Rewatching My Old Builds (so embarrassing?

it's Monday that's so embarrassing hey guys I'm Alex mukan also known as Mr build and today we're doing diy's react to builds I've been doing YouTube for six seven years now and I have some of these videos that have been on the internet probably since 6 years ago and I I haven't looked at them in years and uh it's going to be interesting to see what they look like and um hopefully I can make fun of myself and more than that share something that I've learned now that we're six seven years into it all right let's start this first one this is about 5 years ago how to build a floating shelf oh man first thing that I'm thinking is how grungy the lighting is I had I think maybe two light bulbs in my very first shop or garage where my wife parked her car and uh the it's such an Amber thing it's so zoomed in it's and I'm doing voiceover which is funny I haven't done voiceover in years I'm Glu up this it's funny because I uh everything's getting glued up which some might think oh that's a a really Advanced technique but really and I think I mentioned it in this video that I didn't have a brad nailor so all I had is like two saws and a hammer and I guess a couple of clamps oh jeez no no feeling for timing or anything it's just I wish somebody told me to zoom out a little bit that'll be start clamping all the things shy away fromen pieces atast I guess was a couple of minutes of straight up wrestling with clamps Brad say the day zoom out on the camera all right let's see what else we got will be natural so if you coming up the street and you're beginning to feel today is my favorite day of the week it's Monday Monday being productive but even better Mondays are for trash day now this this is the best part I was really inspired by Casey neistat to start creating YouTube videos and he's a vlogger in New York and I just started mimicking him so I start taking drone shots and doing these like Skyline panoramics stuff okay so we're going through some [Music] bins it whenever you start YouTube you always you don't know where to start so you just mimic the people that you you watch or consume their content and uh you could clearly tell in fact I think I remember I was bombarded with so many comments of people saying Casey nice at want to be and I kind of thought it was a compliment because people are watching his YouTube videos are also watching mine but uh you don't know where you start man I guess you got to mimic somebody all right so this this is a jointer this is my very first Joiner it it's as you can see it's gray and Industrial this is um I got it on Craigslist and it was a 1962 jline Joiner it was stuff they used to have in wood shop in like the' 60s and 7s uh it was not very accurate I think I got it was such a headache but it was a cool bragging right to me I was like oh I got this like really industrial thing I thought that was really cool when I had conversations with people because I'll be like oh I got this old school stuff but I I guess they didn't know that I just had what I could get really God man I wish somebody told me to zoom out the camera why am I everything so zoomed in at least I got lighting figured out a little bit except everything's blown out like I had no idea of what contrast was or exposure well that's the what did you get for being imitating other people let's see what's next so this is uh I got a bunch of leftover hardwood flooring from a flooring guy and I was like oh it's real wood I didn't have sponsors I didn't have money or the budget to build anything so I basically took what I could get or find and this is flooring that I'm gluing up which you shouldn't do it's only like half an inch thick and it's tongue and groove and I remember wrestling with this and tried not to cup or bow or anything but apparently it worked so I basically made one big frame of it and then the middle part was SP to be metal uh let's see here all right so here I am uh putting metal welding the frame to attach it to the wall my neighbor's here he didn't want to be on camera so I promise I'll block him out but uh I'm putting a little glue on top here's the thing about this desk it looked really cool and of course we lose focus uh it looked really cool but because I attached it into studs and it was a solid frame but there was drywall in the way it it flexed um quite a bit so like it's fine if you're sitting there but if you're going to try to sit on it the thing is going to bend way down the road I think looking back into it one thing I would have been done different I would have probably cut out the drywall and attached it straight to the studs it' probably have a little bit of flex still but maybe put like a COR b or two under but uh it looked really pretty and um yeah you can see you see that Flex right there the best tricks I learned when it comes to Milling wood best tricks I've learned okay settle down do the edge this is my buddy Bo okay okay so this was uh a funny thing I uh I was building this cornhole set and uh I think it was one of my very earlier ever sponsored videos and I broke my arm completely in half uh well actually it was this one and I