Making content for YouTube is so strange. So often, I do videos that I’m really excited about sharing with others, and when I upload them, they just sit there and nobody watches them.
Then a year passes…
All of a sudden, hundreds or even thousands of people begin watching some video I did a year ago - a video that I’ve long since moved on from. My emotions and hopes are all on the video I posted yesterday! But what everybody is watching is the video I did a full year or more ago!
And the strangest thing about this is that I have absolutely zero way of knowing what people will latch onto. So many of the videos I do that I think people will love get no love at all. They will sit out there forever with no more than 90 viewers. But videos I do that I think nobody will care about inexplicably become big hits!
It’s a very odd way to work.
I throw my heart into almost all of the videos I put out there, but these two realities - the year long delay before a video gains traction, along with never being able to predict with any accuracy what people are going to make successful - creates a real difficulty.
Another thing to consider is that as I go along, I’m learning new things every time I upload a video. So the video I make today and think is great is a video I will view much more critically a year from now. I’ll think, “Well I would never do the video that way these days, why didn’t I do it this way or that way?” Well, because I didn’t yet have the experience and hindsight then that I have now. So a lot of my older videos that begin doing well are not videos I’m particularly happy with! Whatever the newest video is, that’s the video I’m most proud of and want everybody to see! But no, a year has to pass first and then some might do well and most won’t.
It’s very, very strange for me as the guy creating these things.
I would have thought Pleasant the Hillbilly Pickle would’ve taken off like fire right from the beginning, but he hasn’t at all. But who knows what his popularity will be a year or two from now? It’s impossible to know. The only thing I can do is wait and see.
There you go, an honest, inside look behind the curtain of The Practical Woodsman.
Braving the Ol’ Shawnee Appalachy - Pt 1: The Easy Part
"Her sides are made of iron!" a sailor shouted as British cannonballs bounced off the USS Constitution in 1812. They weren't. They were made of Georgia live oak, and getting that wood nearly killed the men who cut it.
When Congress ordered six new frigates built in 1794, designer Joshua Humphreys wanted them bigger and tougher than any frigate in the world. That meant one tree: the southern live oak.
Live oak is a strange tree. It doesn't grow tall and straight. It grows low and wide, with massive limbs that twist out sideways. That's exactly what shipbuilders wanted. A warship's skeleton is full of curves, the ribs and the braces that hold the decks to the hull. Cut those curves from straight lumber and you slice across the grain and weaken the wood. With live oak, you could find a limb that had already grown into the shape you needed, grain and all. It's also one of the densest, hardest, most rot-resistant woods in North America.
The best stands were on the Georgia coast. So starting in 1794, ...
