 virtual workshop tour Landis River Woodcraft in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A woodworker by the name of Rich Reagan is going to join us. Now Rich makes some beautiful beautiful keepsake boxes and he has an Etsy store and he's just a very very talented. I may be buying one of those puppies here pretty soon. So this is another one of our virtual tours. As you know we did one recently with James Finger. Fixed fingers out of Sydney, Australia. We've done a few others as well particularly one with Mike Newett and people seem to like these so I guess I'll continue trying to do them for a while. So yeah what we're going to do now is switch using a program called Ecamm Live which I'm an affiliate for if you happen to see the link at the very bottom and if you want to do some live streaming or whatever Ecamm Live if you would buy it through my link that'd be very appreciated. So without further ado let's switch virtually to Lancaster Pennsylvania and bring on Rich Reagan of Landis River Woodcraft. Hello Rich out there in Pennsylvania nice to see you. Nice to see you Paul as always. I told you guys all about Rich in the intro so we'll let him just kind of take the floor here and do what he wants to do. Rich it's all yours. I'm glad to visit with you all and I've enjoyed the small workshop guy for well over a year now and he's a very innovative guy and he's not the old cootie thinks he is. I envy him even though I'm 72. I'm gonna go ahead and switch the camera here so I have a here in Pennsylvania have what's called a daylight basement and it's the lower level of my house which is a ranch style house and I have a little man cave it has a full bathroom where we have guests and we also have a small bedroom down here and this is the entrance the outside which is why we call it a daylight basement. I come downstairs from our upper floor or come in the back door if I'm bringing in products and I enter my shop here in this room. So that little slanted line you see is the stairway going down to upstairs so once in a while I forget myself and hit my head but it's not too bad. So my shop is 18 and a half by 13 and a half which equates to a 250 square feet. So you're 25 percent larger than I am. Oh okay and everything I have is on wheels and you can see there to the right is my jointer which is a York craft joiner it looks like every other joiner in the world it just says something different. I got my plaitort on the left side and as we walk in you can see my have a rack it's a Bora lumber rack. I think I saw that from a guy on YouTube have a Delta dust extractor which works quite well. I use that primarily for my table saw and also for my router on the edge of the table saw. And of course like everybody else my table saw is the center of my shop it's a Jet Super saw I bought it about 12 years ago so it the reason they call it a Super saw is it has a joiner I'm sorry a router table built in and it used to have a setting table there on the right hand side but I got that off because it really wasn't functional and they don't make it anymore anyway. And then I have my outfit table which is a table that I built that table and one of the first YouTube videos I saw a couple years ago was from April Wilkerson and she has this table where just goes up and down I have it down most of the time and it also serves as another work table I do a lot of glue up on that so then we just continue around I don't have a lot on my walls because it's such a limited space but like you Paul I'm a big micro jig fan so I have my micro jig stuff there and of course I use the MJ splitter on my table saw and one of the things I haven't done yet is I haven't built a sled but this little device which I found on Amazon I find very very effective it does what I need to have it do only thing it doesn't have which is why I need to build a table saw is if I have an extra wide board that I'm cross cutting it I run out of the t-slot so that'll be one of my next projects. Yeah even with a sled we tend to run our room for really wide ones and a lot of times the sled won't handle a wide one anyway so you got to go to the miter gauge like we've got anyway so all right yeah you're right so the jet I'm very happy with it's a one and a half horsepower and I can cut through two three inch solid wood and I use mostly I use walnut mahogany and maple right now mahogany's are is the wood that is selling the best and oh just a chop saw like everybody else and then of course I have my pocket screw jig I use that quite a bit I think that's a great tool and then some of my micro jib clamps my box templates you can see they're up against the wall and here's something that if you woodworkers haven't gotten it yet it's the dust deputy and so I don't have a central dust collection system I use a little shop vac and I got so tired of emptying that thing I got online and I saw a guy on YouTube oh yo 56 and he had this a dust deputy and he built a plywood case for it and I put that on and I'll tell you what this is one of the best best addictions to my shop I hardly ever well first of all nothing gets into my little shop vac and this thing is much easier to wheel around and I use it for my chop saw and then I also use it for my six inch Rycon belt that belts and there is a real workhorse and the kind of box make can tear this is a walnut dovetail keepsake box look at this and this was a this is this was a custom build for one of my customers and she wanted it's a memorial box for one of her associates that's retiring just served on the ends so I put that in there but anyway I I do a lot of dovetail work fact I do a great deal of dovetail work and I use the Keller system I don't know if you've ever seen the Keller system dovetail jig system I have bought that about 10 12 years ago and I'll tell you it just makes dovetailing perfect and I'll zoom in here you can see that these dovetails are perfect and the amount of boxes that I make annually I just don't have time to hand cut them but I'll tell you what I don't believe anybody could look at my dovetails and see that they're not hand-cut so I want to know