DIY Drama: The Real Story Behind Cam Anderson’s Blacktail Studio

Foreign.

The house.

We have Cam Anderson from Blacktail Studio and Blacktail Ranch.

So I, I made a video, one of my earlier ones, and I did these really fine bow tie inlays, and I, I cracked one when I went in, and it got all the way and it was just like this hairline crack.

And I was like, I kind of, like, put some glue in there and I was like, that sucks, but it's fine.

And I made the video.

And this was again, pretty early when my videos maybe get 40, 50, 100,000.

And it got like two and a half million views.

And people hammered me for, like, trying to hide this.

And I was like, I was so embarrassed because they're right.

And I was just like, never again.

And I'm just like, everything and then some.

I try to lean in and show people that, like, this is how it is and this is where I screwed up.

And it's.

Since then, it's.

People really resonated with it and seem to love that stuff.

From home repairs to smart home technology, this is around the House, your national source for real answers to your home improvement questions.

Joining us today are host era G&CO host John Dudley.

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And now, here's Eric G. Welcome to.

The around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

John Dudley.

Good to see you, brother.

It's happening, man.

Another new day.

Another new day.

And another fun one.

We got my buddy, almost my trauma buddy, too, this last year.

Cam Anderson, Blacktail Studio and Blacktail Ranch.

The one, the only.

Welcome to around the House, my friend.

Thanks for having me, guys.

This is gonna be fun, man.

You and I have had quite the year this year.

Yes, we have.

Somewhat mirrored in some weird ways, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Good and bad.

Well, and it kind of all works out for good in the end, which is the hilarious part of it all.

Oh, there's.

There's darkness, there's light.

And so John gets you up to speed and the rest.

Yeah, you told me it's gonna get better.

And I was.

It was hard to believe at the time, but.

No, you're.

You're right.

It has a light comes shining in.

So about the same time, Cam and I were going through divorces last year, and I came out on, man, I'm going through this and then you're going Man, I'm going through this.

And it was, like, within weeks of each other.

It was pretty crazy how that stuff happens.

And we both were navigating that through the fall last year, so it was pretty wild.

But it's created some great content for you and your channel.

Outside of just building beautiful furniture, I.

Had a. I've had a handful of people because I'll build furniture, then give various aspects of my personal life in there.

And I had a few people tell me that the woodworking is getting in the way of their dating show.

So it's been pretty long with these.

Nice, man.

I think you were one of the OG people out there that were building cool stuff, and it was just dripping with honesty.

If you made a mistake, you went, this sucks.

How do I fix it?

Where everybody else would never let that get in the way.

You know what I mean?

I. I don't know if I ever told you how that started, you'd think that I started from me being an honest person, but that's not where it started.

Ever tell you the origin for that?

No.

Let's hear it, brother.

So I. I made a video, one of my earlier ones, and I did these really fine bow tie inlays, and I. I cracked one when I went in, and it got all the way, and it's just like this hairline crack.

And I was like.

I kind of, like, put some glue in there, and I was like, that sucks, but it's fine.

And I made the video.

And this was again, pretty early when my videos maybe get 40, 50, 100,000 views.

And it got, like two and a half million views.

And people hammered me for, like, trying to hide this.

And I was like.

I was so embarrassed because they're right.

And I was just like, never again.

And I'm just like, everything and then some.

I try to lean in and show people that, like, this is how it is, and this is where I screwed up.

And it's.

Since then, it's.

People really resonated with it and seem to love that stuff.

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Label drawers, shelves and bins clearly for fast grabs.

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Man, it was groundbreaking.

Well, it's groundbreaking.

You just never saw that on the channels out there of any of the creators.

And I'm sure there'll be somebody that'll pop in and go, I did it first.

Where there always is somebody out there.

Oh yeah, screaming at.

Certainly not the first.

But it does when something terrible happens now I can kind of look to my video guy, Scott, and be like, at least the video will be interesting for this part.

Authenticity is worth a thousand times more than some prefab bunch of nonsense you try to feed people.

And I think everybody's realized that after a couple decades of social media, you know, you don't want.

You don't want to dolled up.

You want the real grit, you want the real story, you want real people.

And that, like you said, resonates with people for sure.

Yeah, I said.

And the funny thing is, is, is that this is now turned into this sub story that's almost become the main story around, especially with Blacktail Ranch.

I mean, this has been so fun to work with you on this project because I mean, you are an absolute craftsperson when it comes to woodworking and doing that stuff.

If I was only half as good as you are building that stuff, it's gorgeous.

But you haven't remodeled anything before, really, so it's outside of your wheelhouse, which I think really makes for a.

For an authentic experience for people out there because most people have it.

To be fair, I have renovated something.

I just haven't done it well.

I did, I did like the kind of the Flipper special first house.

I bought a house in Texas for $92,000.

And that was the like fill everything with caulk and do whatever I can.

And since then I've had a couple other not big renovations.

