I remember when I got cast as the bad guy in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. I got a small but nice chunk of change.

And I thought, "Oh, instead of spending this on an indiscretion or an indulgence, I'm going to buy a really nice band saw."

Hi guys.

Hey there.

One thing I've learned about the Wire Cutter team is beyond their passion for talking about gear that hopefully will help folks live better, you know, great chef's knife, a sewing machine, maybe the right pen for journaling, is an inner light, an excitement when that sentiment is shared by someone else in the world, particularly someone famous.

In this case, I'm referencing tools specifically.

Absolutely. It's kind of funny. It's few and far between that there's actually someone famous who really geeks out to the level that people at Wire Cutter will geek out on different products.

But about six years ago, Nick Offerman, who is famous actor, if you haven't watched Parks and Recreation, go back and familiarize yourself with Ron Swanson.

He tweeted about this S-wing hammer that he really loves. and he pointed to our hammer review which was written by Doug Mahoney who has been on the show before.

And since then tons of people at Wirecutter have been like it would be so great to have him on the site it would be so great to get him involved with the review can we get him to test hammers for us you know it's been on our bucket list to be able to talk to him.

And the thing is Ron Swanson the character is really big on woodworking but I didn't even know that Nick Offerman the man he's actually been a professional woodworker for decades he started Offerman wood shop his own shop over 20 years ago before he even made it big in Hollywood.

He also wrote a bunch of books and he's got a new one out called Little Woodchucks, which is so cute.

It's a woodworking guide for kids, but really it's more of a love letter to anyone who wants to slow down, get their hands dirty, and learn how to build something real.

This book has everything from beginner projects like carving little creatures with a whiddling knife to even more ambitious builds.

We had a blast talking with Nick. He is just as funny as you would expect.

And uh this conversation is actually a bit different than we usually have in our episodes.

We do talk with Nick about his favorite tools and gear, but we also delve into some headier territory.

We talk about why woodworking continues to be one of his enduring passions, what he gets out of it, and why he thinks that everyone should really slow down and start making things by hand.

It's a great conversation.

We should also say this episode does have some adult humor in it, so please take care when you're listening with your kids.

We'll be right back.

We'll be right back.

Welcome back. With us now is Nick Offerman, who you probably know as Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation.

He's not only an accomplished actor, though. He's a skilled woodworker who's founded his own woodworking collective in LA, and it's called Offerman Wood Shop.

He's also a published author of now six incredible books. His latest being Little Woodchucks, which released on October 14th.

Nick, welcome to the show.

Nick, you might be interested to know that the staff at Wire Cutter is pretty obsessed with you and has been for some time because we know that you're into tools, that you're a woodworker.

And so, I think a lot of people have been curious about just the fact that you're such a big celebrity, but you're also you've got this life moonlighting as a as a woodworker.

What got you into woodworking in the first place? Was this something that you did as a kid? Is it something that you picked up as an adult? How did it start?

Um, well, thank you. There there are some compliments in there. I I appreciate it.

Uh, you know, it's funny to hear you describe your crowd here.

This book is exactly for you all because when I was a kid, my mom and dad brought up me and my three siblings in a farmhouse that my dad got for free and rolled down the road to like a and set it down on a basement that he poured.

And it was Little House on the Prairie. Like for real, we we made so much stuff.

Mom made clothes. She and dad both come from farm families a few miles in either direction.

So I grew up surrounded by family members who make things of all sorts.

And the farmers, you know, they have to be amazing mechanics and carpenters and painters and cooks and tailor and cobblers and you name it.

Um because everything has to be incredibly frugal to survive year in and year out.

And so growing up, it was just part of my hero worship of adults.

Like when I when I grow up, when I come into my manhood, it means I'll be able to back a wagon of corn into the crib.

And it means I'll be able to hammer a nail in one blow. I'll be able to use the chainsaw and so forth.

And so I just always had a fascination with tools, with the implements that we clever monkeys have come up with to affect change on the raw materials of life to like make our lives better.