that you are making a lot of these beautiful boxes and you have an Etsy store which is called Landis River Woodcraft I've got it up on the screen there and so that's primarily a lot of what you're doing and and how has Etsy worked out for you well I tell you how I got on Etsy I'm semi retired 72 years old I I worked at New Holland church furniture in New Holland Pennsylvania for 28 years as the marketing director and manager and of course we sell church furniture all over the United States and Canada the Caribbean South America and so forth and that's where a lot of the sawdust got in my blood actually got in my blood when I was a kid but I really built my shop in 2005 when I worked at New Holland and then I retired last at the end of December of 2020 and I teach at two different Bible colleges locally I'm an adjunct professor and I was building these box in my neighbor across the street he said Rich you ought to put those boxes on Etsy and I said what's that so I got on Etsy with my first box in June of 2020 I sold my first one in July into Norway actually and I've now shipped them everywhere it was a learning curve tell you if you have any shop hobby that you would like to sell it's handmade I can't say enough good about Etsy they take care of everything you take care of sales tax shipping it doesn't cost you anything until you sell something and you can go on the Etsy site and find out what that is so yes Paul Etsy has been a very good source of part-time income for me yeah so for people to know the Etsy is just your entire platform and I have an Etsy store as well and and I've mine's even more interesting and I don't need to build anything I'm selling I'm selling digital plans and so somebody just goes in there and orders them there for my what I call my sauce scallions and my pop-up workbench and I do I do nothing other than notice that I got a deposit into my bank account so there your credit card processing firm I'm just telling people that they handle the credit card processing and and I think they take a very reasonable fee and so it's a way that if you've got something that you can produce kind of a rapidly and have good value for it then take a look at the Etsy it's easier than you might think to set up an Etsy store it's really not that complicated and it's pretty cool and there's lots of people on those boxes would take me forever if I was truly hand-cutting those dovetails so that jig or that device that you've used is the secret right yep it's called the Keller system and you can find it online at killer dovetail.com invented by David Miller a bunch of years ago and it makes you look like a professional dovetail cutter after you get through the learning curve which is not very difficult and you just use a router they they provide the two dovetail jigs and they get he provides you with a it's a it's a dovetail bit but it's his own invention and he also has a bit for the tail the the tails which is also his own invention and it's a it's a great system for double making and you know I I know there's a lot of people out there that make hand-cut dovetails and I don't I think that's great but when you make two or three or four of these boxes a week 52 weeks out of the year you just don't have time to do it yeah no no way all right we'll put a link to that product or jig or dovetail cutter in the description if I can remember and I like those little things I see there they're called match fit dovetail clamps I've got about eight I've got about eight or nine different jigs in my shop that use those and I'm going to do a video in the near future demonstrating all eight or nine of those jigs so those are those are for me they're about $42 a pair so they're not inexpensive obviously you only need three or four if you want to share them I get kind of lazy so I buy you know eight or ten of them and then I can keep them on different jigs without moving them around the one thing I found out rich I don't know if you have when you're trying to use those you want them to slide in those grooves and I found out that if I put any kind of polyurethane on a jig they won't slide so that's right I think the best thing to do is either maybe just boiled linseed oil mixture 50-50 and or something like a Watco Danish oil and then they slide really really well yeah I learned that from you Paul I like that this is a bench vise actually using the micro jig system and I got that from Jesse over at penalty box woodshop yeah top you YouTube and it's a fantastic way to put up a bench vise yeah combination of youtubers and micro jig products all right then here here's Paul here's something that we said you would like to talk about my favorite power tools well these aren't really power tools but the Keller system and in addition my table saw and this this is called dowel max I don't know if you've ever heard of it but this this little dowel max has changed literally changed the way that I do joinery I had a biscuit joiner I never could get that quite accurate maybe I'm just not as good at it as some people but I always thought doweling was a difficult process and really really wasn't a very strong joint so I was watching Vic on down under woodworks and he demonstrated this dowel max and I'll tell you something in my opinion this is one of the finest pieces in my shop Paul it's uh it's well engineered well designed and here's the thing they have a test on their website and their test shows that it's 200 times stronger than biscuits I'm sorry 200 times stronger than mortis and tenon and about 600 times stronger than biscuits so I'm not selling it they don't sponsor me of course I just think it's a for a beginner woodworker with a minimal investment and a router and a drill press sorry a hand drill you can make some great joinery and for example all my boxes are the tops are two pieces of wood on the top joined together and they got a lastly lifetime so the dowel max makes it perfectly easy and the interesting thing about this little dowel max tool Paul is that if you use it properly when the two boards are boards are joined together they are absolutely flush one of my other