But I've decided I'm no longer in the practice house paradigm where I'm gonna like, if I can't do it as good as professional, I'm hiring a professional fair fair man.

And so it's been fun because the one thing is with, with the Blacktail Ranch and if you guys haven't been following Cam out there, make sure you follow him because he's got so many different channels from the furniture side to the Blacktail Ranch where now I think your original intention was to buy a cool piece of property to put a shop on.

And that use in the last 365 days or so is completely twisted.

Yeah, I was just, it was just going to be a location for my shop and I might rent the house out.

But now living at the house, building a shop on the property.

So it's also.

We were going to do some very DIY type content on fixing the house up a little bit.

But now it's like let's make this thing pretty cool like talking with you where it's like this can't be that cool.

Look at the, the bones are kind of what they are.

And you're like hold my beer.

I got this.

Absolutely.

And it's been fun to kind of walk through this because it's really going on, this natural progression of what a real project looks like.

This isn't a TV project where in 22 minutes of a half hour episode they go from planning to start to the finished part.

We're still six months into the planning stage because of the twists and turns and budget realistic expectations and, and how budgets get out of hand.

Yeah, I, I wish this was more tv streamlined where it's like abcd because now we're kind of the point where the project is flipped upside down and we're doing almost basically a tear down.

And now I won't have any content for a year or more on, on, on that part anyway.

And so I wish that I could fake it and just be pushing this thing through.

But it's good in the long run, but it's going to slow everything down quite a bit.

Learning how much more I need to do.

Yeah.

And there's some content to be created here because you're working with the architect.

If you haven't watched the video so far.

To put it in a nutshell, you.

You did a video here this last fall of, hey, here's the house.

Or you walk through it.

And then you.

You and I were chatting, and I was like, hey, man, I can help you with this.

Let's.

Let's get this on track.

Because now you were looking at, okay, I'm going to move into this thing.

What am I going to do?

And then we started the design process.

But just like every project, there's things that twist and move around.

The first thing that happened, we got the house, the new roof put on it.

And so we start to work about the design, and we don't want to throw that roof away.

All of a sudden, we get into it and start looking at it going, maybe it's cheaper to throw the roof away.

Why are we taking a $15,000 section of roof and spending $50,000 to save it?

Yeah.

And that's the things that I just don't know where.

I don't realize what's possible.

When you give the idea to me not knowing any better of cutting a roof off and replacing it, I'm like, that's a million dollars minimum.

But you guys are like, it's not that big a deal.

It's actually going to save you money.

Because now we're not working inside of these cavities trying to make everything work.

And it's hard for me to wrap my head around that, but I'm slowly.

I'm getting there.

Yeah.

So John, as a contractor, you know this.

We walked in and I was like, cool room.

Let's vault the ceiling.

Oh, let's do all the vaulting.

Let's.

Let's put a nano wall type system, big patio out to the back.

Let's move the doors and windows, and we're vaulting ceilings.

And all of a sudden it's like, it might be cheaper to knock this down.

Right.

You always end up there.

If you're at all.

If you're at all creative or at all handy and have even an inkling of perfectionism, as some of us might do suffer with.

Yeah, You, Johnny, very quickly, very quickly can get to that point.

I'm still stuck on the.

I'm wondering if Cam needs a roofer for a million bucks.

You thinking about taking care of that for you, buddy?

Yeah.

Yeah.

One project.

Goodbye, Steve Martin.

So it's.

No, it definitely gets to that point where you put it this way.

One of my first flippers I bought for 73,000 in Bremerton, Washington and thought Ah, just all this thing up.

Literally tore the thing down to just one wall that stood so I didn't have to permit a new build.

Maintained remodel status.

Yeah.

And then you can ask Eric about how I hoist carriage houses top, second.

Floor up into the air.

A couple of posts holding it up going, hope the wind no glow.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's.

It's the land of sketching sometimes taking things too far.

Yeah.

So Cam, we've been working through that and that's just working its natural progression.

You've got.

Now if people haven't been watching this, we've gone through a couple videos.

We looked at the prices that you had for the remodel and the prices you got were very expensive.

It was a, we'll call it a half million dollar remodel, let's put it that way.

Which is insane when you're thinking about doing something within the footprint audio wise.

Yeah.

And that was, I naively was kind of in my back of my head was thinking 200 to 250 all in and all this, which at that price it would make sense I think to do this.

And then when it came to that much I told you.

First person to point out to me was my brother in law where he's like probably just rip that half of the house off and build whatever you want with whatever ceilings and whatever garage bays and mud rooms and pantries which I don't really have.

I'm just like couldn't get that out of my mind in bed just thinking, oh man, I can have everything I want.

And maybe it's not 500, maybe it's 600 or who knows what it'll be by the time it's done.

But I can actually have what I want being because I'm going to be here forever.

Yeah.

You're building the most ultimate shop out there.

I was driving.

I don't know what are those ceilings 27, 30ft high in that thing.