And my dad was an amateur furniture maker. He made some really cool pieces of furniture.

And so, you know, all of those uh influences combined so that when I was strong enough as a teenager to like get a labor job, I was drawn to framing houses to like swinging a hammer.

And so, at age, I think 15 or 16, I got my first job framing houses for these brothers in town.

And to just suddenly be paid a man's wage for climbing a ladder, like having an adventure up on a third story roof, like cutting rafters and hammering into place, just felt super heroic.

And so I just always loved uh making some of my livelihood with tools, even though then I went to theater school.

I wanted to become an actor. So while I was there, there was this guy named Ken Egan running this beautiful scene shop uh at this facility at the University of Illinois called the Cranert Center.

And this guy hired me to work in the scene shop.

And so that was my first shop.

Suddenly my mind exploded where I was like I learned what a these big wood shaping machines were, a planer and a joiner and a dust collection system and like how to run a great wood shop.

And so even as I became a young adult as a theater actor, I also that was my origin story as a woodworker where I was like I I can shape things with wood tools. I will thrive.

Well, I want to know that the new book is called Little Woodchucks and it's really about projects to do with kids.

In the intro to the book, you talk a lot about how important it is to know how to make things with your hands.

And um I can identify with this. I sew a lot of my own clothing. I taught my kids how to sew.

And sometimes I'm like, I could just go buy something for a fraction of the price and the time involved with this.

What is the argument today in 2025 to make things with your hands, to spend the time and effort and all of that?

And sometimes it's kind of expensive to get into making things by hand. What's the argument?

Well, let me we're going to go all the way back to soil health.

Things are about to get real sexy.

I agree with you.

And I in the intro to my last book uh called Where the Deer and the Analopee Play. I talk about our relationship with nature and all my alarms start going off as I'm writing because this is not good television. This is not sexy.

like everybody's going to sleep because that's what consumerism does so effectively is it says to you, why don't you just buy what you need from the corporations and then sit on your couch and enjoy our diversions while our robots service your wife for you, you know.

And I personally would like to take care of some of those responsibilities myself.

I feel like it's our duty as citizens to maintain to, you know, no pun intended, like keep a hand in to the construction and maintenance of our civilization.

So, there's the responsibility side of it, but I also think it's just really fun.

If we were in Little House on the Prairie, they had a lot of fun.

Like, if you got a deck of cards and a sewing machine and a hammer, you can have a really a really good time.

I feel like that's part of the answer to that question of like if we all just say why don't we just border it off your phone.

We we'll throw our planet in the garbage.

That's what makes me so happy to hear when people love tools.

I mean it's becoming really rare that people know what a tool is.

It was important for us making this show.

A lot of the conversations we end up having are about things that are built to last.

What are the things that you can invest in that will last if not a lifetime than decades?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, especially when you're starting out as a woodworker, uh, good tools are expensive.

Um, and so naturally there are all kinds of laborsaving devices and gadgets and cheap versions of things that at first seem like a a great idea.

And then when it breaks or breaks your heart time after time you finally say, "Okay, it's you get what you pay for."

And these good beautiful hand planes or chisels or what have you or or machines are worth the money.

And incredibly, like when when I'm outfitting a shop, I do my damnedest.

I work really hard to find machines from the 60s and 70s that require absolutely no maintenance or or refurbishment that are 10 times better than what you can get today because things are being made for the company's profitability rather than your use.

This book that you just came out with is about projects for kids.

And I've noticed that with my own kids, there's this thing that happens where they're not on a screen. They're like in front of the sewing machine. They're having to push through and figure out how to make this thing. And it does kind of push them to be more patient.

working on this book. Did you find that process was happening with these kids at all?

Like were you making these projects with the kids and they were having to kind of push through and get past their own impatience with themselves?

For sure. And it's really interesting to see kids today like kids that are growing up with the technology they have versus the kids I've known in other generations.

And thankfully, I mean, I'm really relieved to see these cool kids that that agreed to come be in our book.

