Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop by Nick Offerman

Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at Offerman Woodshop Reviews

• 
  Howard

  4 Stars for Good Clean Fun (audiobook) by Nick Offerman read by the author.
  
  This book was recommended to me because I’m known to make a lot of sawdust from time to time. I didn’t know anything about Nick before this book. I think I’ve seen a couple of commercials for shows that he is in and that’s about it. I’ll have to check out Parks and Recreation.
  
  I’m really impressed with his dedication to woodworking and keeping a small business going. This is a great read for anybody that’s interested in woodworking or beginner makers.
• 
  Koen Crolla

  Nominally about woodworking, but mostly about how in love Offerman is with his own voice, which I find very hard to enjoy. If you already like him, though, you may fare better.
  Offerman's outlook on woodworking is remarkable for how absolutely perfectly it falls in lock-step with current Internet popular opinion (hand tools make you a better person but they're too hard for normal people, SawStop is great, dominoes are amazing and not just an expensive way to recreate Ikea furniture, Lie-Nielsen and Veritas make the best hand tools on the market today, slabs are beautiful, &c.—not all wrong, but all very fashionable), but they're convincingly not the opinions of someone who only likes the look of a tool rack over a workbench, or of someone who only picked up the hobby last week. (They could be those of someone who picked it up three months ago and spent a lot of time watching Youtube videos since, though, and some of them are slightly surprising in a person who has apparently been doing it for multiple decades.)
  
  The bulk of the book is projects executed and described by employees and hangers-on (including a brother and a father) of the Offerman Woodshop, plus profiles of people who are or were important to Offerman's woodworking in other ways.
  The most striking thing about the projects is how damned expensive the tools used to make them are—whenever there are two ways to do a thing, OWS discards both and finds a more expensive way still—but they're possible to recreate if you're a normal person. Most of them ``aren't woodworking'' in that they involve no wood joinery whatsoever (a bottle-opener, a pencil holder, a canoe paddle, a lamp, a cribbage board) or only screws or dowel joints (a wooden kazoo, a birdhouse), but the usual cast is here as well: a stool with wedged through-tenons, a side table, a dinner table (slab, of course), a very nice dining chair, and a bed (which exhibits by far the highest level of craftsmanship of any of them, though I'm not convinced the knock-down joints are actually strong enough to hold up—and I say this as someone who isn't particularly a sex-haver).
  None of the designs commit any grave sins against woodworking, which is more than can be said of many books that are fully about furniture-making, but I wouldn't say they're necessarily worth buying the book for.
  
  Ultimately, if woodworking is all you're interested in, you'll probably be annoyed or bored for most of the book, because woodworking isn't really the point. If Nick Offerman is all you're interested in, though, you may still be bored by all the woodworking content. In the end, I don't think this book is really for anyone other than the many people in it.
  It's hard to blame Offerman for it, though; if I could get away with it, I'd do the same thing.
• 
  Peter Derk

  I made a box for my own ashes.
  
  No, I'm not dying. Just in case some of you were worried this might be the last you'd hear of my great insights on goodreads. Is that really something you were worried about for a second there, you fucking weirdo?
  
  A couple years back a friend told me about his father's funeral and how everyone's trying to upsell. Oh, get this urn. Oh, get this piece of jewelry made with your loved one's ashes embedded inside.
  
  My friend's father worked around this. He set aside a simple, inexpensive urn and specifically instructed that this was to be his urn. He had his ashes spread in the bay in San Francisco, so all he really needed was something that would get his ashes from the oven to the water with a minimal loss of matter.
  
  I thought this was genius. How can you argue against someone's final wishes? And, if the box is homemade, even if it looks like shit, what are the funeral people going to say? "Wow, that's a real piece of shit your friend made for himself"? No way.
  
  After looking at urns online (which range from not-expensive to HOLYFUCK), I decided to make my own.
  
  It's a rectangular pine box with cheap brass hinges. That's it. It's not even square.
  
  In my defense, I made this with hand tools, in a studio apartment, from a single board.
  
  And now it sits in my closet, awaiting my demise and getting the side-eye from my girlfriend in the meantime.
  
  I enjoyed this project, and I'm inspired to remake this box at least a couple more times. Out with the old, in with the new, slightly improved version. I've thought about decorating and that sort of thing, but as I recently heard from a college professor I never took a class from (long story), "Utility is its own aesthetic." That same sentiment was in this book, and I read the same idea twice only a couple days apart. And I love it. I do think simple, functional things can be very beautiful. I think some of the urns out there are a little...gaudy. They might seem like a fitting vessel, but then I think about who I am and how I'd like to be remembered. I'd like to think a pewter vase mass produced in China doesn't fit.
  