It looks like I'm just shooting from the hill.

Yeah, that's pretty close.

18 Foot eaves and so yeah, they peak probably right around there.

Yeah, big, big steel building.

Lots of your concrete pour looked massive.

You had a, you had a huge heated floors.

Come on.

I'm jealous.

I have shop envy there.

So let me ask you this because I might have to blame you for not pointing this out earlier.

My electrician was just telling me something when we were out there on site.

It's heated floors.

It's a.

Whatever it's called the boiler gas powered heated floors.

He did a job where they had heated and cooled floors with a heat pump.

Have you ever heard of that?

I have, but I don't really have a reason for.

Here's the problem.

A cooled floor is going to be interesting because cold air stays low.

Right.

So I.

It's not going to cool the building, I don't think like you would think it would.

You're gonna have cold feet walking around.

But I don't know if it's gonna cool the building like it would with ac.

Yeah, I don't.

I probably wouldn't be that cold.

He said it gets to slab to about 60, so whatever that would do for it.

But either way heated should be good enough and.

But now I know that refrigerated floors was an option.

Yeah, I've seen it.

But again.

And that's how it starts.

And that's how it starts.

Right.

So.

But yeah, I would not have suggested that for you because I think you'd have been probably the time you do that and look at that.

Then you got to figure out how you're going to move air around to kind of keep it so it's cool.

Yeah, that could be its own issue.

And maybe it's just easier to put an air conditioning system in there.

Fair enough, fair enough.

But yeah, the shop itself is everything I want.

It's a little over 7,000 square feet, 6 inch slab heated.

Pretty simple though.

It's just a big rectangle for the most part.

Yeah, I like it.

I like it.

And that's kind of what started you down this whole road of buying that beautiful piece of property out there.

It's about 15 minutes from my house here, which is cool for popping out there, but you've got so much building going on.

That is a lot to juggle for a professional when you've got a whole crew that's being managed out there.

You're trying to build furniture and do the YouTube channel, of course, and all the other stuff as well as trying to deal with life, new girlfriend and of course all the rest of the stuff with the build.

Yeah, and that's.

That's where I'm usually pretty good at realizing I'm not meant to manage a construction site or things like that where if I can go build a table, use that money and hire someone to do the job for me and then have money left over.

I shouldn't be spending 20, 30, 40 hours a week managing a job when I could take that money and go do what I'm good at and probably do it for cheaper.

Yeah, makes sense.

There's so many great lessons to be learned for people to watch that channel.

And I'm having so much fun with you on that as well because we're just cruising through to a realistic pace which of course with your timelines of things isn't optimal, but it's realistic.

But I want to back up a little bit.

How did you get from being a pilot to Blacktail Studio?

They were more related than you might think.

Basically pilots, if you don't know, have awesome schedules.

I was a helicopter pilot's due anyway.

I worked seven days on, had seven days off for life flight network, the air ambulance around here.

And so I was like I need a hobby.

And we had.

My ex wife and I had bought this house with a like a mechanics had had custom built this house.

And I was like, I always like tinkering with stuff and I like never really woodworked other than like building two by four end tables in college or something.

And I was like I want to get into woodworking.

And so just kind of got into it and then thought like someone had recommended posting on social media.

So okay.

I never didn't have Instagram, didn't have any of that.

I had a terrible start.

I hadn't.

I literally thought you had to go ask each person, Eric, will you please follow my my channel and then go to the next person.

And then I learned what a hashtag was where people can search you and find you via this algorithm.

And once I figured that out I was like I got this, I'm.

I got this down.

And so I was, I was really diligent.

Posted every day and started getting a few followers.

They got to maybe 10,000 or so on Instagram.

It was like all right, I got this, let me try YouTube.

And then started YouTube and then I don't know, it was.

I don't say it's easy, it's just my recipe was always just don't post stuff that annoys me.

And I think a lot of people ignore that.

Where if I'm a woodworking channel, don't post pictures of my dinner out to whatever, don't post this, this is the audience I'm going for.

And decided to go full time at the YouTube thing.

Man.

And.

And the rest is history.

But it's so far.

Yeah.

And you're.

And you're just spooling up for bigger and better things.

Talk about that shot.

Making production easier for what you're doing.

Instead of having all those different light scenarios from room to room and.

And carrying stuff around.

You've got the space.

7,000 Square feet is the dream shop.

Yeah.

And I can get multiple projects at one time where before was if I have one big table, nothing really happens until that's gone.

And if a customer delays shipping it for a week or three weeks like they've done now, nothing really happens in that shop.

But now get in the corner and just keep going.

Or have multiple big projects going at the same time.

And that is exciting.

And that's going to be really cool to see how that works out.

Because now you've got the space.

Now you've got all the cool stuff.

And even your.

Even your temporary shop is nice.

Don't get me wrong.

You spend a ton of money on that to get that dialed in.

And it.

It's gorgeous.

It's.

It's great too.

And I think.

I can't remember if I've told you this or not.