You can see their distraction, but then you would see them click in.

I would work with them to whatever operation we were doing to get them to feel the correct use of the tool.

And that's a big moment just teaching them the difference between driving a screw with a drill horizontally versus getting your weight up on top of it and feeling how much more effective that is.

If you read the whole book, it's kind of a not so veiled screed.

Not just for the kids, it's for the parents, too.

I want I write it with a great sense of humor so that hopefully people will be engaged to read it out loud to their kids.

So I I'm hoping to awaken this in everybody cuz I think there are a lot of big wood trucks as well these days who also never use tools.

And so it's a lot more fun and a lot easier to do it together.

I had a question because it still surprises me and I know you wrote this in your book.

You will still make mistakes. you, Nick Offerman, who's been doing this for years, and that's both inspiring and a little bit intimidating, I think, to a lot of people, myself included.

I'm not handy. I can't build anything.

I was wondering if you have any advice for people like me who aren't that patient, but they want to learn and they want to experience that joy of like creating something by hand.

Well, yeah. Yeah, I mean I think it's a great life lesson because I mean I learned early on in everything I do that if I make clumsiness part of my brand then when I fall on my face they laugh and they give me money and I say that's that's what I do. Mission accomplished. I hope you enjoyed that.

But I mean with woodworking it's it's a great example like one of the fun things about making a table or anything in the shop is it's a puzzle.

It's uh solving a series of problems and understanding that you have to lay those problems out in the right order.

You can't cut this before you cut this.

And you got if you look through the steps of one of the projects in my book, I think it's easy to understand if you don't maintain focus.

It's just easy to make brain fart, you know, like simple errors.

But I love it.

It makes me I rarely get mad at myself or at my family because I understand if somebody makes a mistake.

I'm like sure that's what we do.

We're humans.

Like we're built to make mistakes.

No one ever does anything perfectly on the first try.

And so I make I make less mistakes the older I get.

Knock on wood to a certain point and then I guess then it go starts going back the other direction.

My wife's uncle was a luier. He made guitars and he made her a guitar.

And she was talking to me about how he would take the wood options and lay his hands on them and kind of knock them and ask her to sing so that he could match wood tone with the tone and timber of her voice.

And it struck me as like this really spiritual practice.

And so I guess I'm wondering for you, religion is personal, but is there kind of a spiritual or meditative aspect to the way that you work with wood and the way that you work with your hands?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, one of our heroes of the field, George Nakashima, look it up. It's gorgeous work.

His daughter Meera is still running it. They're still cranking out Nakushima pieces.

And he has a wonderful book called The Soul of a Tree.

And he and James Krenov, who has a school, they both are sort of two of the spiritual hearts of of woodworking.

And there is that elfin sensibility of like if you're making a guitar or a dining room table, you know, you meet your clients and you're making the board on which they're going to have their family dinners hopefully for generations.

And so that is holy.

I mean, that really feels like a wonderful and touching responsibility.

In in the sole of a tree, George talks about, you know, the wood will tell you sort of what it wants to be or or

how thick or thin.

You're trying to strive for this meditative sensibility.

Sometimes there are noisy tools.

Sometimes things are are violent or or you're bashing things, you know.

But then there are moments where you're planing wood or shaving it or or finishing it where you can have music playing or the tools themselves are making a kind of music where it it is quite spiritual.

There's a passage Wendel Barry writes in I think it's in his novel the memory of old Jack where he talks about

you used to get to town only at the speed of walking or the fastest would be the speed of a horse.

And so you maintained a knowledge of the health of your neighborhood.

You saw the creek. You saw your neighbors houses.

And you had time to say, "Oh, look. Looks like they painted the barn or they're taking good care of their sunflowers."

Or the opposite, like I looks like Bob might be drinking again.

The faster we go in our society, the less we are able to pay attention.

And so the the less we communicate with our community to say my laundry is well hung, Bob was successfully on the wagon and so forth.

And so in the shop, we try to honor that.

