Episode 14

14 - Tower of Duck Ponzi Scheme

The Business Ponzi-Scheme, Duct Tower progress, Our Dream Products, Why Naivety is Secret Sauce, more Dall-E Madness, and OSMO Application.

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DISCUSSED:

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Please note: Show notes contains affiliate links.


  • What's your dream product?
  • How to Justify your 5-axis Purchase
  • A Better Nack Desk


  • Naïvety ✔︎
  • How to Kill your Products Off
  • Hobbies?
  • Gaming
  • Podcasts
  • The last Reply All - so many linked memories


  • OSMO Application - White Scotchbrite, on orbital to spread it
  • White microfiber polish
  • Sand with 800 grit
  • 2nd Coat - Repeat


  • Water-Based Spray Booth



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Show Info


HOSTS

Jem Freeman

Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia

Like Butter | Instagram | More Links


Justin Brouillette

Portland, Oregon, USA

PDX CNC | Instagram | More Links

Transcript
Speaker:

We're back to normal.

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Good morning.

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Hey, when you say that, it it's almost like, like a recording.

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Like I hear it the same way in my head every time.

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Good morning.

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Good morning.

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Nice to see you back in the shop.

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Yeah,

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it feels good.

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It's been a while.

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It feels like anyway, I

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have to remind myself that you weren't sick, that you were just on holiday,

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just was super sick and flew all the way to Texas and.

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That's bad.

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Bad look.

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Yeah.

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did I see you or up at like 3:00 AM today?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Whoops.

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Busted.

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No, I was just trying to get kiddo back to sleep.

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Ah, yeah.

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Yeah.

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Foolish foolishly opened Instagram.

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Yeah.

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sorry I was there or it popped up and I was like, wait a second.

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Isn't it really early right now.

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I'm just used to the radio silence until about noon here.

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Yeah.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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How are you?

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Pretty good.

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Hmm.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Yeah.

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How are you?

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Yeah, good.

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Really good.

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What's good.

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Anything good?

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What's good.

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In particular.

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Yeah.

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Did you ever listen to a reply all?

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Oh yeah.

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Oh yeah.

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You know, the, Breakmaster cylinder dog space stuff.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I've just been listening to that whole album.

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I feel like my, my audio soundscape in my head is just like broken

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up clips of that, that dog robot.

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If I make some strange noises, that's why you have a room?

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No, really good here.

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We have just wrapped up our end of financial year.

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Last time we chatted was our last day and we were like, push, push,

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push, trying to get a few last sales across the line to meet our numbers.

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And we got our made up numbers.

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Oh, exceeded some of them.

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So yeah, really good.

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Biggest year of sales ever.

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Is

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that like all sales?

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Yeah.

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All sales custom and product.

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Cool.

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And made a little bit of profit.

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That's rather novel.

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That's good.

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It's a bit of cash in the bank.

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Yeah.

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Things are good teams for good team's flowing.

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Well, yeah, no complaints.

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Very good.

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Yeah.

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Hmm.

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Hmm.

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That sounds nice.

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We're making back to our conversation about money last time, but this is like

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the first time I remember having a product that felt like it was a really big change.

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I mean, every time I'd sell calendars, actually.

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back when I started that, like, and I had basically no overhead, it was

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always like cost from making them.

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And then it was like, oh, that seems like a lot of money.

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Cuz I like had no revenue otherwise.

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Yeah.

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But this selling the dust boot feels like the first time in a long time, that's

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like it's made an impact rather than just like trickling out a few sales,

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like, you know, enough people ordered it once that it was like, oh, well we

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can buy the materials now and pay rent

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and yep.

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Yeah.

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It's nice to get those little boosts.

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I find that with product launches as well.

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Like if we get a good little run on something over a short space

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at a time and you get that nice injection cash mm-hmm . Yeah.

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Which yeah, like you say, it's diff feels different to.

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Job by job trickle.

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Oh yeah.

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You feel like you've already spent everything by the time

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you're onto the next thing.

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We always talk about

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, that.

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Friends and I that do woodworking here that I always call it.

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It feels like the business Ponzi scheme where you're like using one job to pay for

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the next almost is what it feels like.

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Even though it's never really the truth, it just always

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feels like, wow, that got slim.

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I better get another deposit here.

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You know, feed the beast,

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the cash flow beast.

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Yeah.

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So much of it rides on cash flow, I reckon.

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Yeah.

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Ooh.

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I've got two microphones on jewel wielding.

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Well, ill just leave that one on.

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see if anybody catches it and you've just got both sides of your collar.

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new headphones, my beard.

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Yeah, no, I totally recognize that feeling one drop to the next,

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I mean, that's how we started.

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Really.

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It was just.

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One job to the next mm-hmm crawling.

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And you got out of it though.

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Seemingly

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yeah.

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Yep.

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How, how do you do, how do you tell us all how you did that?

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How,

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how good question.

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Insert, pause.

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I, I don't, I'm gonna say volume.

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Yeah.

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At a certain point.

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It all just starts to over it's to overlap and I reckon that's probably just for

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us and how the size business we are.

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It's a certain number of jobs and it's a certain yeah.

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Amount of revenue per month.

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That means that Things just start flowing rather than.

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Yeah, that makes sense.

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I kind of, we had very connect, very fleeting moments of that when

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we were in the heat of the most job shop work we ever really did.

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I mean, I'm a broken record with this, but it always felt so fleeting.

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that moment would go quickly and with it kind of the comfort and, you know,

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sometimes we'd have people working more hours and then quite a bit

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more hours or overtime or something.

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And then all of a sudden, all of your, your gains from that seem

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to disappear just as quickly.

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that's an interesting scenario.

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You're discussing of like how it turned into something more than that.

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I guess

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I think consistency is key really like for a long, a very, very long time.

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Everything was very up and down and wavy for us.

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So we'd have a big run of work.

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I would stop quoting because I was busy trying to get a job out the door.

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Mm-hmm , we'd get to that end of that job.

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And then be this kind of quiet lull if I post job reprieve,

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which was nice in a sense it's quite a natural rhythm in a way.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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But at the same time, then your cash flow's drying up and you're still

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paying people and it's not like there's nothing to do, but there's, it was

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that sort of that very lumpy structure.

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Yeah flow.