We're going to build the offices out in there.

Maybe you can help with some soundproofing ideas.

I have some great ideas on that.

Because I tell you what, I've been doing that in my studio right now and it is about some 15, 20ft off the road.

And when every bus, school bus, truck goes by, you hear it.

So I've been in the middle of working through that right now and it's coming along really well.

But sound control is actually not that hard.

Once you get going on it.

You can.

You can cover up everything up to just about being in an airplane flight path and.

And get through that.

So you can do a lot with that.

And John, you did that in the studio upstairs at the carriage house.

And it turned out great.

I did it there.

And I. I actually.

The, like Institute of Sound Technology in Arizona, me and Alex Otto built out like eight studios across eight different live rooms.

It's insane what you can do, but it's also insane how technical and how expensive it is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just before Warren talking about tearing things down and.

Yeah.

He already learned that with.

With what I would call the barn that turned into the shop.

That was.

That was your typical barn is a stretch.

Barn is a stretch.

Yeah.

It was The.

I'll describe it to our audience out there.

It is your traditional farmhouse shop kind of thing that started as one building and then they needed a little more space and they added on and they added on.

And I think even out back, they took an old walk in cooler and had added on using parts from that.

The metal and foam.

Yeah, it was just.

Yeah.

And the roof that they added on was such a low pitch that you couldn't even really add a waterproof roof because it kept wicking back under even after my renovation.

Yeah.

And then.

Yeah, the cooler part.

And then horses living inside with concrete.

And that was.

And then there was just giant sections of the roof missing.

And it was terrible.

Calf looked like a biohazard lab mold test gone wrong.

Yeah.

Bad.

It was.

It was black everywhere.

From old.

It was.

It was.

It was like a bad movie.

It was like a bad movie.

But, man, you guys just cranked on that and got it knocked down.

I loved watching you on your first excavator experience knocking that down.

That was a cool watch.

I couldn't believe they let me do that.

They told me, like, oh, yeah, we're gonna have you knock it down.

And I felt like a staged reality show thing where I was in on it the whole time.

And I literally had no idea until we showed up that day.

And I was like, no, they're not.

They don't want me to do this.

And then I got in there and I kind of nudged it and that's okay.

That's enough fun.

And they're like, get back in there.

Keep going.

Yeah.

Pretty soon I was just swinging that thing around and having a good time.

See, that's awesome.

It was about the similar look on your face then of what your contractor did when you did that.

That sponsorship thing on him in the kitchen.

John, you missed that part.

But it was.

What company was that?

Go ahead and throw it out there.

So, yeah, basically the company was sponsoring that YouTube video was incogni.

They do hide your identity online from people search sites.

Anyway, to do this ad roll, I searched my contractor before the video and found out his family's names and his addresses and his past addresses.

And I started rattling this off and he just has this kind of smile on his face.

It's like, what are you doing right now?

And then finally I was like, and this is an ad.

And he's.

Oh, my gosh, he's gonna punch you.

He looked like his hair was coming up.

Like, there's a gotcha here that you know something that I don't and it looked like it was, I mean, I.

Think I might have been talking like giving his daughter's name, which is all I had was family member names.

But so if I understand if you're talking about some guys, whatever six year old daughter or something, that might be a little sensitive.

Yeah, this was, this was kind of like the Adam Carolla skip and tell Catch a contractor or the, or the catch a predator look when they figure out who that look of.

Where are you going with this?

Yeah, the advertiser loved it.

Oh, absolutely.

I was dying.

I saw that when it popped out.

And we, we bleeped all the information in the actual video.

Absolutely.

So nothing was good.

But I, I, I, I saw his, his veins starting to bulge and I went, this could go badly.

Yeah, I think that was my favorite ad drop of, of, of social media in the last little bit.

That was solid.

That was.

Well, yeah, when I came up with that one and I, we actually lost his audio because right before that he adjusted his mic and pulled his mic out.

So we had to, I told my videographer, like, we don't get to lose this.

We have to keep this.

And so he pieced it together from my, my loud mic and then his mic and it was, you could tell a little bit, but it wasn't bad.

Yeah, now it sounded good and it actually highlighted him kind of going what?

So that was solid.

But really, man, I'm excited for your project coming up here on your house and we, I don't want to talk too much about it because I don't want to get ahead of videos here.

Too much, but we can talk about it because it'll probably change by the time it happens.

Fair point.

This is remodel.

So right now, guys, we're Cam's been, we were talking before the show that he's waiting for the architect to come back on what the new build part would look like.

We've done a lot of design work on the upstairs part of it, which might stay, might not stay or roof could come off, hard to say.

But trying to save some of that with what you're talking with the roof line changes on it.

To really take this from a, I don't know, it's kind of a mid century esque farmhouse and heavier on the farmhouse than it is mid century.

But it has some of those mid century lines on the roof line.

But yeah, yeah, low, low slung.

Yeah.

Big overhangs.