  I guess a lot of folks see this as a morbid project. I'm a generally healthy guy who's not old yet. But I've seen how things can sneak up on you. And I don't see it as morbid. When I was cutting the boards, I wasn't thinking about death. I was thinking about making the cut. When I glued and clamped the boards, I was thinking about gluing and clamping the boards. Yeah, okay, and I was thinking about how to make sure and not ruin the countertop in my rental apartment with glue.
  
  When I finished, I didn't think about dying then, either. I felt like...I felt like I'd taken care of something so someone else wouldn't have to. That I'd saved my surviving friends some money and decision-making in a time when they'll surely be devastated. I'm pretty great. I'll just say it. See, I'm doing their work all over the place.
  
  I felt relieved. Because there are a lot of questions about death. What will happen to my remains isn't one of them anymore. Sometimes it feels good to control the parts you can. And sometimes that helps you let go of the rest.
  
  The short of it, this book encourages people to make things, whatever those things are. And that's a message I can agree with. Take some control of your life. Find a project that involves working with your body just a little, your fingers if you've got them.
  
  Making things is problem-solving. It's a good way to take your mind off the little problems of the work day. And it's a great alternative to the stuff most of us do, which doesn't have a tangible product.
  
  Go and make something. Start soon.
• 
  James

  Since I'm clueless about American TV, I didn't realize Offerman is a comedian. As a woodworking book this is a bit of a bust, but there are some funny bits here and there and there were some decent interviews with other woodworkers. I smiled at some of the projects, they reminded me of my junior high shop classes. A fun skimmer book for rainy days.
  
  I did reread it for the kazoo plans, I'd also noticed Offerman was a student? of
  Shozo Sato.
• 
  Marty Fried

  This book is mostly Nick Offerman talking about his woodworking shop in So Cal, and a lot of stories about his life and love of woodworking. I enjoyed the first third or so, where I learned a bit more about woodworking, which is one of my hobbies so I knew most of what he was talking about. He loves wood, and it shows. He's also a pretty funny guy, and I enjoyed that too, but started getting bored near the halfway point when he began giving details of the people working in his shop, and what they made.
• 
  Katy

  i love this man, and i love his passion. if you are a superfan, pick this up because it's a 5 star listen. and you MUST listen, because it's narrated by our esteemed pal nick, and there are bonus tracks performed by Jeff and Spencer Tweedy (of Wilco fame) at the end of the disc. A few songs are performed by nick offerman, and they are great.
  
  a word of warning, though. if you are not an offerman superfan, you probably won't make it 1/3rd of the way through this book. it truly is all about woodworking, the offerman woodshop, and heroes in the art of woodworking. you might hear a few Parks and Rec references to make you smile, but if woodworking isn't your jam then this book might not be for you.
  
  personally, i thought it was great. an homage to those who make things with their hands, are not afraid to get dirty, and make the effort to work hard to get the results they want. "the lazy carpenter works the hardest" is the greatest takeaway. what i love most about the book (and "gumption" before it) is that nick offerman is a humble man who wants to tell the world about people who fly under the radar but deserve the utmost respect. it's just great to hear meaningful compliments and recognition of those who work their fannies off for a good cause (also, nick offerman says 'fanny' a lot...)
• 
  Ian Hord

  I listened to this audio book and it was amazing to hear about woodworking and more about Nick Offerman. I had known about his woodshop in LA and this book goes over some of the people that work there and their journeys in woodworking. There is a lil song at the end!
• 
  Chris

  A much better book than Offerman's first attempt. Part woodworking manual and part lifestyle book, the book is packed with funny stories, witty quips, and actually useful instructions on creating furniture from wood. Offerman profiles the big characters that populate his working woodshop in Los Angeles, writing effusively about each one and their contribution to the "family." A fun read, even for non woodworkers.
• 
  Andrew Mast

  Fun and inspiring, but also at times overwhelming for an aspiring hobbyist woodworker. That’s not a critique of the book, just how it made me feel! Love Nick!
• 
  Dlmrose

  3.5
• 
  Kirby Alan Lund

  While this book is more so for beginners in woodworking, I enjoyed this read. It's always fun to go through Offerman's characteristic sentence style, and in some places, I actually had to stop reading to go to a dictionary and figure out what a word meant. (Ebullient: to be full of cheer.)
  
  The book isn't exactly what I expected after having read Offerman's Paddle Your Own Canoe. It's partly a how-to book for a few different projects from beginner level all the way up to master woodworker. It's partly a list of people who work in the Offerman Wood Shop, and it was interesting to see the kind of diverse woodworkers they have compared to the homogeneous woodworking club I'm involved in. It's also partly a "who's who" of masters in the field of woodworking; some of them I had heard of, and some of them were entirely new to me.
  