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And so I think the biggest change for us over the last, really just

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in the last year or so is just trying to get out of that cycle.

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And even when we're busy, still make time, even if it's just

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an hour a day for quoting.

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So there's always fresh work coming in, you know, assuming you've got leads

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yeah, just that, trying to keep everything more consistent.

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And so the production flow stays more level cash flow, stays more level.

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And it's still, it's still lumpy for sure.

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But it means that everything's kind of tracking much more stably.

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yeah, yeah.

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For sure that uh, oh, oh, I remember.

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So you were saying something about the.

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The ebb and flow of projects.

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And I totally recognize that it's like the ups and downs of all too much.

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And then I would be bad at quoting or take too long and people would

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move on and you know, same thing.

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Oh yeah.

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um, Those poor people, I'm

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sorry.

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Yes.

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I'm sorry if you're listening.

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Me too probably doing it right now in accident.

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But what I was thinking about that is laughing to myself was that's basically

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what my experience of going to school was like, oh, crazy amounts of intense

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activity, and then like exhausted into a heap and partying for a weekend, you know,

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partying, relaxing with your friends that you don't get to see ever for me anyway.

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And then I would go back to like the crazy again, and I, this is seemingly

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yeah, well element architecture school.

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and I feel like that's very similar to that same pattern.

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not that we have a party, every end of project, but the , it's not, it was

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never that cons I mean, we had moments of consistency, but I always felt like it was

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maybe, maybe for me anyway, dealing with more than just actually making the things.

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It's a lot of, a lot of a lot just all the time, I guess, and

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never felt consistent anyway.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Screw that.

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No, I dunno.

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Yep.

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It's always strange thing.

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Mm-hmm um, at the, at the, as positive as the consistency is, I do find

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myself in a sort of constant state of overwhelm because there's no natural.

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I think it is quite inorganic to do this.

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Yes.

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It's just like push, push, push, like, like constantly gently pushing mm-hmm

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to maintain that constant workflow means there's very little downtime.

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Yeah.

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Sorry.

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I can't stop thinking about that dog.

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Um,

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We'll have to find that clip

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All he's got like all 30 albums on band camp.

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It's amazing.

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Um, Geez, but there's no, yeah, there's kind of, no, it's not

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stressful, but there's no reprieve.

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And so I think what I need to get better at is like scheduling

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in some reflection time.

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Yeah.

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Just kind of forced myself to stop and think, cause I'm terrible at stopping and

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thinking like that's definitely one of my.

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Wake points.

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Um, But yeah.

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if I had to guess from what you've told me, I would guess your two other points

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of getting over the hump of the, the business Ponzi scheme were probably

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having a business manager and then capturing data, capturing the data and

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then having to be able to use it then like going forward and quoting, or like,

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you know, choosing a little more, I don't know, cautiously your jobs or something.

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I don't know.

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Kind of worked for me at

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times, qualifying how to definitely helped.

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Yep.

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For sure.

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Yeah.

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Quitting instead of just quitting everything.

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Yeah, just trying to say no, and mm-hmm, the stuff that's better suited to us.

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Yeah.

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But I think that just that regular, the regularity and consistency is a big one.

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Yeah,

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for sure.

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finishing my thought about money and new products.

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Usually I feel like it, yeah, you have the ebb and flow of like paying for the

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materials and the labor and all those things, so that that'll still come.

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But what I'm excited and hopeful for is that a lot of people haven't discovered

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that we have this dust boot yet.

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Right.

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and that money should continue.

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The revenue still should continue.

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Whereas I feel like a lot of the things I've come up with, it's like,

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there's a burst of interest and then it just disappears and I'm, you

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know, exploring different ways to.

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Use advertising and you know, getting in touch with people that potentially could

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want it, cuz there's a lot of people.

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And then there's also other machines to go, you know, like yours to hopefully

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qualify and move in kind of experimenting with I've been calling it the test fit

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guarantee, but it's like an idea for, especially people maybe in the United

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States that if they don't, if we don't have a, like a compatible match for their

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machine yet, but we think it may work.

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They think it may work that we will give 'em a full refund and like pay for their

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shipping back if it doesn't work with their machine and they don't use it.

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So then we can say it works or it doesn't work.

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Yeah.

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So it's research for you mm-hmm

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yeah, they don't have any concerns then.

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Totally.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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No, I'm, I'm really looking forward to putting that to the test and

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promoting it to be honest, cuz I think it's gonna be so much better.

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Yeah.

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I'm excited to see, I sent you that video the other day.

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Right?

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Of like how small, our little

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dust.

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I went to show, I went to show Ricky it and it was a story and I couldn't find

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it again, but I was like, oh Ricky, you should have seen how tiny their

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little duct was two inch, two inch.

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Now we're now I'm touting size.

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So here we are.

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Here we are.

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Yeah.

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What's cause you're a shop saber, right?

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Yeah.

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What's shop Saber's market share.

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Like, do you have any sense of how many machines there are out there?

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I think I remember seeing at one point there's 5,000 some machines over there.

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Okay.

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Span.

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I don't know how that was probably last year.

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That's really hard to say.

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I, I, I haven't tried to do any research, but that's quite a few.

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It seems that there's enough people that have taken the time to contact

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us, asking if we will make one for their machine or it'll work

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for their machine Laguna or yeah.

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Avid or there's just, you know, there's a bunch of others, multi cam

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somebody asked that it's a problem that seems like it's not well resolved.

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And I'm not gonna say that ours is perfect by any means.

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Think it works pretty well ultimately, but there's always a scenario where it's not

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gonna work for somebody and oh, for sure.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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We'll see how, how many, well, hopefully that it's far more than not yeah,

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yeah, no, I think could be a lot of potential there.

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Exciting.

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Yeah.

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I've always been attracted to the concept of making tools like, oh yeah, I'm

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calling that tool, but tool related stuff.

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I don't know.

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I'm not sure why, but there's something very attractive about

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making things for making things

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in a certain sense.

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I've felt like the bar is low for making, so you make the functional

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solution, but then the bar is pretty low to make it aesthetic too.

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you know, as long as it's not like too sharp and too blocky,

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usually it's like you did.

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Oh, that looks pretty cool.

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You know, like that'll do.

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Yep.

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It's a, it's a bonus.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Yeah.