Yeah, big overhangs.

Kind of, yeah, ranch houseish.

But the, the first rendition from the architect of the major Tear down.

Half tear down.

It's cool.

It's.

It doesn't look.

It's a whole new look in the house.

And he did actually want to pair all the roofs off, which at this point I'm fine with, and added a, a three car garage.

But enter from the side of the house instead of.

Oh, okay.

He's fixing.

One of my biggest architectural things that I love to do is I don't like seeing the garage doors if at all possible from the front of the house.

That's what he said.

He said it's a very, very track house type look.

And he said so he put those on the side and the big bonus room with an ensuite up above.

Above that I think it was 12 foot eaves to the plus vaults.

Nice.

Really promising so far.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's sick.

And that, that changes the entire feel of that house too.

People are going to come by that had seen that house, what it's done a year or two beforehand and go, wow, they knocked it down.

Yeah.

No, the house he drew up, it does not look like the same house.

And the part we're keeping is totally functional with the basement I'm in now, daylight basement and then the upstairs and then.

But by getting a whole new roof and continuing it into the new construction, it looks like a purpose built, not an addition.

Yeah.

And then it's going to be so much more energy efficient.

And that's some of the things that when you're remodeling that you get into.

Because that was one of the things that I was worried about when we were tearing.

If we were going to tear that roof off completely is all right.

If we tear the roof off completely now we're getting in such a remodel spot.

That code usually says hey, you need to use 20, 26 building code.

Which means those 2 by 4 walls need to be furred out to 2 by 6 and now we're down the rabbit hole.

He didn't mention that.

So.

No, no.

But that's, but that's something that happens with, you know.

And again if you're not touching the walls down there like in the basement and some of that stuff.

But it's on that, that living room, dining room, kitchen stuff that I was worried about that.

I was really worried about that part in there going.

Those parts in there that we're getting into that we're tearing down to the studs and tearing the roof off that stuff.

All of a sudden they go new energy code for this space at Least, which isn't a big deal.

It's quieter, it's, it's sturdy.

It makes engineering a little bit better because you're using bigger lumber.

So there's a lot of pluses as well.

Pluses to that.

But it just makes for a tighter house as well.

And yeah, that's going to be a huge thing is just having 80% of the house anyway will be new where new plumbing, new insulation, new everything.

So it's not trying to chase old problems and galvanize pipes, which probably have some of that down here actually.

But what we can have new will be new.

Yeah.

And the cool part, Johnny, to give you an example we're talking about with the roof, is it's got at least stick built kind of a truss system up there.

So it's two by sixes.

That's not a full pressed on stud situation.

But we're gonna have to, to save that, we're gonna have to rip the ridgeline off of that down the middle, drop a beam in, tear off what was holding up the drywall down there.

And that was going to be a pretty labor intensive process.

You've done it before.

It ain't fun.

Yes, it's.

Yeah.

No, it's not.

Just the description made me go.

And then there's a lot of good stuff too in those videos to be talking about as well as the difference between level four drywall and level five.

Yeah.

I was ready to drop an extra ten grand for a number I didn't know didn't really do much for me in terms of what I'm looking for.

And you asked you like, what's the best drywall for smooth level 5.

Of course it is.

It also has the price tag that goes with it.

And 95 of the people out there won't know the difference between level four and level five.

And Christian, the guy you met, he was telling me because I thought it was just kind of shining a light down the side and you don't see waves and he's level five, you can actually supposed to build a split a laser beam or something.

Yeah.

And I was like my roller is not going to be that smooth of paint or.

Yeah.

Usually when you see level five drywall going in, they've got these light bars or lights and they're just doing this wide angle and they're just knocking it down.

And really they have to skim coat the entire wall.

So it's a whole added step of skim coating almost like plaster.

And they sand it back down again.

Where level four, it's it's super smooth, but you don't have that extra skim coat, which by the time you have the nap of the roller and the paint on there, no one's going to ever see any difference.

And I'd like to be able to touch it up someday in terms of I put a hole in it or hung a picture and I want to be able to smooth it out myself.

And I feel like I'd have a better chance of smoothing out level four than some glass smooth level five that you'd be able to see.

My mistake.

Yeah, that's like trying to, trying to patch the side of the, of a Range Rover.

It's not as easy when it's that way versus.

Yeah, exactly.

What's your take on that, Johnny?

I know you love drywall work.

Just, I'm just, I'm the guy that skim coats the, the entire wall for, and still I'm like, oh, that's a level three.

You're perfectionist.

Why?

I don't do drywall.

Yeah, you want to talk about sticking to what you're good at?

I'm.

I'll get too good at drywall, which I never wanted to do.

But, yeah, I was always a guy that skimmed the whole dang wall.

And, and when you said that, I'm like, they'll skim coat the whole wall and they're lucky if they only have to do it once.

It just said you have to step back and go, it's just drywall me.

Right.

Nap of the roller.

