This Old Tony – Metalworking can be Entertaining

Metalworking is fascinating to me. Perhaps it’s because it’s something that I used to know so little about as a youth. Now that I’m older and YouTube is a thing, I find metalworking absolutely fascinating – thanks in part to the videos from This Old Tony. In most of his videos, the faceless Tony explains engineering, math, technique, and builds things. His dry brand of humor – which often includes clever camera and editing tricks to entertain the viewer – makes each video incredibly fun to watch. It’s a bit of a cult that follows Tony made up up of a lot of people who, like me, have no experience with metal working.

What you’ll learn from watch TOT is that you can solve most problems with a Lathe, a Mill, CNC Router, and a TIG welder.

I had no idea what a boring head was, what it was used for, or even why anyone would ever want to build one. But then, after watching this, I learned what a mills and lathe’s can do.

The series on building a Go-Kart takes you through building one from nothing, starting out with the good intention of using a chainsaw motor and quickly discovering the need for something a bit more, ahem, Skookum. (That’s Canadian slang for tough, powerful, built well, etc.)

After 100,000 subscribers, Tony revealed his face to followers for the first time. It’s also fun to note that he regularly includes other Creators in his videos – though it’s not always clear if these creators have endorsed their presence in these videos.

He’s done a number of collaborations as well. My favorite is the Pasta Machine rebuild for Alex French Guy Cooking.

Who knew that Cosine and Cosine error was so interesting? And now I want to make a Sine Bar…

So, being the “How does that work?” nerd that I am, I watched every video that lives on his YouTube channel over this past summer and typically watch whatever new videos he posts within hours (if not minutes) if it being posted.

Fair warning – you might get hooked on Tony’s style. It’s not as bad as it sounds.