Today we get the awesome opportunity to talk to the owner of Sherwood Crafts! His name is Nate! We are so pumped for you guys to hear all about this and Ruthie had the opportunity of hanging out with him way more than I did. It’s gonna be a whole bunch of new stuff for me I might be gawking a lot more than I should, but thank you so much for being with us today, Nate!
Nate: Thank you for having me! I really appreciate being here.
Ruthie: I’m so excited!
Nate: I am, too! I mean it’s not every day that I get to talk about woodworking! It’s a passion of mine and I love talking about it and I really hope I don’t talk your ears off.
Ruthie: That was a little spoiler! Go ahead!
Nate: So I turn wood into slightly smaller wood. I’m a woodworker. I hone and create things out of wood.
How Did You Get into Woodworking?
Ruthie: Awesome! Okay! Why did you start with that? What was your passion behind wanting to get into woodworking?
Nate: Yeah, so my father and grandfather were both in different ways woodworkers. My grandfather has a shop in his basement and so I kind of grew up around the tools. I kind of learned how to put things together and the tricks of the trade as it were. My grandfather, actually, incidentally has basically rebuilt his house from the ground up!
Ruthie: Wow!
Nate: Using that shop in the basement and so I always had a kind of an inherent passion for woodworking, but the business side evolved from a desire to be self-reliant and use my creativity to create. Woodworking can be cathartic and I feel joy and pride in creating something and seeing that thing finished and in the hands of someone that I made it for.
Ruthie: Yeah! That’s awesome! I love that! My small attempts at woodworking that mostly consists of mounting a shelf on a wall, I can relate.
Nate: Yeah, after it’s done you feel accomplished, right?
How Did You Shape Your Woodworking Skills into A Business?
Ruthie: Yeah! Okay, so you talked about kind of wanting to make that into a business and being self-sustaining what were the first couple steps that you took into making this profitable?
Nate: Yeah so the product and the company name kind of went hand in hand with me. I saw an item that I, personally, wanted. I wanted a dice tower. There are companies out there that make these dice towers and they’re really, really nice but they’re also really expensive.
Ruthie: Okay, backtrack, what is a dice tower? I know what it is and I’m stoked about it, but just in case someone doesn’t know.
Nate: Yes, okay, thank you for asking. A dice tower is an item that you use with tabletop, role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder or any other type of tabletop game even Monopoly. Anything that uses dice. You put it in the top. You put the dice on the top of the tower and it tumbles down the tower and falls into a little tray. It’s supposed to give you a more clean dice roll, a more randomized dice roll. But it also makes it so that the dice don’t go all over the table and fall on the floor or something.
Ruthie: Okay, yeah, so you were like, “I really want this, but also I think I could make it and it would be awesome!” and then what?
Nate: Right, yeah, the business started out as a desire of how do I make this cheaper than I see it in other locations? But it evolved from that to how do I make this more unique? I’ve developed a style that is based off of styles that I’ve seen before but it’s uniquely my own.
How Did You Create Significance in Your Business Logo?
Ruthie: You talked about how that kind of tied into the logo, how did you make that your own?
Nate: One of my best friends is a graphic designer and I came across him. Actually, he used to live with me and I asked – Bekkah: You just came across him one day! *laughs*
Ruthie: Pop! He lives here!
Nate: *Sarcastically* I came across them in the hallway one day! And I asked him develop a logo for me. I like geometry. I like shapes and I like meaning behind logos. So I asked him to make an outline of a 20-sided dice with a tree in the middle where the outline of the tree is a ten-sided dice and that’s my logo.
Ruthie: Yeah and, you guys, this is like one of the most unique yo – logos! I was gonna say “yogos”… Logos! I’ve ever seen. It’s really cool and I just, I don’t know! Everything about it is so calculated and so well thought out. Just like when you were talking about and explaining, I, obviously, this is a podcast I can’t show you but it’s so cool. You guys will have to check out his Instagram it is sherwoodcrafts on instagram and it’s so cool.