And it's a fine line because I'm not going for the greatest profitability.

I do my best to have my shop break even. That's my my goal every year.

But that allows everybody to work at the pace of a horse or walking and and I think that enjoyment goes into the beauty of the pieces that we make.

I was talking to a friend last night who said I I was telling her that you were going to be here today and she immediately said, "Oh, I have his coasters."

And she was very excited.

Um, but it made me wonder about the actual place you do your work.

So, are you working on personal projects at the Offermanwood Shop, or do you have a dedicated space in your home?

And if so, can you give us a visual? Walk us through.

Sure. Um, I I'm not allowed to make sawdust where I share a marriage bed with Megan Mali.

She's going to hear this. I'm going to get in trouble.

Yeah.

For insinuating that we've made love.

Um, so I have a a shop across town on the east side of LA and I'm wonderfully spoiled.

I mean, you know, I used to uh have to make a lot of dining tables to make my rent and now the shop is is I've got such great woodworkers there that I'm able to, you know, I remember when I got cast as the bad guy in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous.

I got a nice uh small but nice chunk of change and I thought, "Oh, instead of spending this on an indiscretion or or an indulgence, I'm going to buy a really nice band saw from the Lagona bandsaw folks."

And so that beca started a habit where every time I would get a a nice acting job, I would buy a new machine.

And so now I have a space sort of up in a loft where daddy can just keep his mess.

That's the pull quote.

Yeah.

I like the idea though of a wood shop full of beautiful things that are expensive and a metaphor for your career success.

Yeah,

that's kind of special,

I guess. So, yeah, it's weird.

It's I never could have imagined how much my tool use would lend sucker to my dreams of a life of artistry.

to the point where like uh they even made Ron a woodworker because of my shop and we shot a few episodes in my shop.

Like Ron's shop is shot at Offerman Wood Shop.

No way.

Yeah, that's awesome.

And those his canoes are my canoes that I built.

Like there are a few things that Ron builds in the show that are comedy woodworking.

Like he builds an Irish harp overnight.

And by the time we got into later episodes, there's one where I either build a crib for Chris Trager or we build it together or something.

I remember that. Yeah.

And it was like I became unavailable where they were like, we need a crib by Tuesday.

I was like, I I have to learn my lines. I can't I can't build a crib.

Do you find that your woodworking, your acting, and your writing kind of feed each other?

It sounds like in that example like the woodworking kind of fed your acting in some ways and vice versa.

I think so.

I I think that more it's more just on a disciplinary level like they all feed into each other.

The work and planning and forethought that I put into something in the wood shop gives me patience and the wherewithal to also like ah right I should sharpen things for my acting job or my tour as a humorist and I should also understand that I'm going to make some mistakes you know.

and all of these lessons and I get them from my mom and dad and from Wendel Barry and and also you know Zen Cohen's like the way of the art is the way of the Buddha.

which will always move me and to always maintain the attitude of a student.

You know, that all means like we all have a gift within us.

It's our responsibility to figure out what that is and then that's how we make our life fulfilling is by performing that that service for others.

For me, it's making stuff out of wood or making funny faces as I fall down.

Well, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll chat with Nick about his favorite tools of all time.

Be right back.

Welcome back. So Nick, this is the Wire Cutter show. We have to talk about the tools that you use.

So hypothetically, let's say someone really wants to get into tools, but they don't even know where to start.

At Wire Cutter, we rarely recommend like pre-made tool kits where you can just buy them basically off the rack, you know, at Home Depot or whatever.

So, we were wondering what five tools you would recommend or range in your own personal bag for a newbie.

And is is this just for someone's like household first five tools?

Let's start there. Yeah.

First and foremost, these days I go for uh for a nice cordless drill.

She's laughing because I very very intentionally went out and bought a drill so that I could be a bit more self-sufficient.

And I was suckered into buying a corded drill because the person at the store told me that that was the one to get.

and I assumed that was the right thing and I've been dragged ever since.

Well, I will not shame you.

Thank you, Nick.