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I'd also being functional beyond just the bare bones functionality too.

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Like you've got that nice sort of magnetic.

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Yeah.

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Stuff going on and just a bit more considered.

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Yeah.

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Bit more, bit more designed.

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I suppose.

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Can't

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help myself.

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Honestly.

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It's nothing, nothing I'm doing.

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It's just my OCD.

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yeah,

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no, I know.

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I don't, I don't, we're working on a couple other I've just

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been calling it the duck tower.

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I think I posted in a couple stories, but we're working on this

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like thing that holds your duct.

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what,

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I just need a duck like quite quack ducks.

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And then imagine you plug it, plugging that into the, Dolly Dolly,

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the Dolly.

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I actually used that so much after I got into it that they limited me.

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I had, I was banned for a certain amount of hours.

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They're like, you've done this too much.

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You need to

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go home.

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You've used your server allocation.

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Basically.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I have a lot.

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I, I withheld just flooding you with way too many images of, of things,

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but I have a lot that are honestly, if some are very disturbing, like they're

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like taking body parts and mashing 'em around and it it's not like gory or

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anything, but it's just like a little bit of a house of horrors sometimes.

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The duct tower to finish up.

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We've done a few kind of mostly prototype, very rough prototypes

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and it works really well.

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It like holds the duct, especially with the shop savers.

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They have this.

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Air cylinder that makes the Z be able to retract faster.

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It basically takes the weight off of the, the spindle head so that it

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doesn't have to use only the motor.

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And it's a great idea, but it also sticks up like probably almost 20

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inches over top of everything else.

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So you've got this big thing that wants to catch the duct all the time.

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Ah, that's why you've got that huge extension.

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Right.

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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I always wondered about that.

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So that's why we had that stupid.

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I called it the smoke stack, which was just a giant piece of ducting

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metal ducting that used to go up.

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But anyway, we've got this other thing, cause it's definitely a problem with

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Rob Tabers that other people have, and it doesn't, there's never really been

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a good resolution, so we we're onto something and we're just kind of evolving

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it till we can turn it into something a little more polished and hopefully

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be something we sell to here soon.

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Cool.

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Awesome.

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Yeah, we, we had a really sketchy moment.

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The other week which would've been wouldn't have happened if we'd had

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a baby pants so cutting all these Birch panels for a climbing gym.

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And it was such that the compression cutter was running like right down

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the edge of the sheet, but leaving just a tiny strip of material.

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And so getting all that, like stringy strandy Birch nonsense that you get

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sometimes mm-hmm , which obviously wasn't getting sucked up by our pitiful

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dust extraction on that, on Trinity mm-hmm . And so some of the stringy

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stuff got wrapped around the tool.

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And then the machine went to put the tool back in the tool changer, which

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is the carousel tool changer and had all this stringing nonsense on it.

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And the tool changer on Trinity's got this really weird mechanism where

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there's like a, a turned probably like two and a half inch steel tube.

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That's like.

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Almost a foot long that comes up out of the tool changer and the sort of park the

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tool in and that, and then it retracts.

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Anyway, these tubes, the tubes are kind of loose and they

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just sit in the tool changer.

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Anyway, cuz of, the Birch spaghetti that was attached to the tool, the

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next tool got like stuck in this tube.

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Spindle picks it up.

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There's this bit of steel tube hanging off the bottom of the tool holder.

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And then it turned the spindle on like 10,000 up PM or something.

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And John was out there and he just said it made the most horrific noise as it

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tried to spin up this lump of steel.

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Um, oh my, anyway, thankfully it didn't go anywhere.

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Yeah.

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And John managed to get the east up fast enough, but it shook the

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whole spindle loose off the gantry.

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Like all the bolts were loose, like there's so much oh my

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word.

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But yet didn't is this the one that has the potential bearing problem?

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nah,

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that's the other one.

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a oops.

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Z.

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So that's exciting.

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That little thing that comes up goes straight up and down and Z it

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doesn't have like a, it's not gonna like, try to run through the side

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of your potential new baby pants.

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No, straight up and down.

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Yeah.

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That makes sense.

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Yeah.

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Those are the kind of things I think about when people are like, well,

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this work with my machine, I'm like, I don't know what kind of weird stuff's

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going on when it tool changes, but if you're just cutting probably yeah.

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but your tool changes got that weird sort of horizontal load.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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That's about, so it can, it can take some movement, but you know, if it wanted

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to just like completely rotate through.

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It's it's a flat plane.

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So it would go through the brush ultimately, but like

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an umbrella tool change, you mean?

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Ah, yeah.

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Yeah.

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I've never seen outer with anything like that.

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No, that'd

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be crazy.

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So you got, you got a, you robot that comes in and give me that

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it'd be sweet.

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Um, I got some time on the machines this week actually, cuz John was out sick.

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And so Josh and I had two days of play time out on the floor.

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So Josh is usually stuck in infusion and I'm, I'm usually stuck in quoting

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land and We had two glorious days of slinging plywood chips, is great.

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Great timing actually, cuz we're trying to train Josh up as sort

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of a backup machinist mm-hmm so instead of it always falling to me

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is being the plan B, get Josh jump up so he can go up smart and cover.

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On the machine.

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So it was good.

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Great fun.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Were you working on the thread board?

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I have been chipping away at that in my R and D slot.

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Yeah, just working on little accessories on the pencil shop.

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Those were cool.

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The board itself is pretty much resolved in terms of how we make

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that on the, the other machines.

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But yeah, the accessories now are what I'm kind of focusing on all

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the little pegs and bits and bobs.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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But it takes quite a long time to program apart.

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I dunno if you saw that little reduced shank.

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Yeah.

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Double ended part that I made the other day.

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So that was, was quite involved kind of, you know, drawing that parts

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easy, but then like programming at.

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On the pencil shop, no.

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To a point that it's safe and reliable takes quite

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some time.

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I've never fully understood, I guess said maybe I should know the G code better,

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but when you tell it, you want to do a thread for a certain amount of length.

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Are you doing that by hand?

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Nah, no.

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No.

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Okay.

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Gonna and a fusion.

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Okay.

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I was gonna say it would, you'd have to calculate the points and

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the, I guess it's probably a, a keyed cycle or something, but

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no, the threading code all is just straight out of fusion.

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Yeah.

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That's that makes sense.

