The episode kicks off with Ross revealing he is a devoted fan of Phil Rosenthal, the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond, who now hosts a food travel show on Netflix called Somebody Feed Phil. Ross has personally visited around 15 of the restaurants the show featured, which is either very impressive or the most expensive hobby a woodworking podcast host has ever admitted to on air. Jess loves the show too, mostly because she cannot figure out how the man stays thin eating like that. Ross explains Phil only takes a bite and hands the rest to the crew, which is the most polite thing anyone has ever done at a Michelin-starred restaurant and a taco truck back to back.

From there the three of them do what any group of close friends does when the mics are hot and nobody has stopped them, which is spend a solid chunk of time ranking summer fruit. Jess is pushing enormous Walmart grapes nearly two inches across that basically look like plums. Colton is a mango guy who cuts them like an avocado and eats them off the grid. Ross wants dark plums all the way through, loves end-of-summer strawberries and Georgia peaches but peels them because the fuzz is a dealbreaker. Jess eats the entire kiwi including the skin. Ross does not like watermelon. This is treated as breaking news.

The real meat of the episode is Colton's deck. He wants to build a 38-foot wide covered back deck on his 1945 farmhouse and came with some ideas, some of which were fine and some of which made Jess say the words "way too thin" with an energy suggesting Colton had proposed framing an aircraft carrier with toothpicks. Two-by-sixes for the floor joists are out. Minimum two-by-tens, go with twelves if spanning 16 feet, and nobody uses four-by-four posts to hold up a roof at 12-foot height unless they enjoy watching things bow slowly over time. Jess advocates hard for at least a 24-inch roof overhang to protect the deck from sun damage, which apparently kills wood faster than water does. The pressure-treated lumber debate gets thorough, covering ground contact versus outdoor rated, copper-based treatments, and whether you need to seal every cut end. Ross strongly recommends filming all of it because outdoor build content crushes every other category on YouTube and TikTok and Colton is leaving serious views on the table.

The back half belongs to a trivia game Jess built from scratch where every country has a national tree and most of them are trees these three have never heard of. Countries like Bhutan, