I liked it—and having produced videos here at Taunton, I know that videos like that involve a lot of work so congrats to Tommy and WGBH for pulling it off. But as a producer myself, I’m not really the target demographic... the real question is what you folks the viewers will think!
It was kind of funny watching the trestle table project though because we just finished a trestle table project here at Fine Woodworking also covering spring joints and the like. Tommy’s hand tool spring joint method was new to me. We covered how to do it with a jointer: https://www.finewoodworking.com/build-a-dining-table-video-preview/
And just to pat ourselves on the back, I must say that our trestle table animations were a little cooler. :)
Okay, enough about what I think, I look forward to hearing more reviews from you folks.
–Gina, FineWoodworking.com
Is Rough Cuts playing on your local PBS station? Visit the station finder here: http://www.thomasjmacdonald.com/stationfinder/station_finder.php
Fine Woodworking antimation was cool!
Sorry...
Replied to the wrong person:
I agree, Gina, your antimation is very cool. What application did you use to produce it?
RE: Animation
Hi Eric,
Sorry not to reply more quickly. The "camera" bug was giving me grief Tuesday night. (BTW: Does anyone else still notice it? I seem to be able to post fine now. )
The animation is completely thanks to one of our editors Tom Olivares. The trestle table series is the first one he animated like that: https://www.finewoodworking.com/build-a-dining-table-video-preview/
I gave him the SketchUp file that Dave Richards created.
http://store.taunton.com/onlinestore/item/contemporary-trestle-table-gary-rogowski-065121.html
And while you can export quick time "movies" directly from SketchUp by setting scenes, timing, and moves, he took the SketchUp file and dropped it into Maya. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=13577897 Then he finished the animation off in After Effects.
-Gina, FineWoodworking.com
Gina
I have only had time to watch the beginning of your trestle table series and what I saw looked great. Until I screen the rest, I'd love to know what the total running time is if you add up all the segments. That might be an interesting way to compare apples to apples (trestle table building) with differing time allotments, 28 minutes to ???
Remember, the editors are your best friends.
Almost 30 min
Hi Swenson,
Glad you liked the beginnings of the show (https://www.finewoodworking.com/build-a-dining-table-video-preview/). Gary R. does such a great job on video. Looks like the trestle table series came in at 29 min 34 sec. It’s one of our shortest yet. (1:36+4:12+4:25+5:38+5:11+2:16+6:16)
But also, you can’t quite compare a broadcast TV show to what we do on the Web here apples to apples, since I’d guess that the target audiences are very different.
When we produce a series (or edit a magazine article for that matter), we assume a certain level of woodworking knowledge—because people have paid for an online membership or purchased a copy of the magazine. The more difficult the project, the more of the basics we gloss over because we don’t want to bore intermediate/advanced folks with the fundamentals.
I’d guess that PBS is a little different since they could be reaching anyone with a TV.
As to why our videos are getting shorter... we worry that people may lose interest more quickly online. We all act a bit like hunters and gatherers online easily getting distracted by a new email, update via facebook or twitter, or a real world interruption like your boss walking by your cube.
If you folks have feedback about the ideal length for these projects, let me know.
Thanks, Gina, FineWoodworking.com
segments and length
FWIW, Gina, I like the way the Workshop videos are broken into segments. For me, each segment could be as long as ten minutes, or thereabouts, thus allowing serial sort of viewing, along with interruptions created by other priorities. I'd also suggest allowing the subject woodworker as much time as needed to sprinkle the presentation with useful nuggets of experience, resulting in as many segments as necessary for the particular project. If the total runtime of all segments is an hour or two, that's fine with me, personally. Of course, I'm only indirectly paying for the production costs. ;-)
Good to know
We're trying to find that happy medium of letting people get tidbits from the woodworker without over doing it. Thanks for sharing your "druthers."
