Courtesy | Scott Wadsworth
Scott Wadsworth is a carpenter and blacksmith with decades of experience. His YouTube channel, “Essential Craftsman,” where he uploads videos of himself building, repairing, and giving advice on craftsmanship, has nearly 1.9 million subscribers. Wadsworth gave a lecture titled “The Problem of Pain Evasion: A Case for Grit” Sept. 21, sponsored by the President’s Office.
Q. How can young people benefit by learning to work with our hands, even in small ways?
A. Living in a first-world country in the 21st century, where the focus of effort has been to reduce work, pain, and labor, has taken us out of contact with the material world. And by the material world, I mean commodities — the things that grow, come out of the ground, and are used to make things. I believe working with things that put us in contact with the material world gives us a more reality-based relationship with our life generally, and reminds us that we depend on products from people everywhere. Someone somewhere always has to produce the things it takes for us to stay alive.
Q. Many students work with our minds toward intellectual and academic pursuits. What can putting our physical bodies to work do for us?
A. Variety is the spice of life. If you work mainly with your mind, try to work with your hands for a change. Also, being created by God, we are creators. When you make things, and you take something that has little beauty or utility in and of itself, there is a fulfillment in seeing the final stages of beauty and utility emerge from what you have done. It builds a type of self-reliance and confidence, and hopefully some gratitude.
Q. What is the most fulfilling part about your work?
A. The fulfillment has been that the things I’ve learned about making these silly videos apparently have been a blessing in the lives of some not insignificant number of young men who are aimless and drifting in the world at this time. Young men have been under attack. Emasculation is one of the drumbeats of our culture. I get so many comments saying, “You remind me of my grandfather. I wish I had listened to him more.” I get other comments saying, “Watching your videos has made me a job foreman and now a superintendent, and my livelihood is better,” and “I want to become a better man, and a better father, and a better husband.” The blessings and challenges of YouTube have been more than I anticipated, both fulfilling and uplifting, as well as exhausting and anxiety-inducing. I think that’s a pretty good description of life generally.
Q. How did you start your YouTube channel, “Essential Craftsman”?
A. The way “Essential Craftsman” found its audience was we bought a lot and started building a house, getting 150 videos out of the process. The way it started, though, is a different story. The recession of 2008 pretty much wiped me out economically. I had plans for some little apartments, which is how a blue-collar carpenter guy usually gets ahead, and that went away. I pretty much resolved myself that my retirement program was going to be my work truck and my tools. But then my son Nate, who lived in Mesa, Arizona, came up with his family for Christmas, and he said, “Dad, I think we ought to make some videos in your shop, because we could put them on YouTube and people would watch them.” I thought YouTube was just funny cat and fail videos. But Nate said people like watching people lay bricks and build things, and he thought we ought to make some videos in my blacksmith shop. He also said it would be a marketing advantage for my swords and knives. So the first video we made was just of him filming with his phone in the shop one evening. He came back up again a month later, and we filmed two or three more blacksmith videos and started uploading. This coincided with the History Channel show “Forged in Fire,” which sparked a real blossoming of interest in blacksmithing. So, after we put up the videos of me blacksmithing, it went somewhat viral over the weekend and got around 110,000 views on a video titled “The Blacksmith’s Anvil.” But the big deal was we went from 300 subscribers to 5,000 over the weekend. Well, that got our attention, and Nate started coming up a little more often. We uploaded more, put up a couple of carpentry videos, and in Arizona we filmed building a little garden shed for my other son, and soon most of the audience stuck around for the carpentry videos rather than blacksmithing.
Q. Do you have a favorite video or project?
A. There’s a YouTube playlist on my channel called “The Spec House,” where we built a house for the channel. That was a lifetime accomplishment. We were the first ones on YouTube to build a house from start to finish, and I daresay it’s the best example of documenting a house-build series. It’s also by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s not hyperbole when I say it almost killed me. I have sleep apnea, and I was falling asleep at every stoplight. That was my most significant construction thing I’ve ever done. What’s greater for me, though, is that every time I make a video and speak to the camera, I think I’m speaking to my great-grandchildren. It’s about legacy — the things we build, entropy will claim those. But for some period of time, if the internet persists, long after I’m dead, I’ll still be teaching people, including my descendants. That’s my favorite project.
Q. What advice do you have for Hillsdale College students?
A. Number one: Learn to love to do hard things. Number two: Seek all the wisdom you possibly can. Pray for it, and especially in choosing your spouse, because from that one decision will come 90% of your joy and 90% of your misery, and it will turn you into something worthwhile.
