About the April 1 2016 video

I have been getting an increasing number of comments comparing me to Bob Ross (from the 1980s TV show "The joy of painting"), especially after referring to the swirl in the bottom of a bowl that I turned as a happy accident.

The main idea was to poke fun at how people from the UK call a rabbet a "rebate". A rebate is getting money back on a purchase. We have a special word for making a square notch along the edge of a piece of wood, and that word is Rabbet. Just like mortise and tenon is mortise and tenon, not mortice and tendon. Also see John Heisz's video "this is not a rebate")

But first, I have to cut the piece of wood, and I was thinking, wouldn't it be cool if you could cut wood like you cut glass, by making a score line and breaking it.

So that's the "technique" I used. The first one I only score on one side, and it doesn't break perfectly. A trick shot, of course. I put the piece of wood on the edge of the workbench, and hit it with my fist. Then, without moving the camera, I cut a notch most of the way through it on the bandsaw, put it back in the same spot and hit it again.

The video cuts from the first shot to the second exactly where I hit the piece of wood. The discontinuity isn't noticeable.

I then "scored on both sides" for a "clean break". That was much easier to fake. I just cut the wood and used two dabs of glue to glue the ends back together. The glued joint looked very much like score lines. Then I just hit it to break it apart again, no video effects needed.

There was a short piece left at the end that I couldn't break off that way, so I put a block of wood under it and whacked it with a mallet. Pieces went flying!

I found an instant rebate online, so here I'm cutting the right size piece out of it to apply it.

After that, I carefully mark where the piece was, take it to the table saw, cut the rabbet and put it back in place.

I then hit it with a mallet again. And again, cutting the video where the hammer hits it.

Then I had to glue it together, trying to think of a funny Bob Ross like method. I figured, hey, why not mix some colours on a palette with a 2" brush, like Bob Ross always does. And magenta is a nice complementary colour to yellow (oops, just realized that would have been blue - oh well).

I tried to do the end Bob Ross like as well, except he always ends with "God Bless", and I wasn't going to go that far. I was thinking about saying something cynical about religion in its place, but I figured, no need to offend believers deliberately.

Though it is odd how many believers feel justified in reminding others of their belief often, but if a non believer asserts their non-belief in a similar fashion, they end up deeply offended.