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And then you're just appending or inserting wherever you want.

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Like other movements and stuff.

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Yeah.

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Yep.

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Tool changes.

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Yep.

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All that spindle changes.

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Spindle changes.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Got, got a quick, quick one here.

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Hmm.

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Ooh.

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here's your tower?

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Red ducks tower of duck.

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Thanks tower.

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Thanks.

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Look at their faces though.

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God

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messed up.

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This one's pretty good.

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There's like a giant one at the top.

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That's a goose.

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Do we know how it works?

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I think it's gotta be something that like it's eating other

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images and then mashing them up.

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But like that there's perspective, like, are they 3d models?

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Are they

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collages?

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What's what's insane.

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As you can say, like, I want it to be a photo, a cartoon

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rendering tower made of ducks, 3d

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rendering.

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This is great podcast content.

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Yeah.

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Just

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wait for us to sit and uh, do this guys.

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It's real fun.

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that's kind of crappy.

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Oh,

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disturbing.

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Like it's got , it's got a 3d model of a dark and it's

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built a tower of cake out of,

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It's a pyramid of duck, made of ducks, with a larger duck on top.

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it looks like a painting.

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So you can like choose, say, like, I want a painting in the

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style of this artist, you know?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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We'll throw some photos up, but I'll give you the one while we're sitting here.

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there's so many in here.

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Oh,

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Justin, Justin, what have you done?

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my God,

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I didn't ask.

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This is the bad part about these is I didn't ask for the rest.

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I only wanted the baby pants by the sawdust

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You're going to want to see the Youtube episode this week.

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Yeah, that's incredible.

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I don't even don't even know, it's very entertaining, but disturbs

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how disturbing he'll stop there.

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Amazing.

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Well, if I had your cell number in my phone, I would save some of

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those down as your contact picture.

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I think we can do

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Yeah.

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Just cut out all of that.

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Cut.

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Do you want nerdy things about Shopify and checkout an air table

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or, oh, always the lofty question of what's your dream product.

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Woo.

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Dream product.

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Geez.

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That I want that

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I was thinking like, what you wanna make.

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Like what's the thing you've always wanted to make, but you haven't

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been able to either figure it out or it's just too crazy to make

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Hmm.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I've got something that kind of fits that category.

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It's, it's a part that I think I was just trying to justify getting a five access

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mail to be honest I was trying to think of a, a part that I'd make on it.

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So it's like a little, it's a table leg system, basically.

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Yeah.

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So one of our key clients that I work with a lot works in the commercial

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sort of office fit out space.

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Mm mm-hmm and there's a lot of demand there for a, a leg system

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that can be adapted to sort of any table top or any oh yeah.

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Any size table, any size, you know, any material.

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So we've bounced around a few ideas for a leg system and I've got this

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sort of five axis Salinium part in my head that would probably have then

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a threaded timber Dow or some other timber element that engage with it.

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But it's just like a lumpy bit of machine machined into a sort of a

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multi-axis part mm-hmm . Leg system.

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That's my answer leg system.

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What about you?

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And now all I can think is I wanna make the image of the leg system in Delhi.

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he's hooked.

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You know, what's funny is I didn't think, as I asked you this, I

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was like, what would mind be?

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And I I don't know if I know what that was.

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I tried, I spent a lot of time early on when I first quit my

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architecture job, trying to make and sell this desk that I'm using.

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There's some images on our website.

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We just call it the NA desk.

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I've seen it on your website.

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Never really it.

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I mean, I learned a lot about what to do and not do in products because of that.

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And it's kind of an interesting, I like, I'll never really regret

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it because I, I bought the C and T router for it basically.

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But I also didn't understand enough about, I don't know, selling furniture

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on the internet or how to make a profitable product, that it just,

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it was always a labor of love.

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Like it never made, I think we've probably made a dozen of 'em or something

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and it just kind of, haven't totally killed it off, but I, it's kind of there

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for reference, I guess now, that was kind of my dream product for a while.

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I've always wanted to come back and make another version of a desk that is

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more profitable that kind of embodies some of its characteristics, but that

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isn't impossible to make and yeah.

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Is affordable for people it's

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quite complex.

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It's respectfully it's very design school.

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Yeah, for sure.

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It, I designed it in school and I was like, oh, I should make these someday.

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And Had a lot of people tell me they couldn't make it or it evolved from

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the time I started that process.

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But yeah, it's not a good product.

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I don't think it never really was.

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Yeah.

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How do you feel about

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culling products?

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Have you CU anything

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a little bit?

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The iMac bases we've we still have a few actually it's like this.

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Yeah.

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Yep.

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But that's you turning those off?

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Are you, yeah, they've discontinued that whole product line.

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So instead of making a new batch and having 'em sit potentially, I was like,

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well, maybe we'll make the new version.

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And we just never, I don't honestly like the way that I've tried

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different versions of that I've had requests for 'em, but, they did.

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Okay.

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But we kind of jumped into that at the end of the iMac line that

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it had the kind of wedge foot, but yeah, I'm honestly pretty bad at it.

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Other than that, I mean, I've kind of noted that those are

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discontinued the desk, as you can see is just up there still.

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And I guess I can't quite kill it off cuz it's like a, a memory place

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for me or something I don't know.

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Yeah,

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yeah.

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Yeah.

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I know that feeling I've had products that I've hung on to probably too long because

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of some association I had with them.

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Yeah.

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Like there was one sort of a range of stuff that we used to make that was

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kind of our first foray into plywood.

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It's how we.

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Mm, ended up getting into ply as a material.

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And it was very simple and very lightweight and it kind of, it

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summed up a lot of my feelings about how I like to design things

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in terms of honest to materials.

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And it was completely unfinished for a long time and yeah.

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Trying to make strong things from thin material.

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And I think, yeah, we, we probably hung onto that far too

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long till to the point where.

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Through the way our processes had had evolved.

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It became either completely unprofitable to make, or we'd kind of our quality

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control standard had crept up and up and up over the years to the point where

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this product that was supposed to be very simple and bare bones had become

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kind of, it was trying to be something that it should never have been, was

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trying to be sort of finished furniture.

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And it became sort of got to a price point where it just didn't make sense anymore.

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Yeah.

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But yeah, I still hung onto it cuz I was sort of attached to some of the ideals

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around it in terms of where it had

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come from.

