Fools With Tools Podcast

This is a makers podcast that treats the making as the excuse to talk. Steve, Al and Brett have three voices and one rhythm. Every episode opens with the same greeting deliberately fumbled — one of them announces he is a slice of chorizo, or a desert worm, and the show gets introduced as a podcast for the shilling shagreensmith or the revitalized rickmaster, whichever comes out. Then the check-in. Al has dug a pond for a client with a hired digger. The camper van is nearly finished, both the 12 volt and the 240 wired in. Brett has been building furniture he openly dislikes, knocking small items off a list to get his head straight before starting a large forging project. Injuries get reported casually. One episode was delayed because Brett slipped while working on a truck engine and opened his head. The technical talk is specific without being instructional. They chew on the difference between remaking and restoring, on what old buildings reveal about the problem-solving of the people who built them, and on the idea that new tools and materials let you improve on an old solution rather than merely preserve it. Chris Cash gets quoted on welding: get it hot enough and anything joins to anything. Underneath all of it runs a steady conversation about work. What it costs to leave a full-time job for a hobby that turned into a trade. Why some makers drift the other way, toward regulation and safety. How to price and scope client work without giving away all your time. There is a recurring, uncomfortable honesty about doing things for other people because helping feels good and because it is easier than facing your own unfinished projects. They mention maker camp, forging classes, the barbecue crew who are part of the show. They admit to going two years without posting and being pleased with themselves for a run of regularity. The tone is loose, profane and interruption-heavy, and the closing minutes are usually Brett audibly wanting the other two to stop. One episode ends on something else entirely — a short, quiet tribute to a talented maker who died, delivered without polish because polish would have been wrong. Every episode signs off the same way, telling the audience they are loved.