  Overall, it was an interesting book, but again, because it's meant more as an overview of woodworking, I'm glad I rented it from the library instead of buying it outright.
• 
  Erin

  I love Nick Offerman. He's talented in so many ways (including narrating audiobooks) and he's passionate about creating things with his hands. And other basic things like hard work, kindness, equality, etc.
  This book is pretty technical and all about woodwork. I'll admit to mentally drifting off during parts but I also felt such comfort in his passion for his craft. My grandpa was a woodworker and creator of things with his hands. During this book I was transported back to his woodshop. The smell of sawdust, pounding nails into scrap blocks of woods, and his meticulously kept shop where everything was organized and neat. The pieces he's made are some of my greatest treasures and I feel so lucky to have such works of art. Some he made expressly for me and some he made because (I think) he needed to work with his hands and take on a challenge and create for others.
  I'd like to think Mr. Offerman would like to hear about my grandpa and his beautiful pieces.
  
• 
  mehg-hen

  I like his voice and I like someone going on and on about things and people and actions they love. A very fun and satisfying read that turns into a skim because this is really like a handbook with projects. My favorite parts are his profiles of various woodworkers and discovering more of what they do on the internet. Also, you will have even more respect for wood. A good covid read, no sympathy is extracted from you in the reading of this book, you only get deposits of what people are good at and what people like to do. Satisfying!
• 
  Chad

  Trademark Offerman: delicious prose, self-deprecating humor, child-like glee, and humble appreciation for just being there, so to speak. It's a beautiful book, mixing bountiful wood-porn photos, short essays, and step-by-step instructions for a variety of projects, one or two of which I'd like to attempt.
  
  But really, it's worth it for the "Best Way to Fell A Tree" comic alone.
• 
  meghann

  This book would be unbelievably helpful to anyone planning on setting up a wood shop. I am not, but I still found this interesting and entertaining. It's amazing the amount of work that goes into making something by hand, and it's a shame we tend to gravitate towards the mass produced Ikea-esque furniture (I myself have a large amount of Ikea in my house). My father is a self-taught master woodworker, and I found myself even more impressed by this after reading this book. My brain did not even want to try to wrap my head around the precise measurements and calculations in this. I loved how this had step by step instructions (with photos) on how the reader could make all the most popular projects that the Offerman Woodshop sells, from a kazoo to a bed. There was lots of tips, history, and profiles on people outside of OWS who are making amazing things. I also appreciated the push to be eco friendly and use reclaimed or sustainable grown wood.
• 
  William G

  Not just a woodsmith (not a thing), but also a wordsmith, Nick Offerman offers another enjoyable entry in the growing library of books he's authored. This offering is very niche as it focuses a great deal on woodworking, but it was still entertaining and in a very similar vein as "Gumption". Filled with profiles of people Offerman respects and others that work in his shop (though these two are not mutually exclusive), instructions for several projects, a few food recipes, and even a beer pairing guide, it was truly "good clean fun".
• 
  John Campbell

  I enjoy spending time with Nick Offerman, so I was charmed by this book. If you like his sense of humor and are open to his ideas on how creating things with your own hands is an important, affirming activity for everyone, you will enjoy this book. For myself, I have an incipient interest in woodworking inherited from my father, so I enjoyed his thoughts on wood, working with it, and his role models for doing so perhaps a bit more than the average Offerman fan.
• 
  Ian Hrabe

  I feel like I read this one once a year as I get further into my own woodworking journey (which I started in earnest reading this book the first time a couple years back. It certainly helps that it's a ton of fun to read due to the way Offerman plays with the English language. His dulcet tones don't quiet make up for the lack of a visual element that is integral to the book, but it's still a joy to read and inspiring to boot.
• 
  Mark Fallon

  One of the most beautiful books I've read in some time.
  
  Offerman loves wood, woodworking and the woodworkers he's met over the years. I was surprised by the amount of helpful information, as well as inspiring stories.
  
  A bookshelf keeper.
• 
  Ethan Chitty

  A thoroughly enjoyable combination of witty commentary, woodworking, and introductory materials with a few projects thrown in for good measure.
• 
  Erik Gonzalez

  Offerman's entertaining ode to woodworking. Definitely not a how to book, except for the how to part, I guess. The love shines through though and it is infectious.
• 
  Scott

  2.5… moderately entertaining, but probably aimed at novice woodworkers or people who really love Ron Swanson. If Nick O. hadn’t been the narrator it would have been rough.
• 
  Jayson Barker

  Great if you're interested in Nick Offerman's take on putting together a woodworking shop. Not so much if you're just looking for jokes.
• 
  Ashley Yeager

  I like Nick Offerman, but I only kind of care about woodworking, so this was more technical than I cared about. Book is fine, I’m just not the target audience.
• 
  Dianne

  I highly recommend the audiobook over reading this yourself. Worth it!
• 
  Wes

  This audiobook was good. Child of a woodworker by trade and passion, novice woodworker myself, and a huge Nick Offerman fan it was enjoyable to listen to him talk about the people, tools, texts, jobs, and woods that have inspired and influenced him. Also, what a great voice.
• 
  Jonny Hugh

  Very inspirational and information packed.