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Did people tell you directly like, Hey Jim, we gotta kill this or

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do you think they're hesitant to?

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Uh, I think

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they're probably typically pretty hesitant too.

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Mm-hmm That's pretty common where we're getting better at that.

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Like, we are getting much more trigger happy in terms of just killing

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off things that don't feel right.

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Yeah.

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or at least pulling them offline.

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I'd say that on that note.

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I think I have the same people.

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We talked about this a little bit before, but most everybody that's worked here.

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Doesn't have a design background, so they'll always kindly default to me

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on any design questions, which is both good, but I think I've also tried to

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foster, like, no, you need to have your own design, feelings because I

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can't just have all the feelings or it'll a, nothing will ever get done.

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Cause I'll just sit there and stew on it too long.

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And cuz nobody's arguing with me about it, but what was the other side of that?

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Apparently I'm Spacey today.

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Um, So

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insert space sample.

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Oh the other side of that kind of unrelated, but related is the whole

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idea that like, I feel like it's very calm and the older you get and anything

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life, you start to get more and more close minded about your potential things

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you design, because I'll immediately start to cancel out all the, well that's

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gonna cost too much or the, you know, that would take us forever to finish or

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you kind of start killing those things.

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Whereas in contrast, I would've probably never made this desk, right.

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Like that led to so much else.

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That was good.

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Even if it in itself was a problem.

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Um, Totally.

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And that naive, like we said before, the naive is so valuable.

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And I actually like really enjoy that when I start working with somebody and

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they don't have all the like, they ask the questions that maybe some people

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go, well, why are you that's stupid?

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Why would you say that or something?

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And I'm like, these are the kind of naive questions we need.

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you know, like , I always feel like they get to a good place with they

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ask questions, you know, any, any type of naivety, usually isn't hindered

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then by experience that could hinder a potential good solution in any way.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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That's a great point.

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I've been a bit of a tangent, but I've been aware of that in the last

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few weeks with, as I've handed off production management and I'm no longer

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the person, the sort of the key person to come and ask about how to do that

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or what to do next or blah, blah, blah.

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I'm jealous.

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And , I.

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I've had this, a few moments of kind of being aware of like, I've got an answer

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for almost everything in the shop and that's not necessarily a good thing.

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I need to get that outta my head.

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But I was asking myself, like, why do I have an answer for all these things?

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And it's like, in terms of naive it's because I have

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naively tried to do everything.

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Mm-hmm, , mm-hmm, related to this business and I've failed and I've

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made mistakes and I've, you know, I've pulled everything apart and I've broken

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everything and I've failed at everything.

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And so in doing so I now have a lot of sort of built up answers

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and knowledge around mm-hmm

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broken things.

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Yeah.

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That's the good side of it for sure is.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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When you have the experienced person that says, you're gonna cut your finger

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off, don't put your hand in front of that spinning thing, you know, like.

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Or, you know, this takes longer, whatever it is.

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I mean, there's the kind of logistical side to it, but for sure.

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That's gotta be a weird experience though.

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I'm sure they're still coming to you for some stuff.

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It's just not the majority.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Just not being the default negotiator.

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That's all.

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Yeah, yeah,

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yeah, yeah.

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That's cool.

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It's good.

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Sounds great.

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Good thing.

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Yeah.

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I'm getting way more product development time done during the day.

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Not just in that early morning now, which is nice.

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So you've changed your schedule, your diary.

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Some I have to stick extended my development slot longer into the morning.

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That's nice getting it done.

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Yeah.

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And I fill up my coffee.

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Mm-hmm still feeling that Wallaby in my quads a little bit, the

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Wallaby, the Walla beast.

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what are your hobbies?

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Just Hmm.

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Business designing and making things.

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It's kind of been a weird um, I don't know what to say.

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Like it's, it's kind of been somewhat negative, I suppose, especially in like

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my personal relationships of like that I have definitely verged towards what most

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would probably consider like workaholism.

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And in my take on that, I've.

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I kind of recognize that more.

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I think it's probably better to have a break and not do what's considered work.

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Even if I like truthfully feel like I enjoy a lot of the times, like my free

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time, let's just say of work would be more on the design side and less on the

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like, solving some logistical problem.

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you know, designing a product or I feel like that's my like, release

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time of there's no responsibility.

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So that was always great.

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And I'm actually, I don't know, pretty bad otherwise at hobby type things

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I play video games with my brother online, like over the internet.

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That's about

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that's non-work nice.

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Little bit of non-work.

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How about

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you?

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Yeah.

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I used to play a lot of video games in my youth.

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Old man.

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I can't remember the last time.

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Oh no.

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It's within the last three years that I had a little bit of a binge,

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but it was only a few sessions.

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I rediscovered StarCraft.

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Oh, that's one of the games, my brother and I used to play

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like crazy when we were kids.

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Yeah, same.

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Yeah.

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And I used to play a lot of stuff.

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I think at, at a certain it's probably during design school when I was still

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playing quite heavily and oh yeah.

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As I sort of realized how I suppose important it was to me at a certain

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point, I sort of realized how much, you know, where the time balance was.

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And I sort of, yeah, I turned gaming off at some point during that period and

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sort of focused on probably my fourth year of school was where I sort of.

Speaker:

Switch focus a bit and kind of never really got back into that

Speaker:

space in a big way, but um, Hmm.

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I, I, yeah, dunno

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on StarCraft.

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Do you hear the Zurg noises in movies ever?

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Do I hear them in movies?

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I can't sound

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effects.

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Oh man.

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I hear it all the time.

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Like, I mean, I'm playing that game for like 20 years now and it's like

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every movie with an alien in it.

Speaker:

I hear that like creepy curls or noises.

Speaker:

I was find it funny.

Speaker:

I'm like, oh, there's only six noises we use for aliens apparently.

Speaker:

And Zurich is one of them.

Speaker:

. deep.

Speaker:

That's a deep cut for all you.

Speaker:

None.

Speaker:

I like it.

Speaker:

Spare crafters.

Speaker:

I think my equivalent these days in terms of that sort of

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head space is probably podcasts.

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Hmm.

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So looping back to a reply.

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I listened to the last episode last night on my ride home and I've

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got this funny thing with podcast because I can't listen to them when

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I'm doing sort of active brain work.