And even with a foam roller, even with a silk roller, I don't care what you use, it's going to leave a stipple.

So just get over it.

Yep, absolutely.

Bigger fish to fry in the world.

So, Cam, what fun projects do you have coming up here on the, on the horizon on tables and stuff?

You just.

I'm sure your schedule's booked out for the next year.

Fun is, is debatable because I'm, I'm working on the biggest.

It's the biggest table I've ever done.

And people always comment.

You say that every video.

And I was like, that's kind of how it works when you're like, trying to do better stuff.

So it is again.

But that said, this is by far the biggest.

My previous biggest was 13ft, and this one is 18ft.

It's the thousand pound slab of wood on this base.

Wasn't super complicated, but it's been the hardest project I've done in years, if not ever.

And I told the client it's for a corporate office down in Austin.

And I told him we could do power in it.

And he says yeah, it was just to be determined but this is all kind of new to me so I don't know what, I don't know on this.

And he sent me some cool pop up units.

You've probably seen point pod.

And I looked at the specs and go yeah, those will fit right inside our base, no problem.

But I didn't.

They did.

They didn't give the specs on the flanges for them which are bigger than.

It's a really pretty tight base.

And then lining everything up per perfect.

And it was like I'd actually cut the bases, the metal bases apart and move everything just enough.

And we finally, we got it, but it's just flipping it over.

I have two engine hoists hooked up to a beam that I is over my rafters to flip this thing over.

And that was one of the things.

We didn't know if the ceiling would come crashing down just moving it.

And it's a, it's a bear.

But we're, we're through the hardest parts.

Nice.

So now we got to design a rotisserie system now for you to do tables with.

Right.

Somebody was just commenting on that and I never thought about.

Yeah.

Using the car rotisserie for a table.

That's what I was thinking.

Maybe a car rotisserie would be a very easy way to do it because you could strap it to that and then there's lifting up and move.

There's probably a surprising amount of sag to these big tables because two of us can lift up on one end and we can lift the table but it's still touching nine feet down.

So Warrior Rotisserie would be.

Not enough support.

Depending though some of those rotisseries, depending on how they go, they, you've got that frame in there so you could come in and, and build some kind of a system on there that kind of clamped from the outside of it down the side that was almost a, A, a strengthening beam down the side that you could put some felt pads or something on to clamp it with.

And then you would have something that would, that would help with that.

I'm sure we could design a way up to make that be cool and make it a heck of a lot safer for you.

I need nothing.

Have you seen the, the Pac man machine that the guys are gl veneer down California have?

No.

It's got infeed and out feed rollers and it's a, it's a big hydraulic thing.

It's printed bright yellow.

Looks like Pac Man.

Okay.

It literally just sandwiches it and then the whole thing like cylinder like spins over.

It's like some Chinese factory.

And they.

I think they had a custom made for moving their, flipping their tables so they can flip a 30 foot by 7 foot wide table in 30 seconds.

Okay, that's cool.

It is cool.

That's cool.

Yeah.

You can always do stuff like that if you've got one of those big beam cranes or something over the top where you can drop two lines down and, and spin stuff around a little bit easier.

But holy smokes, that's a lot.

Yeah.

I think eventually I'll just get into something efficient with the forklift.

I had a friend of mine, he made me a couple of custom.

He's a poster.

Custom straps that almost basket the slabs from the end.

Yeah.

So it can't slip out of it.

And that's worked well.

And so we'll come up with something long term.

Oh yeah.

That's kind of the fun of that.

Designing out processes for that.

And in doing that because you're having to kind of custom build everything for that just because there's nobody out there making it such a niche kind of thing.

People aren't moving 2,000 pound tables all the time.

Most of the shops that do that, they had 20 employees and they just call every over and they just say everybody come help, help us turn this.

And they do.

And then everybody goes back to work.

Where I got me and one other guy a lot.

Yep.

That's a wild one.

But that makes sense.

That makes sense.

Any other cool features you're putting in the new shop?

I'm sure you've got all new tools going in there.

I am talking to a tool company right now and we might actually have a sponsor for some industrial tools.

Nice.

I'm excited about that.

That's been.

We've been talking for them to them for quite a while.

But yeah, the big 50 inch wide belt plant, wide belt sander slash planer, industrial planers, industrial jointers.

Yeah.

Basically pretty close to industrial.

Most everything is.

Is the goal.

Nice.

And then you wouldn't have to take that out to somebody else to go do that stuff.

Which would make your life so much easier than trying to haul that out.

Because that just doesn't fit in the back of the truck bed anymore, man.

No, there's a big one especially now.

But even this, my last video I had, it was.

It was a small console table.

But at one point it's it was too big for my 12 inch jointer and I got to work on it and it was twisted so we had to go drive 40 minutes to work for five minutes, then drive 40 minutes back and then we're half a day into this five minute job that I just had this at my own shop.

Yeah, that's frustrating, especially when you're trying to keep that, keep that machinery going out there because you've got a schedule.