Maybe we should also create an extended play version. :) Often, it's actually more work to condense than to let things run long. -Gina
extended play version
With the advent of digital editing it became a snap to make as many versions of a show as you wanted. Take a long clean version and title it Long Clean Version and save it to a bin. Keep cutting down and refining and call the next version Medium Length Version and save it to a bin. Chop the hell out of that one and put crazy Liquid Morph Transitions on every cut and call it Access Hollywood Version and then delete the timeline cause it's not worth looking at. I've done it hundreds of times. We were the beta site for Avid Newscutter years ago.
FYI This topic is also being covered on the FWW home page with comments that appear here and new comments too.
Agree
I pretty much agree with all of your comments regarding speed and over use of many expressions. I'm over 50 and I guess some people talk like that all the time but I can't listen to it all the time. It got on my nerves pretty quickly. Way too much to cover in a half hour show. I guess I need to watch a Norm rerun to see how he did it. The road trip was good but the band saw mill guy I use doesn't like "yard" trees becasue they're full of metal. Tommy had a few nuggets in there but even those were not always explained. I am an advocate of spring joints for long boards like that. They work for me. I agree on the breadboard ends. You'll never have to guess where to buy one of pretty new tools he's using, that's for sure. If I stumble across the show again I'll watch it. Hopefully it will improve with age.
I have to agree that the show was too fast paced..he spoke a mile a minute..now me, being
hard of hearing it was difficult to follow..i have been following Charles Neil for sometime myself and have always found his pace perfect for me..he's extremely thorogh and informative..in my opinion..one of the best siurces out there..i watch his hour long show weekly and it just simplifies what would be a complicated proceedure..its great to have Tommy and I'm glad he's there..but try Charles Neil and see what you think..
Charles Neil
Happy to see a wood working show hit the main stream. I think its just the wrong one.Lets face it, the people who watch most of these type of shows want to learn something . This is not the way to get ur done. this way too much too fast for the novice woodworkers who watch. One thing I always found to be troublesome is reading an article on a project and things are either left out or spoken about in terms that I had not a clue. This all came to a halt when i found Mastering Woodworking with Charles Neil. This Guy can teach woodworking as well as finishing your project to a level only countless years of exsperience can bring. I have build along with Charles on several projects and have had complete success.
I cant see myself building along with Tommy !!!!! Not at that pace !!!!!!
Animation
I agree, your antimation is very cool. What application did you use to produce it?
Tommie Mac
When I first heard that there was a new woodworking show being proposed at PBS Boston, I knew immediately what to expect. When the first introduction piece went up on the internet, it was very obvious that my expectations might be correct. From what has been written here, my fears seem to have become reality.
To my knowledge our PBS station hasn't run this yet and considering the fact that the PBS station link below is totally worthless because it may give us PBS stations in our locale, it doesn't tell us when or if those stations will carry the program.
As someone who only receives rabbit ear tv without a DVR, I doubt that I will be seeing much of Tom Terrific here unless PBS plans to podcast them over the internet. If this is going to be speed woodworking, I wouldn't watch it without the ability to back it up and rerun scenes that I don't understand .
Maybe Woodcraft can put in subtitles for those of us who speak Nebraskan style American English instead of downtown BIG DIG. Or, maybe like Norm's show, the producers will make 2 shows to produce something as intricate as a trestle table and have Tommie slow down a bit, go a little deeper on methods, use fewer UHHH replacements, and enunciate.
Tommy's Show
I'm not sure why I'm weighing in on this subject but perhaps because I'm a little unsure what some were expecting a thirty-minute TV show on woodworking to accomplish. Also perhaps I'm curious if anyone ever learned real woodworking from either Norm or Scott? I know that I didn't learn all that much from either but I did learn, mainly from Norm, the love of woodworking and that inspired me to look further and seek out more information. So as far as I'm concerned TV shows are for entertainment and perhaps a little inspiration, expecting any more is a little unfair. I am glad to see a hardworking and talented woodworker achieve some notoriety. I just hope that my local PBS station will air Tommy's show.