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Mm-hmm like, you know, quoting sales.

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anything computery.

Speaker:

I typically can't sort of listen to anything but music, but when I do listen

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to podcasts in bulk is when I've been on the tools for extended periods of time.

Speaker:

So like, you know, last year, trying to get a big job out the door, you know,

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just me on the weekend headphones in listening to like back to back episodes

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mm-hmm of reply or something like that.

Speaker:

And so I get this thing where I've linked very specific memories to episodes.

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Oh, interesting.

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It's kind of almost in a photographic way of like I'm picturing an orbidal

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sander on a Birch top with Osmo oil and the smell and the feel of.

Speaker:

Going in linked to this moment in a podcast.

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Yeah.

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So I feel like I've got the hundreds of these little links to

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like menial production processes and some moment in a podcast.

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Interesting.

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I used to happen with me for music all the time when I was like, like,

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I have specific songs in specific driving instances and like a certain

Speaker:

vehicle I had in high school, you know?

Speaker:

So I get

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that.

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Hmm.

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What was the reply I have just said, do you remember that you were

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that length, sand sanding Birch

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tops?

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No, I couldn't.

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I couldn't give you the episode table.

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I'm sorry.

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No, yeah, yeah.

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no, I love that show.

Speaker:

I mean, not to dive too deep into that.

Speaker:

It was such a great show.

Speaker:

Really nothing like it, I, maybe the equivalent would be like

Speaker:

the internet version of this American life potentially.

Speaker:

, I feel like they did, it did stories in a different way than most.

Speaker:

And they always had this amazing, like catch to them or like a

Speaker:

solution that was like, what, how did that happen outta nowhere?

Speaker:

Or you found the right person or and then kind of had a crappy, year or

Speaker:

so after that whole scandal and kind of felt like it died at that point.

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Yeah,

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for sure.

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Yeah, I think that they did a really, they managed to get a really good

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balance between sort of trivial techy, fun stuff, and humor and stories that,

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you know, mm-hmm , they could cry.

Speaker:

Like, yeah, I remember over the years, like if I ever sort of.

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Tear up listening to a podcast.

Speaker:

I'm like, oh Jim, you have not had enough sleep.

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I'm working too hard.

Speaker:

Cuz I know that little, that tiny little anecdote in that podcast just

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made me cry, which is fine and great.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

Speaker:

Important.

Speaker:

But that was kind of this trigger point of like, oh, okay.

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Crying again.

Speaker:

Like I've been working too hard.

Speaker:

I haven't had enough sleep course.

Speaker:

I

Speaker:

totally get that.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Note to self Uhhuh

Speaker:

crying at my desk.

Speaker:

Nobody notices oh, ive noticed you on that topic.

Speaker:

I think I've seen videos.

Speaker:

You've posted somewhere.

Speaker:

What do you do?

Speaker:

A, I didn't realize you used Osmo till like this week, which is interesting

Speaker:

cuz we love that stuff and it's just interesting to see it spread

Speaker:

throughout the world in different ways.

Speaker:

What do you use?

Speaker:

Do you use a sander with that?

Speaker:

Like a pad somehow.

Speaker:

ask Scott, is that something, is that what that was?

Speaker:

Is it absorbing then or are you spreading it at that point?

Speaker:

Mm, we spread it.

Speaker:

Oh, look, it's a deep, deep conversation.

Speaker:

Osmo application.

Speaker:

Oh yeah, it is.

Speaker:

Um,

Speaker:

Joe and Kyle will be into this.

Speaker:

Don't worry.

Speaker:

Typically

Speaker:

we spread it with a white scotch bright mm-hmm attached to a pneumatic orbital

Speaker:

sander mm-hmm . Oh, interesting.

Speaker:

So tip a bit of like, assuming we're doing a big surface here,

Speaker:

like a table top tip a bit of Osmo on ju orbital it on with a scotch.

Speaker:

Right.

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And that kind of really pushes it into the pores of the timber, but it's quite

Speaker:

an uneven coat at this point and kind of spread it, you know, both a axis,

Speaker:

get full coverage and then switch the scotch bright off the orbital,

Speaker:

put a clean white micro fiber, just Velcro straight onto the orbital.

Speaker:

And then.

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Polish it not Polish it, but you know, buffet flat with the

Speaker:

orbital, with the microfiber

Speaker:

cloth, nothing else you don't like wipe it up first?

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No.

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No.

Speaker:

Wow.

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Cause the scotch flight's got it quite flat and consistent.

Speaker:

Like it's still a bit lumpy and weird, but then you come back with the microfiber

Speaker:

and that flattens it off nicely.

Speaker:

So that's kind of first coat then maybe sand min coat sand with 800 grit,

Speaker:

something really fine just to knock the dust off the top and then repeat that

Speaker:

process for another, at least one more coat, but sometimes a third on a tabletop.

Speaker:

Wow.

Speaker:

That's it's very interesting.

Speaker:

I've seen, I mean, I kinda learned through watching people do it on YouTube with

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little scotch brights, but it was always like a hand process we've always done.

Speaker:

I mean, a lot of furniture, you, it feels like you can't get it.

Speaker:

You have to kind of do stuff by hand like that.

Speaker:

Anyway.

Speaker:

Certain shapes, but

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interesting like a table leg or something like an on an open.

Speaker:

Leg, we, we just RA it all in, you know?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker:

Big GC wet rag of Osmo and just get it everywhere and then come back with a

Speaker:

dry microfiber or semi dry microfiber and just like take off all the access

Speaker:

and that's fine for more complex shapes.

Speaker:

So some good process porn.

Speaker:

I know this is what the people come for.

Speaker:

That's why I wanted to get into it.

Speaker:

No, that's very interesting.

Speaker:

I, It must also that probably helps use less on the fir you

Speaker:

know, to spread it around that way.

Speaker:

Cuz then you don't have much like we've used like rollers little foam

Speaker:

rollers before mm-hmm and that's pretty efficient, but I'd say the

Speaker:

worst is just dabbing a cloth and then rubbing it or like a, if you

Speaker:

just do it by hand with something, it feels like you use the most that way.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

You're gonna lose a lot in the cloth, right?

Speaker:

Yeah.

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I quite like we've dabbled with this technique.

