👋 Use Your Hands!

To make cool things.

I admire people who make things with their hands.

Carpenters, glass blowers, painters, mosaicists.

Some of my fondest memories are building adirondack chairs with my dad. The fresh smell of sawdust all over the backyard, feeling the edges of a cut to make sure both boards align.

One summer, we built a log cabin with our friends. The trees came from a forest nearby, milled by a man down the road. Every log was hand peeled and carefully placed by us. When you step back and see that it’s not only standing but habitable, it’s an exciting feeling.

uninhabitable –> habitable.

It turns out there are a lot of folks out there who have captured this spirit of making on film. Some more extreme than others.

Just yesterday I found out about a guy who builds and flies remote control planes – That’s his whole thing!

But in the spirit of the cabin my dad and I built, I was especially fascinated by some vintage tape from Finland.

These guys are the real deal. Felling trees, hewing logs, and using axes to make notches for the walls to align. I can assure you, our crew didn’t have that kind of expertise. But the way in which it all comes together gives me just enough spark of hope that anything is possible.

Rather than share the original film, I want to recommend one carpenter’s reaction to it. Scott, aka @essentialcraftsman helps contextualize (i.e. makes it so I can understand) what is going on, and his enthusiasm is contagious. And if you want to watch the original, you can do that here too. (27 minutes)

Now for most people, this kind of project is unattainable. Where are you going to find a spot with land, logs, and willpower to build a cabin from scratch… (the only way we did it is because our friends had everything except people to make it happen).

There are other ways to make something, in a much smaller way, with projects around the house.

Few are able to explain both the thinking and the process behind such a project as well as Simone Giertz (pronounced Yetch).

She’s one of Youtube’s bigger maker-creators, famous for her unusable robots, but her skills and creativity extend into metal working, carpentry, and, in this video, stained glass. Spoiler alert: she succeeds! (15 minutes)

I love how she starts this project by dreaming, then prototyping, then executing, working through every possible problem (including inevitable failures) until she completes the project.

Although I don’t expect I’ll be making any stained glass any time soon, I feel inspired.

Makers remind me that (almost) everything in our human world was made by someone. Tiles, benches, drywall, windows, furniture, even our clothes.

There are tons of people making tons of types of clothes. But when I saw this video of a Korean tailor making a suit from scratch, I was mesmerized. I never imagined I could be so transfixed by a man transforming fabric into clothing, but apparently so were 17 million other people. (25 minutes)

There are lots of ways to make things. You might consider this newsletter something made by hand (I like to think so).

Hopefully one of these videos might inspire you to make something too.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

– Francisco

P.S. I just launched an instagram. You can follow @thespiraldispatch there too

P.P.S. If you came from instagram, welcome! If you’re wondering what the heck this is, this is what this is.

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Last Week’s comments!

Last week we talked about real estate extremes – you can check out the post here.

“Today I realize that a home can actually be an extension of yourself. It gave me the feeling that maybe I can have a space where I can be myself and express my personality” And he suggested his favorite episode of Never Too Small: Tokyo Architect’s 7 Level Compact Home, 59sqm/635sqft

From: S.B. - France

Never Too Small and [Living Big in a Tiny House] are my favorite tiny home content creators

From: M.G. - Barbados

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