-there's no standard. there's no one way to do things. -whenever you cutinto a new board, you kind of have to study thegrain, see what it wants to do. -it's kind of meditative,and it takes forever. -the passion is important to me. i want to be creating, always. -i didn't think i lovedwoodworking, really, at all until [laughing] maybea few months ago, actually.
-my favorite momentin woodworking... [ sighs ] ...i got to say it's the moment of driving backfrom the lumber yard with a truck full of wood, and then you're just like, "this pile is gonna turninto something amazing." -there's so many different typesof wood out there. they all act differently. they have different colors.
they have different waysof reacting to the environment. i thinkthat that is invigorating. -here at offerman woodshop,i'm using a lot more hand tools. you'll hearthat distinction a lot between carpentryand woodworking. carpentry utilizesa lot more power tools. there can be some snobbery aboutit, like, "real woodworkers are keeping it purewith hand tools." i actually reallyget the most out of both.
-the guys around the shop hereprobably make fun of me for sanding a lot. i kind of get into the zone where i want everythingto be, like, perfect -- every scratch, every mill mark,everything out, so it's just -- the naturalgrain speaks for itself. -the first stage is usuallythe design stage -- drawing things out, sketching. then you get to gofind your wood.
and then you start building. that's my favorite part. well, i started woodworkingwhen i was a little kid. my grandpa was a big woodworker. he got me, like, a subscriptionto fine woodworking magazine, which is so precocious, 'cause i was 7,and it was totally boring. [ giggles ] so i ended upmaking skateboards,
and that kind of turned into myfirst entrepreneurial experience as a 10-year-old woodworker. i'm drawn to woodworking,i think, because there's a story in wood. when you start to see sort ofwhat's underneath in that wood, that's a really exciting time. no matter what kind of woodyou're working with -- straight from the forestor it's from the lumber yard -- it's an organic material,
so it's always gonna be changingand moving and adjustingto its environment. it's always sort of a mysterybeing revealed. i went and boughta bunch of poplar. he just gave me thesetree trunks, and he was like, "oh, there's a few bugs in it,but you can treat it, lee. it's gonna be fine.like, you know, whatever." so, i'm cutting it upon the band saw, and i'm, like, pushing themthrough this enormous blade.
i'm, like, deathly afraidof worms and bugs, like, lifelong fear, but i'm just trying to be butchand keep going. -[ laughs ] -and i make a cut,and i just see this, like, enormous, "rowr!"come out of one of the holes. and we call michele in, 'cause she's kind ofthe toughest guy in the shop. [ both laugh ]
and michele looked in there,and we had basically -- i had, like, cut into a nestof arboreal salamanders that live on termites, which is what haroldhad sold me -- a log full of termitesand salamanders. the moral of the story, where i'm going with this,is it turns out the termites made all theseawesome patterns in the wood. the termites did beautiful work.
-it's true. -that just becomespart of the story and what makes this pieceof furniture a custom piece. my other favorite thing --[ laughs ] my other favorite thingin woodworking is just the problem-solvingthat you have to do. i thinkwhen i first started out, i would just mess upall the time, and i was always so depressedabout how bad i was.
-there's good days,and there's bad days, but they're mostly good days. like, i made drawersfor a cabinet that were too big, and i couldn't get them in.and, like, that was a bad day, but that's notthat bad of a day. -and now i probably mess upjust as much, but when i mess up, it's just the next challengeto figure out how to fix it, and, actually, that'sa huge part of the process.
you get so lodged in itthat you can't find a way out, and a lot of it is also helping other peoplesolve their problems. this shop is much more communalin that way. the communityhere at offerman woodshop has kind of been evolving andgrowing over the last few years. when i started here,it was me and nick. nick is so muchpart of this shop and is such a dear friendof mine.
-he has generouslygiven it to us to keep goingwhile he's off doing his thing, and it's like a gift. -if it wasn't for this place,i might not be in los angeles. actually, i'm pretty certaini wouldn't be here still. -i think people should getinvolved with woodworking because i thinkit's very empowering. -it's a physical, tangible thing that when you're done,it's like,
"i made that. that's awesome." -recently,we had someone cut into a slab, and they found parts of a fence. it was in the heartwood, so the center of the treehad grown around a fence. it's also very exciting, 'causeyou're like, "whoa," you know? "i thought this was justa regular piece of wood, and now we findall of this history inside." -what pulls at my heart
is the heirloom qualityof each object that you make. we can make upour own stories sometimes about what these peopleare doing with these objectsthat we've passed along to them. you can only imagineit's gonna continue living and get passed downamongst the family members, amongst generations. -everything in my houseis made by someone in my family, myself, a friend.
pretty much every--i don't know, i -- pretty much everythinghas a story in my apartment, and i feel surroundedby my people when i'm at home.-yeah. -it's kind of cool to imagine that that story links back upto the original, that there was once a treethat grew around the fence. oh, that's --this part's getting hokey. [ both laughing ]