Um, you you can get a lot done with a corded drill.

Uh, especially if you have an extension cord.

Yeah. Or you're just close to the the plug, right? It's absurd.

It just cracks me up thinking that you have to plug it in to do anything in your house.

It's absurd.

It's funny to me that you think that's funny where I'm like, well, of course that's how we did it for a really long time.

I know. No, it just seems like it's just it's, you know, she can get a cordless

dr. No, I get it. I get it. I mean, we used to to make a phone call, you used to have to move your body to a place where a phone was on a wall

before my time, Nick.

And then you had to stay there the whole time.

Yeah. You couldn't leave the phone.

Um, but those they're incredible because especially nowadays, you can get a kit with all the different bits and a nice set of drill bits.

So, you can get a lot done with those. That's one.

Number two is I also would get a nice manual screwdriver with interchangeable bits cuz there are a lot of applications that a drill doesn't fit into or that a drill is maybe too much for.

Number three is a nice socket set.

What's that? It's a set of little uh cylinders that fit on nuts and bolts, hexagonal nuts and bolts,

and it comes with a ratchet.

So,

Got it.

So, that in combination with a wrench set or a crescent wrench that's an adjustable wrench

that kind of equips you to put together and take apart all nuts and bolts that are in the in the hexagonal family, which used to be kind of the only game in town.

Nowadays, they have all kinds of different fasteners.

That complicates things where if you have to have more than two or three kinds of screw tip, especially if you're taking things apart and you have to figure out what tip they use, they have square tips and phips tips.

So, this is like comparable to like when iPhone kept changing the charging ports on everything and now we're all going back to like universal and we could have just done that forever.

How could Yeah. And how is that even I don't like that about capitalism that that

even that the nations are allowed to go imperial or metric.

I'm like come on guys we're we're sharing this planet along. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. What are we on? Three or four.

Well, if the socket set is three and I'm going to say a set of wrenches and that includes your box end, your open end, and I'm going to include a crescent wrench in that as a set of wrenches.

I think you're cheating. You're including sets.

I don't call it cheating.

You got to have a hammer. You have to have a persuader and then a saw.

I mean, those

but but I've gone over five.

You like an Estwing? Is that what you like?

I do. I mean, you know, in my day, Estwing really just nailed the uh they were like the Nike of the available hammer brands.

They feel great.

They look great.

Is there something in your workshop that is kind of an unsung hero?

It's not the obvious tool. It's not the thing that everybody has in their toolbox, but it's something that you think deserves more attention than it gets.

The thing that springs to mind is there's a company in Maine called Lee Nielsen Hand Planes.

They make hand planes and uh chisels and a few other implements of fine woodworking.

Their tools are just exquisite.

there's a little uh hand plane that's that's all in brass that fits neatly into like your apron pocket.

So that's what springs to mind is invariably in my co-author of this book, Lee, who ran my shop for 10 years, we were just talking about how it's like your dependable Swiss Army knife where there are so many other shavings or adjustments that you want to make to a piece, but you've always got that that little Lee Nielsen plane.

Nick, you don't have kids, but you collaborated with Lee Buchanan, who is the co-author of this book.

Yeah.

I want to hear about how you went about deciding on the projects, and what did you learn from Lee as you were creating this book?

When Parks and Wreck looked like it was going to go,

I thought, I think my life is going to change.

I think if this is anything like it seems, I'm going to have a lot less time in the shop.

And so I either need to like lock up the shop or get somebody working here under the opaces of offer wood shop.

And a mutual friend of ours I was working with and he said you know I just did an install and this woman named Lee outworked the other three guys.

Uh I just met her and you should you should meet her. She's pretty special.

So I had her in for a meeting.

Everything about her was so wonderful.

So together we sort of built this family over the years.

We ended up doing a woodworking book for adults and everybody called Good Clean Fun and it's been so much fun to get to collaborate with her again.

When we're together, we come up with all of the ideas for what the projects will be.