You're trying to stay on with people's projects.

I'm still pretty fortunate though that one I have a shop that will rent out time to me on their big ones.

If you didn't have that now, it'd be setting up a router sled or something all day on.

Yep.

And so I'm, I feel more, more fortunate.

Fortunate than most, but it still could always be better.

So what's your, I want to ask you before we run out of time here, I want to ask you.

Finishing, you have your way of finishing.

What is your favorite way to finish Walnut these days I have gone all.

In on the LED UV cured finishes.

You probably, I'm sure you've seen those.

Yeah.

And the ones that I use are hard wax oils.

They're getting more and more popular in the States.

They were big on floors in Europe for a long time.

And I've been using the non UV ones for years.

And then about, maybe even two years ago, I've switched over to a UV cured one.

And I don't know if I'm supposed to talk about this or not.

I was just talking to become my, my partner with this.

But we're developing our own.

Nice.

The problem is you need, I have a two thousand dollar light that it takes to cure this.

And you can also use the sunlight, but even the sun isn't quite as powerful as these lights.

So we're working with a company, a chemical company that's going to do a dual cure where it can be cured with a light or through oxidization.

So you want to just put it on normal finish like a Rubio monocoat, you can do that.

Or if you want to put it on the sun or do this, you can.

Or at the light and you can click cure it that way.

And the guy, one of the guys I'm working with, he's talking to me yesterday.

I'm terrified of why nobody else is doing this.

He's like, he's like, this is so obvious that somebody needs to be doing this and nobody is.

And I was like, I think they're just comfortable with what they have.

They're like, why do we need to re educate everybody and have this new product and this new space?

We're selling products so why do we care?

But we're doing.

I agree with that.

Actually.

I agree with that because I've worked with cabinet companies for 30 plus years and I have been in the conversations with finishes where the, the Sherwin Williams finish guy is in there talking about the latest finish.

And it took forever from people to get for cabinetry finishes 30 years ago to even switch out a lacquer, even though that there were so many better finishes out there.

It's what we do, it's all we do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And you're going to pry it out of their cold dead hands.

And then all of a sudden conversion varnish.

And then you're getting into flatline finishing with, which is awesome with the UV cured stuff because they're running a cabinet doors down a machine and by the time it kicks out the other end in two minutes, it's finished, it's dry and there's less, less junk in the finish.

You just eliminate a lot of that stuff that can drop out of the air and, and, and show up in a finish.

So to me it's brilliant.

And that's where I think we're gonna have some hurdles in.

Because one, these types of finishes are incredible on cabinets.

They're just more.

You only find them in luxury ones but they're.

It's easy to, it's so easy to apply and there's no dust that gets into it.

You don't have to have a clean room.

And then if you want to refresh it in a couple of years, you can do that.

Whereas if you get your lacquer and, or your conversion varnish and you scratch it or you get it kind of too shiny kind of is what it is.

You're kind of stuck with it.

You're stuck.

That said, contractors, people that why risk this going out of the real world?

They're building a $50,000 kitchen for someone that might come back because they don't know this finish.

It's going to be hard to get them to take a chance on a new product.

Johnny probably remembers this because he was working with me at the time.

There was a time that there was a major finish manufacturer in cabinetry.

And I'm not going to drop their name on here because I don't want the lawyers calling me, but they messed up in their build of a primer for the cabinets and it was not compatible with the finish.

So remember these.

They were all these jobs that went out that had to be refinished on site because cabinets were installed, granite was in, and the finish.

The.

The primer was falling apart underneath.

So it was crazing.

It was doing all these things, but it was six to 12 months later, after it fully cured, it was breaking down.

And so I get that.

And I saw companies spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on.

And the Only once it happened, everyone, whoa.

Stop using the product.

But it was a nightmare for the cabin industry for about two years because it had to play its way out.

Yeah.

All you have to do is give that a name.

You call that delayed distressed cabinetry.

Right?

There you go.

Yeah, there we go.

There we go.

No, it's a premium to do that upgrade.

That's right.

Yeah.

Just like, gouge in a hardwood floor.

You're like, no, now it's cooler.

100.

I get the terror thing, though, Cam.

I can relate with you on that.

The marketing side of it.

Absolutely.

A few different AI Projects, and that market moves so quickly, but at the same time, you're like, how has nobody got this built yet already?

Like.

And, yeah, there's a lot of fit.

You go to bed.

I. I don't even go to bed now because I worry.

I just keep grinding because I'm like, man, how.

How is nobody doing this?

Yeah, it's a real thing, but there's.

It's like anything, right, Cam?

There's risk and reward with that.

It's one of those things that it's like, all right.

And you don't know until you play with it.

Yeah.

And I like.

I like taking big swings.

For some reason, I have a really hard time thinking this doesn't work out, but if it doesn't, then go on to the next thing.

It's science.

It should work out, but you just got to play with it and find out.

I know the product's going to work, because this is.

It's a.