Bekkah: Also he has a Twitch account! I just saw that on his Instagram!
Nate: Oh gosh! I do have a Twitch account! I forgot about that! I haven’t used that in a long time!
Ruthie: Okay so kind of go rolling back to the business side of this, you kind of started out. You had this idea of what you want to do. You wanted to make a logo you were very thought out in what you decided to do with your logo. How did you start the actual process of making these things? What tools did you use? You were like, “I’m going to need these tools in order to move forward with this passion that I have.”
Nate: Because I was already passionate about woodworking and I had a background in woodworking I had a lot of those tools already with me. I was very blessed to have those tools already in my possession. I used the tools that I had. I had less at the time, obviously, I’ve grown since then with the amount of tools that I have. Like any woodworker would tell you, “you can never have too many clamps”.
Bekkah: That is not what I imagined a woodworker saying.
Nate: Oh!
Bekkah: You could never have enough wood but “You can never have too many clamps”?
Nate: Oh, no, if you say that to another woodworker they’ll say, “Oh, yeah. I know exactly what you mean.”
Ruthie: “I’ve got ten thousand. You know, maybe at some point – ten thousand, that might be too many.
Nate: Maybe, it depends on what you’re doing, right? If you’re making big, big tables that might not be enough!
What Are The Basic Tools You Need to Start a Woodworking Business?
Ruthie: Yeah so you had just kind of your basic essential ones?
Nate: I had a table saw and a miter saw or a “chop saw” some people call it. A lot of what I do is on the table saw.
Ruthie: Nice.
Nate: A lot of the first introductory or my very first tower was made primarily on the table saw. The first one that I made was kind of reverse-engineered from the other dice towers that I’ve seen. I took pictures offline and thought, “Okay, well, this is how I would make it with the skills that I know that I have and it evolved from there.
Bekkah: So the design you have with that you pulled it apart when he was showing it to us. You pulled it apart with magnets? Is that a common thing or does that something you were like, “This is a good idea.”
Nate: It was something that I saw a few other designers do. It’s not explicitly mine but it’s something that I was attracted to, no pun intended.
Ruthie: *heh heh*
Nate: But it’s something where you can take it apart. You can store it a lot more flat and it’s just more aesthetically pleasing to me, personally. But all of the towers that I make aren’t just magnetic towers. I make other glued together towers as well.
Ruthie: I know we’re kind of – I was really excited about the towers just because they look so cool, but you make so many things that look so cool!
Nate: Thank you!
Ruthie: How do you do that? You pulled up this cutting board that was just stunning I was like, “Wow! How do you get the color of wood to look like that!?” I don’t know, it’s just everything about it is really beautiful and well thought out. How do you decide what to make? Do people ask you to make specific products or you just kind of mass produce a lot of product that people then buy craft shows or do you do more custom work?
Nate: It’s primarily custom work. I’ll say that. All of the things that I make, the colors that you see, those are natural colors. I don’t dye or stain any of my products and so that’s something I’m proud of. Using nature’s beauty to make something equally beautiful.
Ruthie: You should have that as tagline! Do you have that?
Nate: No, I don’t! I should!
Ruthie: Using nature’s beauty to – what did you say? “to make something equally beautiful”?
Nate: Yes, “using nature’s beauty to make something equally beautiful”
Ruthie: Oh good!
How Do You Ensure Your Woodworking Business Time is Efficient?
Bekkah: Ruthie’s just mining in your little nuggets. Okay! So! Also, that sounds so bad! I’m never gonna say that again…. Okay, so time management! To make sure you’re being productive what does that look like? Because I know a lot of times as artists they’re people who get so focused on, “Oh! This is the idea that I have!” That they spend so much time that in the end when they finally sell a product they’re like, “Well, I put over a thousand hours into this. It’s worth this!” How do you make sure that you’re being conservative on your production process and then making sure you know what your market wants?
Nate: In my situation, right now, I have a nine-month-old kid, a little boy. That is – it’s a blessing, first of all. Second of all it makes sure that anytime that I spend in woodworking it has to be – what’s the word I want to use?