You must have never have seen The Woodwright's Shop with Roy Underhill. His shows are chopped full with useful woodworking information. I've learned a whole bunch of stuff watching his show over the years with the numerous woodworking guests he brings on the show. Norm not so much. Scott Phillips, no way! (I don't use cyanoacrylate glue on my projects). Another good show was Woodworks with David Marks but DIY Network didn't want to pick it up for more seasons because it didn't fit in with the coutless HGTV type shows they throw down your face.
Roy and Mark
You are absolutely right on all points, each had something to offer the viewer. What I learned from Roy Underhill’s show was not so much about the kind of woodworking that I practice but the way it was done 200 years ago. I’ve taken several classes from David Marks and recorded all his shows and still watch them today. Mark is natural teacher/instructor and easy to know due to his engaging nature. He told me several funny stories about the DIY production crew, from making him don a long sleeve shirt to keeping the shop floor unnaturally clean. The last time I talked to him which was after he had finished what turned out to be his last season, he said he was waiting for DIY to call him about continuing the show. He also said that the show took a lot of his time and he had started having to hire some outside help with the show so he could compete his other projects. In my opinion he wasn’t all that eager to continue but that he realized that the show exposure has greatly increased the demand for his products. So all in all my original post was wrong, we should expect more.
Roy Underhill
Good point. Roy still has a bunch of enthusiasm but he is having a quieter conversation with you, not shouting at the camera. At first I thought you meant "chocked full" but then, remembering Roy with a broad axe in hand, maybe "chopped full" works even better. I haven't seen his show in a while but I hear he is coming back on in our viewing area this fall.
shows online
You can view his past few seasons here http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/video/2900/2901.html
Episode #2911 with Brian Boggs is one of the best. Hollywood Spectacular, Viking Tool Chest from 2008 and Screw Box for Wooden Threads in 2007 were some of the most inspiring episodes I've ever seen.
I just watched it.
Thanks for the link, I just watched the Brian Boggs show and what a delight. I use a Conover spoke shave but now I have got to look into the Boggs shaves. I think LN makes them.
Rough Cuts Show 2.
Just screened the second show, making a step stool. Pretty much the same as number one. Good parts, bad parts.
Watched it too
I just watched it too. Tommy isn't as bad as a host as people have been saying. He does have a high strung personality but he's not unbearable to watch. What bothered me was the editting. The scenes are done so fast that it's hard to keep up wth. I felt like I was watching the show on cocaine. When they went to the one guys shop and he explained how to cut dovetails, they zipped through it so quickly I could barely understand the steps he used. As a veiwer, I would have much rather watch his guest host cut the dovetails than Tommy. I did like how they cut dovetails pins first.
I thought it was funny how they had Woodcraft merchandise stradegically placed throughout the show. I know from watching Tommy's podcasts that he really enjoys using Lie-Nielsen planes but when they showed the segment on cleaning up the face of a piece of wood, they used a Woodriver plane. Product Placement at it's finest!
I'm not sure what the purpose of having Al is on the show. Is he Tommy's student or is he his helper?
Tommy's student or his helper?
More like cheer leader yes man late nite tv talk show side kick?
More Feedback
I, too, found it hard to keep up, and I watched the stool episode twice so far. Reed's process of cutting fast dovetails while not considering appearance or size, seems to contradict his fine woodworking enterprise. But the "chisel gage" technique seems worth trying in my shop, since my hand tool skills are shaky at best. Also, why does Reed show a finished dovetail example with a broken pin and a bold scribe line still showing? Not sure of Al's roll on the show. Finally, woodworking is supposed to be fun, so why hurry through the process, even in a 30 minute show? Hope to see improvements as the show develops.
Chisel gauge
I really wanted to see more info on that chisel gauge but they went through it so fast I'm not sure I caught the whole technique. They definitely should have spent more time with Reed in his shop. When you think about it, the entire episode was devoted to cutting dovetails so why not spend more time on one person's technique than to rush through both?
Better Show?
If you want to see something better in the way of woodworking with Tommy Mac go to his website "http://www.thomasjmacdonald.com/content/howto/" for a much better show.
Miles
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