Better than Pegboard or French Cleats?

I'm out at April Wilkerson.

@Dw, I don't know anything about her. I just stumbled upon this video and found it personally interesting, as I need to redo my garage before putting the place up for sale. What do some dislike about her and/or her channel?

Added later 2 h 55 min 45 s:

April Wilkerson is an American YouTuber and DIY expert born in 1987, known for her woodworking and metalworking projects[1][2]. She started her DIY journey in 2013 after graduating from the University of Texas at Arlington with a degree in business management[1]. Wilkerson's YouTube channel, which focuses on home improvement and DIY projects, has over 1.5 million subscribers[2].

## Career Highlights

Wilkerson co-hosts several TV series, including:

- "Assembly Required" (2021) on History channel[1]
- "More Power" (2022) on History channel[1]
- "This Old House Makers Channel" on Roku (2022)[1]

She also founded a commercial and retail shop called The Wood Shed[2].

## Personal Life

Wilkerson is from Texas and currently lives in the Texas Hill Country with her husband, Cody, and a group of rescue animals and chickens[2][3]. Her goal is to create most of the items in her home with her own hands, and she shares her knowledge through written and video tutorials on her website and YouTube channel[3][4].

Citations:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Wilkerson
[2] https://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/april-wilkerson-youtubestar.html
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLKU8JJJ9A8
[4] https://www.sanantoniofallhomeshow.com/blog-social/san-antonio-fall/2023/09/28/april-wilkerson-10-questions-answered!
[5] https://wilkerdos.com/about-me/
[6] https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9433512/
[7] https://www.instagram.com/wilker_dos/?hl=en
[8] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4v2tQ8GqP0RbmAzhp4IFkQ

She started on YouTube with zero skill at anything but manipulating the algorithm.  Just not a fan of that type of guru.

She has a degree in business management, so YouTube algorithm manipulation may have been covered in one of her courses!

I haven't looked at any of her other stuff, only that one video. It seemed to the point without a lot of blathering on and on to increase the number of ads displayed, she wasn't trying to sell me something, and I went away thinking that this is something I had never considered but may try when I redo my garage.

That said, I know what you mean. YouTube is rife with channels by so-called "gurus" using all the classic funnel techniques to part people with their money. Maybe I should start a YouTube channel where I offer a paid Master Class teaching people how to recognize scams. A $7995 value, discounted to just $999 if you sign up within the next 24 hours! And if you order within the next five minutes, I'll include my FREE plans on how to build this award-winning birdhouse.

The slotted plywood idea looks pretty good, but her ply wood looks to be at least 1" thick.  That's a lot of weight to push across a saw that many times and even more when you start hanging it on the wall.  I have no idea why she would cut the slots within a few inches of the floor.  That's also a lot of steel cutting for the hangers.

I'll give her credit for being fairly concise in explaining her achievement of melding french cleat and slatwall systems.  I use neither and do not plan to change, so I'm less than interested.  I still like bracket and standard shelving personally, but that is nothing more than taste, which does vary a lot.

I can't really fault a person for monetizing their interests in this way.  By the look of the machines and tools in her shop, it's paying off.  While I may not respect modern incarnations of PT Barnum in the way I respect people who produce salable products, I won't pretend there is something inherently wrong with their schtick.

At the end of the day, she's selling entertainment, really not so different than our favorite FWW authors have done for decades.  Most of those authors however, at least when I read the magazine, were more experienced at what they were doing, so their ideas of how to go about building a piece of furniture was more interesting to me.  I would expect to see something like the subject of this vid in a magazine tips and tricks column more than as an article.  

I think that may explain why some of us don't get so excited about youtube vids like this one, even when there's nothing inherently wrong about them.  The vids are typically 5 to 15 minutes spent communicating relatively simple ideas that we used to communicate in magazines via a sketch or two and maybe a few lines of text.  In order to get you to click and have youtube pay them, they must present good, yet relatively simple ideas as great innovations.  The whole paradigm just kind of turns me off.

Dave's Not Here wrote:

I think she is a prime example of the American Dream.  She started out in 2013 with not much more than an idea and in a fairly short amount of time turned it into something successful.  I can't find any reason(s) to find fault with that.

You're not wrong there, and I agree - as far as her right and ability to start from nothing, see an opportunity and work it, I don't disagree at all. 

I'm looking to avoid people like that woodworking, but the reality of the woodworking market is there are far more people with a kreg jig and minimal tools looking to do stuff like make shelves for their house, storage solutions, add shelves in a cabinet etc than there are people who want to work entirely by hand or to work entirely with power tools to a close standard. 

I guess I'm in between- I can make some pretty good tools, but they are irrelevant to 99.5% of the world. It's the mindset of a pro that I want to learn from - not the business side, but the problem solving. 

I make the kreg jig example because it matches a coworker of mine whose woodwork is limited to things of that sort, and he likes it, and I think that's good. 

I agree with John's comments below hit the nail on the head - you read the magazines for a while and they may be entertaining but they don't leave you with enough to do anything - or at least that's how I felt about it. You get to needing to solve specific problems, and you just don't need to see another person who started their woodworking on youtube right when they started on youtube and their real talent is figuring out how to draw people and sponsors as well as make a pleasant video to watch with good production. That last part is a whole lot of work that I could never be bothered with - maybe you can contract some of that off to the third world now, as I've seen other high volume video makers talk about their editors in indonesia, etc, but still. 

I'm in for anything like curtis buchanan's videos, seeing mack headley work by hand on the CW card table DVD, or watching George Wilson and his dudes making instruments at a regular pace with a narrator talking so you get to see real time speed and details. there's just so much of that stuff available, though not fed at us by algorithm, that I can't spend my hobby time with wilkerson type stuff.

Agree with all you write, David.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Ralph Lipeles wrote:

My Grandfather was a woodworker employed at the Frick Museum in New York City. In those days there was not TV and he was probably not a reader. So when he relaxed after a day's work he made carvings and furniture. His work is really beautiful.

I wish more of that was shared - I had a pair of relatives who were similar, but fabricating things that weren't wood, and same motivation - TV was around by them, but they got the willies sitting and watching it and were far more "tinkering" as my mother put it. but their work was far beyond tinkers random work. YT would identify the relatively small pool of people who would get it for any of those three as a low quality advertising pool and try to direct them to "review and shootout" type videos that have a dozen affiliate links in them and nothing new vs. the last 100 that someone has seen.