products is a small chest and I use two four inch boards glued around these fronts and sides and so with the dowel max it makes it so much simpler I was going to buy a super max uh drum sander because I was doing all this sending and this dowel max has eliminated that so that's one of my favorite tools also Paul do you remember how much it costs yeah it's 265 dollars and when you pay the 265 dollars I think it's 265 they send you a drill bit and a spacer and they send you the whole kit and they send you some dovetails I now have the quarter inch adapter and also the 5 16th inch adapter so it's dowelmax.com you can find out all about it and then here's uh here's something I just got not long of doing all of my own finishing now and I have the earlex 5500 sprayer and I was getting a commercial shop to do all my spraying and the problem was they were using um uh vocs for the finish and a lot of people when you close these boxes up and you ship them and they're closed up for a few days when you open them up and uh if you use conversion varnish or something like that it just blows you away with the vocs and vocs are a no-no in california anyway so I picked up this earlex sprayer and aqua coat for my polyurethane water base and in 24 hours it dries hard as a rock so that's that's one of my newest innovation and uh it saves me money and it saves me time and the finishes are just gorgeous I use the drill press a lot and um so it's just like any other drill press that was actually one of the first tools I bought my wife bought it for me for christmas it was a rigid and I bought a ryobi table saw and of course um I traded that in rather quickly and uh so those were the first tool first tool two tools I purchased and I have um I have a delta bandsaw that I don't use a bandsaw very much for the kind of work I do and then one of my favorite things here is my um uh thickness planer and that's a makita and I'm very happy with that I couldn't be any happier with it if everything under rollers I have my sanding station and supplies under there and I think one of my favorite things in my shop is this um this workbench when I first opened my shop I wanted something that was versatile that I could move around and I could store things with but also use it for an assembly table in my limited space so I found this in one of the magazines it's not my design I keep my drill stuff there and um I keep my all my router equipment down here in that and of course it has three drawers for storage and then over here I have um my finishing equipment small tools including all the tools that Paul Carlson told me to buy I see your uh graph gear yeah graph gear 1000 yep I got my porter cable guys down there for pin nailing and that that's probably my favorite piece of the shop it's so versatile and uh it's my home base and then we continue on that's my wall there and uh I have my bits and uh I got my Forzner bits grinder and some miscellaneous tools that's where I keep my extra saw blades I have a DeWalt um uh data set which I highly recommend and a variety of different clamps and if you make a lot of boxes like I do this this this uh clamp system was one of my best finds when I make boxes and cabinets and then over here is my the last part of my shop is my clamps which I don't have enough of like everybody else uh yeah and uh that's my that's my little 50 square foot shop a guy's castle in the basement of his home uh a lot of good time for spending there and uh do you think you'll get tired of I know you use a lot of different woods and you got different custom designs that people ask for but do you think you'll get tired of making those boxes does that making those and keeping up with your orders does that keep you from doing any fun woodworking for yourself or like Paul yes it does it does get tiring when you get four or five orders in a week and um if I make three or four boxes at a time that equates to about three and a half hours per box um if I make one at a time it's four hours so uh so when you take because I take a lot of pride I use all rough lumber I don't use box lumber I put it especially lumber yards and um I buy only top grade lumber and top grade materials and um so starting about the end of October through the end of December it gets crazy it gets absolutely crazy so here's what I did I changed my delivery time which was unbelievably short in the beginning I changed my delivery time to two to three weeks and if um when I opened this shop by December of this year my shop was running me and so I quickly decided that I need to run my shop and so I stretched out the delivery time and if somebody orders something and I don't have time to get it in their timeframe I just message them and offer them a refund or the additional time and I got to give a plug for people people who buy from Etsy have been fantastic the people all over the world it's I never dreamed that Etsy would be like a pen pal shop I've made urns for I've made wedding boxes and shower boxes and when you get a mother who lost a son oh I'll ask you to build something special for brains I can't explain and that's why I do it it's not about the month although I I cover my costs and I do make a profit but what I've learned is it gives me a purpose that I never dreamed that I would have at this age of my life very cool very cool it's nice to see there's more old coot more old coots out there enjoying their return all right well that was very very interesting I've delighted to visit your shop let me uh change my screen here I got a little picture up of my french cleat wall it wasn't where I meant to go let me go to uh ending so I would invite everybody to visit Rich's Etsy store and take a look at the beautiful boxes that he has over there and the pricing and so forth and also visit my store a small workshop guy and I really want to thank Rich for carving out the time to let us see his shop in Pennsylvania please give us a like a comment and subscribe to my channel I don't think Rich has a youtube channel thank you very much for tuning in today and stay safe in your workshop so uh when Rich is through with his video