Ruthie: Very intentional, almost?
Nate: Yes, it has to be intentional. I have to make sure that every minute that I am out in my garage, which is where my shop is, is used to the fullest. If I have a project in mind I need to make sure that I have all the wood that I need for that project. I need to make sure that I have the cut list accurate and basically stick to the plan. That’s the goal. Stick to the plan! Make a plan stick to the plan.
Ruthie: Yeah it seems like you’ve kind of developed a good plan with that and just kind of, over time, deciding what works and what doesn’t and that I love that. I love that process. I am really big into process development. That is something I just really enjoy. Refining and things like that. How do people – you said you do these custom projects and stuff like that which is so evident on your instagram page and your website, how do people hear about you?
How Do People Hear About Your Woodworking Business?
Nate: A lot of the stuff I do is through Instagram, primarily. I love Instagram. It’s free. You can reach a lot of different people if you want to put in the money to invest into your product and into your brand. With hashtags even, just using the right hashtags. I think you guys talked about that in a previous podcast, right?
Ruthie: If we didn’t, we are now! Use hashtags!
Bekkah: No, actually! Ruthie and I have been kind of following different people and looking at stuff and one of the things that I recently learned was that having 15 hashtags. It used to be you could use up to 30, I think, but people who are bots do that and stuff and Instagram’s been like slapping that down, but 15 hashtags on the bottom of everything with the keywords that you want is like the right, sweet sauce. Five short, five medium, five long. I’ve been trying it out and it’s actually been really successful.
How It’s Worked to Advertise My Business Through Using Instagram Hashtags
Nate: Yeah! I was surprised when I first started it. When I first started using hashtags because I thought, “Oh, it’s just something that you know millennials do. Not that I’m not a millennial, but you know.”
Ruthie: It’s funny because Bekkah sent me a screenshot of somebody trying that out or whatever. She goes, “Instagram hack” and sent it to me and I saw it in passing I was like, “Great! Our Instagram got hacked!”
Nate: Oh no!
Ruthie: But I… I misinterpreted that. *laughs at my own ignorance and the fact that I never checked to see how we got hacked I just accepted it*
Nate: Yeah, you know, digging into the analytics of Instagram and seeing when the people that follow you are more at most active on Instagram to post in those times and use hashtags that they want to see. All those sorts of things are really beneficial to people who are wanting to start any type of business really.
Ruthie: So then people kind of find you on Instagram and stuff. I saw you had one picture on your Instagram where you were at a craft show.
Nate: Yeah, I’ve been to a couple of craft shows.
Ruthie: So that’s kind of like the primary how people hear about you and how you sell your product. If somebody reaches out to you, you just like ship it to them in the mail?
Nate: Yes. If someone reaches out to me via email, because I have an email through Sherwood Crafts: nate @sherwoodcrafts.com. They can reach out to me with specific requests either, “Hey, I want this dice tower made out of this specific wood” or “Hey, I want a coffee table,” for instance. I can think about that project, see how long I would expect it to take, and send them a quote.
Ruthie: Then you just bill it by project? You don’t have like –
Nate: Mmhmm
Ruthie: That’s so cool! Can I ask what you use for your – I’m just always curious what people use for different invoicing and things like that. What do you use for that?
Nate: I use, actually, I just use an invoice template from Excel.
Ruthie: Handy!
Nate: And I save them. I have my logo through that and then I just change the invoice number to the next one in the sequence and just save them that way.
Ruthie: Nice! That’s cool! And then you have a consistent form of documentation, time over time so that’s cool.
Nate: Exactly!
Ruthie: When you were talking about your tools that you used to have or like a small amount I was just like chuckling to myself because like just looking back you’re probably like, “Wow! How did I even get by without all of these things that I have now!”
Nate: I know!
Ruthie: When you think about how you started out, what is one thing that you liked doing and then now you no longer like doing?