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I've got, I like when I see people using like a rubber

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plastic scraper to hell yeah.

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Apply it.

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Like, that's another good.

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I've seen that, like flooring contractors do that, or like COC do that with big or

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they used to do that with big tabletops.

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I remember when CAAC came out and visited us, there was a

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lot of Osmo talk at the time.

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Well, everyone's got different methods.

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Yep.

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But yeah, we tried that for a while with the scraper and that's quite good.

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So Aaron who works here, he's kind of always been the Osmo, the

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Osmo king he kind of fell into a spot years ago where he was the

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one doing, making all our tables.

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So therefore he was the one doing the most sort of Osmo application.

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And there's, you know, there's probably thousands of words written in.

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Work flowy about how to do it in our production standards.

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And then, you know, there's been lots of different versions of that

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over the year years as we've changed our techniques, but, Hmm, very cool.

Speaker:

Yeah, I'd love what I'd love to try a UV Osmo at some point.

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Have you overlooked it for that?

Speaker:

I haven't.

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It's, it's pretty sweet.

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You can just do you use it for, with a lot and it's done.

Speaker:

That is crazy.

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I mean it DRS dang fast.

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That's like one of the things we love about it is how fast it and well, it

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always dries, like there's, it seems like you can't mess it up in a certain way.

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you just keep knocking it down and yeah.

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Rubbing a little bit back and it's good again.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Yeah.

Speaker:

It's good in that sense, but we only use it on a few products.

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Typically we spray a polyurethane clear coat, water based

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clear coat on most products.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah, I'm jealous of your spray booth.

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That's something we, oh, that's so good.

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I've basically chose a mill instead of a spray booth.

Speaker:

Yeah.

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which I can understand why , I don't know, at this point, like hopefully we

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find a good use for that dang thing, but,

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Mill's much more exciting, but definitely spray booth gets a lot of

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work.

Speaker:

I bet.

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Do you have multiple people that do the spring?

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Yeah, pretty much everyone.

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Wow.

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Nice.

Speaker:

Yeah.

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Very cool.

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Well I , I can understand why our businesses do this and they just have

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one finisher mm-hmm but it's, and maybe we'll get to that point in the

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same way that we've got a CVE machinist now, like a lead machinist, maybe

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we'll have a lead finisher one day.

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it's always felt like one of those jobs to me that's pretty

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repetitive and meaningful.

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Yeah.

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And maybe you can get excited about like the new, you know, new gear

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and get your processes really dialed.

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And maybe, you know, obviously there are pro professional finishes out there

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who are really into it and great at it.

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So maybe we'll get to that point, but at the moment it's one of those jobs

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that just pretty much anyone can do.

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And we're all, all trained up to a point where anyone's comfortable

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jumping in the booth and laying down some sweet coats are clear.

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Yeah.

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I think it'd be tough.

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I guess.

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I, I know very little about finishing as, as exemplified by my asking.

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I also just like to hear about how other people Osmo seems like one of

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those things that can be like completely different based on who's applying

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it, but spray finishing, I don't know much about, and it's always seemed

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like I've heard, there's always like one or two people that do most of it.

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And that does tend to cause a bottleneck.

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Cuz I know like one of our neighbors that does some painting, they only

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have one painter and it comes in.

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Yeah.

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I think he comes in like once or twice a week.

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And other than that, they just wait for him to come in, you know?

Speaker:

Yeah.

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that in that case, I think it's a little bit more skill based, but oh it

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is very skill based I think.

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Yeah, to do it well.

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Yeah, definitely.

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Our spray booth is a bit of, bit of a bottleneck for us.

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So we've got a 2.4 meter wired water wall if you haven't seen it

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on Instagram and it's the water.

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Wall's fantastic.

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We've only cleaned it out once in the three years.

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We've had it set

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up the heck's a water

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wall.

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Yeah.

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Oh yeah.

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Water wall

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spray.

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I have, I have to look at this.

Speaker:

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So basically it's a tank of water.

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It's probably oh wow.

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Thousand thousand liters of water in the bottom.

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Whoa.

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And a huge fan that powers the airflow up top and miraculously through some

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magic of like angled steel battens.

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It sucks water up to the top tank.

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Mm-hmm , there's no pumps in it.

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It's completely sort of static.

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Other than that fan sitting on top and it magically sucks water up and

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then creates this waterfall effect.

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And so the overs spray gets captured by the waterfall and then filtered behind

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in a series of wet patterns and stuff.

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And producers really clean air out, out of the exhaust.

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Do you

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exhaust it outside?

Speaker:

Yeah, it goes

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up through the roof.

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Okay.

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I was like for a second, I was thinking like, it's so clean that you just put it

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back into the shop and it's like, holy Mo.

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You

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probably could cuz we're using water based paints.

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Yeah.

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Probably actually could do that.

Speaker:

I don't, if you're using oil based or solvent based paints, I don't think

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that would be a good idea, but yeah.

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It's cool.

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And so then there's a coagulant that's added to the water that just makes all

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the paint particles kind of stick together and float to the bottom sink, float to

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the bottom sink to the bottom and then amazing your annually or whatever service

Speaker:

schedule you gotta get in there and like shovel out all this like go mm-hmm

Speaker:

clean out the McDonald's for,

Speaker:

but yeah.

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

It's one of those jobs.

Speaker:

That's a good thing.

Speaker:

But yeah, we are, we are maxing out capacity in that booth.

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Like we've got just looking at that table.

Speaker:

We've got about 45 jobs live at the moment and the majority of

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those have got clear code on them.

Speaker:

And so, yeah, it's a pretty busy corner of the workshop.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

That sounds, it's one thing we've never really offered and I've found

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some outsourcing of finishing, but it doesn't ever, if you can offer it.

Speaker:

I think it, it would be a lot smoother for the client and for us, but never

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really done finishing for people.

Speaker:

Cause it's just, eh, I don't know.

Speaker:

It's just tough when you don't have a space dedicated to it.

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Like you gotta really control the air and

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we're not totally, our next thing is to build a bit of a drying room cuz it's,

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you know, it's really cold at the moment.

Speaker:

Probably not by American standards, but for Australia it's pretty cold.

Speaker:

Like it's minus probably minus one at the moment.

Speaker:

It's pretty cold.