had I have two steel plates in it on this electric skateboard and I was in the middle of this project and so I asked my buddy Bo who also builds in his garage and I was like hey man I need you to do a favor like I have to introduce you can you help me finish off this thing so going forward through this video it's actually it's Bo doing the work so here's B sanding what a good guy huh oh look we still got Ryobi in here right on ah good friends all right so this is me already back into this video this is um actually the very first time I learned how to solder copper pipes and I was thought you just uh use the uh the wire heated up and it should go in and it never did it just came undone and then literally after entire weekend of trying to figure out I finally Googled and I realized that you have to put this flux on the inside this paste and then when you introduce the um the wire it does like a capillary fill it's kind of like science like it sucks it in it creates this like vacuum for it to I don't know if it's a vacuum exact but it it sucks it all in as you can see yeah it's going right into the joint but I remember specifically how frustrated I was because I didn't do my research I kind of just assumed that's how you do it and uh man that was a hard lesson learned all right so this is where I built the uh a wireless charging station dock for like an iPhone and an Apple Watch Out of epoxy and it was my very first epoxy job I've ever done every very very first project and here I'm making this mold and uh the mold was fine except I didn't know that you're supposed to use like a a tyvec kind of like special tape that prevents uh it from well from having the epoxy sticking to the tape so I use this waterproofing tape from I don't remember who but this is like the hardest release of of the epoxy from the mold because the so it's a rubberized tape so it's like glue to it oh my gosh I remember how miserable it was look it's not even an even poure it's it's like slanted I didn't think to like level the table so this is putting on the join her to try to you can see this is my second jointer I'm trying to level it out I've used I probably spent like $200 worth of epoxy to create this thing that you could the idea that you can build oh the thing that you can buy on on Amazon for like 12 bucks but I decided to of course over complicate it oh my God look at me I'm trying to thing out destroying the blades on my Joiner look at that oh my that's yeah don't do that folks don't do that the biggest waste of a project ever FP over it's so cringy okay so this one this is a video I think is one of the very earlier videos that kind of went viral for me as a content creator and I didn't think it's going to be that great of an idea but somehow kind of took off so I'm creating this water feature and the issue with it is it worked in theory like it created the rain but the problem is is I never considered flow so I put all these slow dripping uh Jets on that are spaced out but I never followed through with having a flow like it created too much turbulence up there so you didn't have enough of the the water coming out what I should have done is had a continuation over and that could cycle through but uh instead it just it just all just started just overpowering turbulence in there either bigger Jets or or continuation of a flow uh my voice is raspy you can tell I was H sick or something like that here's the the Raindrop water it was fine but uh the Water also got hardened so I think I need a bigger jet in order to accomplish this I'm pretty convinced that the people who have the house now that these are probably calcified from all the hard water but hey I guess I mean got to give some credit for for effort I guess yeah all right let's go on to the next one the top of the railing was a 2 by one and then the each running shorts in a house Sparks are flying I did put down a welding blanket so the floors you can see it right there the floors don't get ruined uh don't start a fire uh there's also right there there is a a joint right in the middle this is so embarrassing so obviously DIY not a professional welder I could sometimes make a decent weld at least back then but this is the worst example ever there's this joint right between to the left of my head the the top railing and the bottom connect and it goes down this way and the other one goes uh at a different angle but in a different plane and I didn't know how to create the cut how real fab Fabricators would so I decided to just throw as many beads at it as possible after it connected and then just grind the crap at it like there's this old saying you know there's good welders and there's good Grinders and I think I convinced myself that I was a good grinder that's so embarrassing guess secure place it allowed for me hey I hope you guys enjoyed this episode of di react to build uh you see I did know what I was doing but you know we learned along the way and it's been six seven years later and now I feel like I have a little bit better understanding Improvement on my skill set hope you guys enjoyed this episode tune out this week see you guys on the next one see you bye