It's a.

A company that produces finishes.

This is not like this is what they do.

So it's not like it's not gonna work.

But in terms of whether it's too much for the consumers to wrap their head around or something like that, is that.

That's to be determined, man.

That's gonna be awesome, man.

I'm excited for that.

So I'm too.

It's funny.

It's like we literally.

We're having pretty much exactly this conversation today, Eric.

And literally, I said, swing for the fences.

Right.

Those are the options.

Do we trail this out for six months.

Go for concept.

The concept's proven.

I know it's worth it.

I know it's going to work just like you're saying.

And I literally said this or swing for the fences.

Geo.

Like that's funny.

Same day.

Got to go for it.

You just got to go for it.

Yeah.

So cool, man.

I'm so excited for what you got going on and the channel changes and of course, the house is.

I'm so, I'm having so much fun with you on that over there.

Just kind of working through the, the twists and the curves.

I appreciate that because you're not making much money from me.

No, no, that's what friends do, brother.

That's what friends do.

So.

No, you drew, you drew up the amazing kitchen that now that I'm tearing it down, is going in the trash.

So thank you for, for that amazing kitchen and I'm hoping you're still going to be willing to help fine tune this one.

The architect's drawing to make it the most, the same type of idea out of it.

Absolutely, man.

We'll have some fun with that and that.

My pleasure.

It's.

It's fun to me.

I spent 30 plus years designing and now that I do media full time, it's nice to go on and go, oh, man, I could, I could actually do this again.

So I haven't had the time to do it.

I was, I was doing that year after year after year until I got burned down on it.

Now I'm like, well, I'm having fun doing this for, for friends.

Oh, it's not, it's nice not having Mrs. Smith calling me up at six o' clock on a Sunday night when I'm sitting down to dinner asking questions about should I change the moldy on my plans.

I don't have to worry about that anymore.

But with this, it's super fun to work through it with you and get you across the finish line.

When we get there, you might, you might have to worry about that with me.

So don't, don't, don't count on that just yet, dude.

Friends, it's a whole different story.

It's a whole different story.

Johnny used to do that to me all the time and we're still friends, so.

Good.

I get what you're saying though, about that.

I'll tell you what, I walked by, we got a construction building getting built right at the end of the street, and I walk by some days after sitting on the computer for 20 hours.

I'm like, I just Want to go swing a hammer, man?

I just want to go.

Just work something simple with my hands, moving my body.

Yeah.

Do you get that, Cam, where you want to get back in the.

In the left seat of helicopter?

Oddly, it's weird.

I get asked that all the time.

No, I'm.

You're good?

I'm good.

Yeah.

I wouldn't mind it, but.

No, there's no day where I was like, I want to go fly.

It's.

I've done it.

It's fine.

Done it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I get that.

That's a whole different world, though.

That's.

And I think that's why you pilots do so well with social media and some of these things, because you're.

You're process oriented.

Right?

There's a checklist.

There's things you have to do, and I think you're more diligent than many.

I don't know.

Yeah, I was.

I was the guy that skipped.

Now the faa.

Now, I don't care what the FAA says about me or does to me.

I skipped the checklist so many times.

I was.

Well, maybe.

Well, maybe I wasn't.

Wasn't the best fit for it.

Being a bad sheep.

Get into my hopcopter anyway.

So my job's just to get in there.

They'll be fine.

To be fair, I did the checklist.

I just did it from my own system and memory instead of 100.

I totally get that.

Yep.

Yep.

Everything's attached.

It's fueled up.

I've con.

I've.

I've.

Everything looks good.

Yeah, we made it.

A few thousand hours and.

No, no.

No crashes to speak of or.

We made it.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

All right, Cam, we're running out of time.

What's the best way for people to find you out there in your channels?

If you search Blacktail Studio anywhere, you should be able to find me wherever you.

Social media, Blacktail Studio.

And of course, you've got your own products out there as well with some of your stuff.

Let's hit that, too.

Yeah.

N3 Nano is the.

The flagship.

It's a.

Essentially, we're not.

My chemists are going to kill me for this, but a ceramic coating for wood.

It's.

Most of them are designed for cars.

Don't put them on wood.

This one is made for wood.

And that's been far and away my flagship product, which is what led me into other wood finishing avenues that we talked about.

Yep.

Awesome, man.

That's great.

We got to plan a dinner sometime.

Get the.

Get the ladies together.

We got to plan that out anytime.

We'll do it.

All right, Cam, thanks for coming on today, man.

I appreciate it.

And just looking forward to the next few months and we working through the rest of the project, the planning part of at least.

Absolutely.

No, I appreciate it.

Call me on the roofs.

Ready?

Get here.

You got it.

You got it.

Done.

That's awesome.

I'm Eric G. And for John Dudley, you've been catching around the House.

Make sure you watch the video of the podcast on our around the house Eric G. YouTube page when it releases Monday after this show airs.

Thanks for tuning in to the around the House show.

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