Be the Norm Abrams (This Old House) of metalworking

"Mike Slowey" wrote: (clip) I stupidly got suckered into responding... And you stupidly got suckered into preaching about it... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ And you stupidly continue to show resentment about it. I thought it was pretty funny. Maybe the reason you don't is that it contains more than a grain of truth.

You ever got chigger bits - those suckers can irritate you for weeks! DAMHIKT

Tillman

I thought when I went to this newsgroup I would be talking to adult craftsmen honestly interested in sharing their interest in burning and turning metal. I guess I was wrong.

I'm cured, now, boys.

"Mike Slowey" wrote: I thought when I went to this newsgroup I would be talking to adult craftsmen honestly interested in sharing their interest in burning and turning metal. I guess I was wrong. I'm cured, now, boys. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ If anyone feels a sense of loss because of what I said, I apologize.

--All true! Bottom line, tho, is that if we want to grow the hobby something like this wouldn't hurt. I'd *love* to see a show about machining. I think the real problem with a show like this would be the projects that one would want to present. That is to say, even the longest projects on NYW only take two half-hour segments to complete. I've a feeling that even the *simplest* metalworking project would take two half-hour segments; the really fun ones would take most of a season, yes?

You'd have to heavily time compress it for the short attention span audiences. Even so you could probably still get away with 4-6 episode projects as long as they were interesting enough. One episode can certainly be a composite of a weeks worth of activity and a six week (real time) project is not unreasonable.

Pete C.

You've obviously never worked in a machine shop environment surrounded by adult craftsmen. Even in the real world, as opposed to yours fer instance, there's this phenomenon called levity.

Not to be confused with a physics term applied to what happens when one straps buttered toast (butter side up) to th' back of a cat, which is then dropped (upside down) from a height of say 4'. That would be a perpetual motion levitation device[1].

However it would also be quite humorous (levity), which is where this adult craftsman is going with this particular diatribe. Humor is commonplace in vocations that involve th' very real potential for very bad things to happen, every day, to those so engaged. Not that it's limited to such professions, mind you, th' concentration is just higher. As is th' IQ of humorists in general.

It appears that your humor muscle has been severely strained, perhaps even completely torn. Dr. Snarl prescribes that you thoroughly convalesce prior to returning for further interaction herein. Try th' buttered cat experiment, it's been known to cure torn humor muscles like magic. See! Even thinking about it made ya smile... hope it wasn't too painful.

Snarl... or take yer ball and go home

[1] Attributions to th' buttered cat theorem goes to th' Mad Feculator, world reknown lead physicist of Cats Ass Technology(tm).

Okay, guys. I'm over it. Yea, I like humor as much as the next guy. Next time my BS filter will be better tuned to look out for it.

That said, let's look at the original idea.

There was a considerable response to the idea which says to me that there is the germ of an idea here. And with respect to those of you who have first hand video production experience, I'm sure you're right about all the time and trouble it could cost to do something like this. But. think about this...

Suppose each of you who have some metalworking project you are proud of should take movies or stills of your project and then gather them all some place. If you had a place where the more basic ones could be stored, like your companion web-site, or a totally new web site, then suppose you made the site have more appeal by word-of-mouth or other promotion to the general public. Then, after several months do a little site analysis to see what kind of viewership it generated. From this you could get some idea of the amount of interest out there.

Assuming there is interest, you already have the web contents of this site "in the can" to show to potential sponsors and you have your viewership data (assuming there is good data and good results). Now, you could feel confident about having a need in the market, and having the people who could meet that need, i.e. those of you that have built the web contents and those of you who contribute in the second step, so you could proceed with getting a little more quality for a second project or second episode.

Take a step at a time get the data, get the content, get the need met. Grow a little bit after each step.

It could happen.

Mike