Some of them were no-brainers and some of them we kind of workshopped where we were like, "Okay, what bench design, what saworse design, what materials, you know, we workshopped a few different connectors for the box kite, for example.

And Lee's just so great, whether she was running my shop or doing this from afar, working in her shop in Berkeley, she's just amazing."

How did you decide what would be appropriate for kids?

Were you really leaning on Lee to kind of be like, "Hey, you've got some kids. Is this appropriate?"

Or were you testing it out with kids in the shop?

It had mainly to do with what you could make satisfyingly with hand tools.

We were trying to limit most of the projects to not needing power tools.

There aren't a lot of projects that are meant to send your kids off like go out in the garage and and whip up a couple saw horses.

They're generally meant to have adult supervision just because in the wood shop, you know, just like in the kitchen, there are implements that are sharp that you can really hurt yourself with.

And so, no matter what age we are, when anybody comes into my shop, I'm like, okay, always a lot of grab ass here.

And like we love having fun, but number one is straight up like safety first.

That will kill you.

That'll chop your hand off.

We wear hearing protection and protect our eyes.

We protect our lungs.

And we're dead serious.

Like don't if somebody's using a tool, pretend that they're backing a bulldozer toward you.

Just give them respect.

And so with kids as well, we just went through each project idea.

And you know, there were all kinds of different toys and games and and fun things.

And maybe the most benign thing I can think of in the book, there are two sets of tongs that we make.

One of them are are these, we call them toast tongs.

And you can imagine a couple of big tongue depressors and you glue a little piece of wood between one end of those.

And you can make it's a big pair of tweezers.

And it's really fun.

One of the first things you can learn in woodworking is when you glue wood together, how strong that is.

It's so exciting.

I mean, you can make whole pieces of furniture just relying on the strength of the wood glued together.

And so the tongs is such a handy implement.

And that to me, everything that we make in the shop, once its use comes into play, like you let the glue dry, you sand it a little bit, and then you can pull your toast out of the toaster or you can take these tongs and flip your hot dog on the grill and it just feels incredible.

Like, holy cow, I made this just by gluing these pieces of wood together.

And so we sort of extrapolate off of that, you know, using a a set of hand tools.

We kind of discerned, okay, most of what we did.

We made some of them together, Lee and I, cuz we did have some times together up in her shop, but then a lot of them she also prototyped with her kids, and she would go through and see what they could do and what they couldn't do.

Nick, we usually ask all of our guests one final question, which is, what's the last thing you bought that you've really loved?

But we want to ask you, what's the last thing that you've built that you've really loved?

That is a great question.

There there are a couple things that I made for Megan uh that I'm not going to say.

Um, one of them is a sex toy, but that's all I'm going to say.

And if you are making a sex toy, just make sure if you think you've sanded it enough, sand it just a little more.

The last thing I made that I really loved are this batch of ukuleles, which I've been working on bit by bit for years.

When you play a an instrument that you've made and people don't leave, it feels pretty incredible.

One day I will wield that in concert and then I can retire.

Well, thank you, Nick. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

You're very patient. Thanks for putting up with me.

Very fun.

Nick Offerman's new book with Lee Buchanan is called Little Woodchucks, Offer Wood Shop's Guide to Tools and Tom Foolery.

It's available now wherever you like to buy books.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time.

The Wire Cutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Garin and produced by Abigail Keel.

Engineering support from Mattie Maziello and Nick Pitman.

Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson.

Original music by Dan Powell, Marian Lozano, Rowan Nemoto, Katherine Anderson, and Diane Wong.

Cliff Levy is Wire Cutter's deputy publisher and general manager.

Ben Fman is Wire Cutters editor-inchief.

I'm Christine Sirette. I'm Kyra Blackwell. And I'm Rosie Garin.

Thanks for listening.

So, when you're making sex toys, uh, first of all, just don't even use conifers.

Like, don't avoid soft woods altogether.

Go with deciduous hardwoods.

And just don't forget to raise the grain.

And just don't forget to raise the grain.