No questions, just a thanks for making your videos. You're on my short list of regular 'YouTubers', despite the fact that I have zero woodworking experience, and don't have any plans to change that...
I really enjoy watching your approach to design and problem solving (and obviously your precision and craftsmanship).
Just checked out both the lock and your scaffold video. Amazing projects.
I don't have any real wood working skills (though I hacked together some window boxes out of a wooden pallet last month). Every time I see a project like this posted I get really inspired and wish I spent more of my life learning this craft.
How would you recommend a complete amateur get started?
Amazing, thanks - looks like a great resource. The only power tools I have are a drill and a jigsaw, so it looks like I was on the right track :)
Edit I could watch these videos all day. So much interesting content - and very much in the spirit of this website (Hacker News). For example, this clip of deconstructing and hacking the doweling jig is brilliant. https://youtu.be/jFPLFyxkhzc?t=2m51s
It wasn't really by plan. I quit my job at Blackberry (then called "Research in Motion" and decided not to work for a while. The website was good to spend time on, and it just grew from there.
Looks like I answered too many comments, cause hacker news is telling me to slow down. Oh well. No more answers!
Sorry about that! There is a rate limit on brand new accounts because of past activity by spammers and trolls. Unfortunately, it also applies to really excellent brand new accounts like yours.
We marked your account legit so this won't happen to it again. Please answer as much as you like.
big fan here, when I first discovered your youtube channel I spent the entire afternoon watching all the videos, back to where you guys destroying a blackberry phone!
It seems like you could, but it would make the opening process more complicated, because you'd have to rotate a revolution for each additional rotor for all the rotors to catch.
Fantastic video. It helped me understand how a combination lock works. I also have to wonder if there's any entropy analysis on the click to close to reset the lock. Seems like you can get at least some information on more likely combinations from the final position and some assumptions about how far the pegs rotate back.
Have you considered making a big-ish "regular" lock with a big wooden key (even though you'd need springs, not sure if you want 100% wood)? I think it would be a pretty valuable tool for learning how to properly lockpick (with wooden tools) :)
Hi Matthias, could you describe how your website is built? It looks like static HTML files built from a WYSIWYG editor.
Also could you describe how your website analytics work? I see you're using a 1px gif to log requests. I guess this just logs to a file. How do you find out when you get a surge of traffic like from Hacker News?
This was fantastic. I never knew how combination locks worked before, and there couldn't be a better explanation than your model and video. Really well done!
Safety, like security, or religion, unfortunately, is exempt from rational analysis. Which is to say, nothing good will become from writing about safety. I don't want to get into a religious discussion.
How is that? Are you saying that the current discussion on woodworking safety is muddled and based on belief more than facts, or that ANY evaluation of safety is doomed to be irrational? Because I disagree with the latter (I don't know about the former)
It becomes an arms race of safety. Are goggles enough? Shouldn't you make a robotic arm with remote camera and operate from a safe 100 ft distance behind a blast shield? (Cue Mythbusters) .
So nothing good comes of it, only an endless discussion of where the blurry line is drawn.
I think the idea is that there is a theoretical graph where the X axis is "effort to act safely" and the Y axis is "chance of an accident" and it's shaped like a crooked L and although it plateaus, it starts out at a steep angle. So there is some point in there where a certain amount of observational safety is optimal.
Yes, certainly thought about it. But for most of what I do, a consumer grade CNC wouldn't be able to do it. And for most of the cuts that a CNC could do, I can cut it much faster by hand. Yes, in theory, I don't have to be there while the CNC runs, but in practice, if I can cut it 10x faster by hand, that doesn't matter.
In theory YOU don't have to be there when it runs, but in practice I own a 75w laser cutter, a CNC mill, and a 100amp plasma cutter and I would be happy to provide parts to you free, for science.
And also so that my kids think I am cool because Dad knows someone famous on YouTube. Because that is what it takes to impress 11 year olds these days.
Just happened to be waiting for a Elgin 883 movement to finish drying from a clean/rinse cycle. Killing time on HN, and I happen to run across this referral to a video.
Watch repair can be fun, and it really doesn't cost a lot to get into on a hobby level. There's lots of books on watch repair, and most are out of copyright. The debate of mechanical watches comes up every so often. That Bulova watch he takes the Balance Wheel out of will literally last a life time with proper care.
In the video, he mentions he doesn't know how the Bulova Accutron 360 gear is manufactured(you need to inspect it with a 30X scope). I have always been curious about this topic. If anyone knows, I'd appreciate the info. I know about watch lathes, and hand turning. I don't know how the factories mass produce these gears, what machines they use.
Matthias is fantastic at engineering things and then building them out of wood, but I consider it very different than true woodworking. To me, the level of craft of someone like Sam Maloof is on an entirely different level.
Although Matthias does have metal tools, they're just items he hasn't gotten round to wood-ifying yet.
The man is truly unique among wood-workers. If he were given the task of building a suspension bridge, he'd make the damn cables out of wood if he could. (And he'd probably succeed at it, too).
Wood is pretty easy to work with, if you have some nice tools (these are also pretty cheap to buy second hand.)
Once you know what wood you like working with (I prefer something like oak, pine is too soft. Cheery is lush. Apple is also nice...) you just need something sharp to cut it with, a saw, a knife, some drills. Add some sand paper and off you go.
The point of a lock is twofold (in most cases* ). First, to discourage casual/opportunistic access. Second, to make unauthorised access evident. I believe this lock meets those criteria, albeit at a minimal level - but it's purpose is to educate, rather than to directly secure.
* In specialised cases the expectation is that the lock will also take a finite amount of time to get through, which may exceed that of the door, allowing for a response to alarms, for example. In other cases a lock may be designed such that the contents would be destroyed by any action which would defeat the lock.
Not to diminish Matthias' amazing abilities, but only to highlight the challenges that go into making anything out of wood: plywood, isn't really wood per se. If you built things out of wood you'd have to worry about grain direction, because cross-grain strength in wood is very low. This adds a whole another level of complexity to the engineering process.
Most things I make aren't made of plywood. Yes, you have to be aware of poor crossgrain strength (varies with species) as well as seasonal shrinkage and expansion from humidity changes.