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And when you're spraying a whole bunch of water based clear on parts

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and the workshop's, you know, close to zero, it's not a particularly

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happy time for paint drawing.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

My and a very short story about that is when I got my first shop out of the

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garage, I went into this shared shop and it had like 26 foot high ceilings.

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And it was basically an open shed on the ends.

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And it was super cold that winter and the space that I actually got was a

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spray booth that was UN permitted from the city . And there, I remember seeing

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on the door of it when I went to go tour the space, like where I was supposed to

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move in, there was still this spray booth and there was a ticket from the city.

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It was like $30,000.

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Fine.

Speaker:

And I was just like, that's literally, always scared me to, like, we're not doing

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anything close to unpermitted spring.

Speaker:

Cause yeah.

Speaker:

That's a crazy amount of money.

Speaker:

But that got that.

Speaker:

I got that shop space because that person didn't get a permit.

Speaker:

She, yep.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

So we wanna build a little drying room.

Speaker:

I'd love to do it with a saw dust burning heater to actually get

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our saw dust happening as the heat source for that drying room.

Speaker:

But we need to get the insurance company board before we do that.

Speaker:

You like heat some water outside or something and then like keep

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the burning outside of your space so that it's not yeah.

Speaker:

That's

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one way like a radiator.

Speaker:

Yeah.

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Make like a hydraulic system bring the warmth in.

Speaker:

So yeah.

Speaker:

Hmm.

Speaker:

Maybe by next winter, we'll have something sorted out.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

But our winters are pretty mild.

Speaker:

Like it's cold now cuz it's, you know, 7:00 AM and it's probably frosty out

Speaker:

there, but by 10 o'clock it'll be sunny and like warm and we can push

Speaker:

drying, trolleys out into the sun and

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Use your solar panels somehow to like reradiate inside.

Speaker:

Well that's

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

That's the other approach is just to use that excess electric energy.

Speaker:

It's probably more efficient.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I like the dust version.

Speaker:

Make pucks.

Speaker:

That'd be nice.

Speaker:

Just don't just don't tell anybody.

Speaker:

They'll never know.

Speaker:

How would it,

Speaker:

would they ever know?

Speaker:

How would they ever know when we've published something on the internet?

Speaker:

I

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dunno.

Speaker:

What are you gonna work on this week?

Speaker:

I'm going this week's pretty much over for me.

Speaker:

Big

Speaker:

Thursday.

Speaker:

I just forget about that.

Speaker:

Bye.

Speaker:

Next week, I've got a

Speaker:

planning session with the business coaches this morning.

Speaker:

Oh.

Speaker:

Which goes pretty much old morning.

Speaker:

Wow.

Speaker:

And then afternoon, I probably do some frantic quoting for things that I've

Speaker:

promised people this week and the day will be over mm-hmm . End of story.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

How about

Speaker:

you?

Speaker:

We're kind of working out the last final, like scale up

Speaker:

production, kinks of dust boots.

Speaker:

I've got a quote stuff.

Speaker:

Good duck.

Speaker:

The, the tower of duck.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I'm starting to work on a little bit of my R and D time.

Speaker:

We'll probably spent like the.

Speaker:

Aluminum pedestals for the ATC.

Speaker:

I really wanna oh, cool.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Start to prototype those in a way that's producible a larger scale, cuz

Speaker:

that would be a sweet job for the mill to start working on mm-hmm and people

Speaker:

are starting to ask about those, which is nice because they, I mean, my whole

Speaker:

thought was that they would work hand in hand with or the dust boot and yeah.

Speaker:

People seem interested in those.

Speaker:

Yeah, really.

Speaker:

Maybe we could replace our janky carousel tool changer with one of those.

Speaker:

I

Speaker:

always thought the co it's funny, cuz I think the carousels are kind of cool.

Speaker:

Like, and, and yours, whenever you have it, right.

Speaker:

It's like, now you want the opposite and I want, I'm like, oh

Speaker:

the carousels pretty cool and fast

Speaker:

it's really not fast.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Cool.

Speaker:

Exciting.

Speaker:

Yeah, I like that.

Speaker:

Very

Speaker:

cool.

Speaker:

Very good.

Speaker:

Are you still managing to do a little bit of default diary structure?

Speaker:

I got real bad last few weeks with my lack of being in a normal place and time.

Speaker:

And, yeah, I'd like to get it back into that.

Speaker:

Also just Haven having the thing I've struggled with is when I don't have the

Speaker:

things for each of the periods of time, then I kind of like let the whole thing

Speaker:

slide but I, I think my favorite part that I think just stuck because I don't

Speaker:

like doing it is I don't feel so guilty about not doing quotes immediately.

Speaker:

I'd like, feel fine.

Speaker:

I'm like, well, this isn't the time to do quotes, you know, mm-hmm

Speaker:

that's tomorrow at whatever time

Speaker:

. Yeah, that worked well for me too.

Speaker:

Nice.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Now, yeah.

Speaker:

I'm curious to see how yours evolves now that you've changed

Speaker:

so much of your responsibilities.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

It's always a bit of a moving beast, but yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

We should business head off scheme.

Speaker:

business Ponzi scheme.

Speaker:

We taking next week off.

Speaker:

Is that the plan?

Speaker:

Ah, yeah, I think probably best I'll I'll be doing some form of camping out.

Speaker:

Enjoy it.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Can't sit in my bed and podcast from an Airbnb this time.

Speaker:

That's my little time off of summer.

Speaker:

Enjoy it.

Speaker:

Mm-hmm

Speaker:

yeah.

Speaker:

Cool.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

All right.

Speaker:

See you.

Speaker:

Thanks have a

Speaker:

good week.

Speaker:

Bye bye.

Speaker:

Well, we get back to our Ponzi schemes.

Speaker:

Yes, . Sounds good.

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About the Podcast

Show artwork for Parts Department
Parts Department
Justin Brouillette (Portland CNC) and Jem Freeman (Like Butter) discuss CNC machines, their product design and manufacturing businesses, and every kind of tool that they fancy.

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About your hosts

Profile picture for Jem Freeman

Jem Freeman

Co-founder and director of Like Butter, a CNC focussed timber design and manufacturing business in their purpose-built solar-powered workshop. Castlemaine, VIC, Australia.
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Justin Brouillette

Founder of Portland CNC & Nack