Nate: Bowl turning, actually. Making bowls. I thought for sure seeing ss my last name is “Turner” I would like turning bowls.I started doing it and then I don’t know if it’s the way that I’m using the tool or the way that my lathe is set up, but more often than not my tool grips into the blank, the bowl that I’m making, and cracks it. It’s so disheartening when that happens. If it doesn’t happen I’m not terribly pleased with the end result anyway. The sanding is something I’m not used to yet and I haven’t had a lot of time to put into the fine details of sanding a bowl. It’s something that I’ve kind of put on a back burner, for now.
Ruthie: Ok, that makes sense.
What Every Woodworking Business Owners Should Do
Bekkah: I have one more question for you, when somebody is looking to get into something like this, woodworking business what kind of recommendations do you have for them?Resources that you’ve used that you say, “Definitely check these things out. They’re really effective for me.
Nate: Let me turn my page because I have a long list.
Ruthie: Ooo! Here we go!
Nate: As far as advice goes, start small. You don’t need expensive tools in order to make something, you just need some tools. You know, the tools that I started out with were a table saw, a chop saw, and that’s about it. Now I have a band saw and I have a planer and I have all these other things that help me make these pieces faster and more accurately, but get the basics and learn how to make those as accurate as possible. Because those skills never go away. Tell your friends about the things that you’re making, because they might want something. They might want a cutting board and cutting boards, relatively speaking, are fairly easy to make and you can sell them for a pretty high price if they’re well made. As far as resources go – Youtube! Youtube is a massive warehouse of content for DIY training to teach you how to do things especially with woodworking. Some of the ones that I personally like Jonathan Katz-Moses, Stumpy Nubs, funny name, but he’s a great guy!
Bekkah: That seems a little scary!
Ruthie: Bekkah, you cut out there.
Bekkah: Oh I just said it seems a little scary, his name!
Nate: I know!
Ruthie: Yeah like maybe you wouldn’t want to look at his stuff.
Nate: No, he’s all about safety and so it’s kind of ironic in a sense
Ruthie: That’s funny!
Additional Resources to Help Start Your Woodworking Business
Nate: As I grew my business some other resources that I was really into is pirateship.com which is discounted shipping rates. Harbor Freight for entry level tools. Grizzly.com for good tools that are quality, but not over the top expensive and lumberyards. That’s advice that I would give as well. Don’t go to like Home Depot #notsponsored and get pine
Bekkah: Unless Home Depot wants to sponsor this episode.
Ruthie: But it probably wouldn’t work out because he just said, “Don’t go to Home Depot.”
Nate: Home Depot is great. I’m not discouraging people to not going to Home Depot or Menards or Lowe’s or whatever, but the wood that you get there is what they call construction grade. It’s not meant to be accurate and it’s not meant to be without defect. It’s going to probably be warped or bent or you know cupped or something like that. If you go to a lumber yard first of all you have more access to a wider variety of species of wood and you also have access to higher quality wood. Instead of buying pine from a big box store – not mentioning any names – you can go to a local lumber yard and get something like poplar. It might be a dollar more expensive per board foot but you’re getting a better product.
Ruthie: When you go to those stores and stuff like that what is your favorite kind of wood? Just out of curiosity.
Nate: Yes, I have two different kinds of wood I really, really like to work with. As far as a domestic wood or a wood that grows in America, I love to work with walnut. Walnut is such a beautiful, naturally dark wood and when you cut it it smells amazing. If you talk to any woodworker and they’ll talk your ear off about how a wood smells. As far as an exotic wood that I like or a wood that doesn’t grow in America, I love working with Sapele. It’s a cousin of mahogany and it smells like cinnamon when you cut it.
Ruthie: Wow! That’s so cool!
Bekkah: What!? This is amazing!
Ruthie: Wow! I’m learning so much! I have so many other questions! I could just! Wow, but okay, thank you so much for joining us, you’re just the best. If you guys want to check him out he has a really cool website. It’s sherwoodcrafts.com and also his Instagram like I said earlier sherweoodcrafts. Like him, follow him.
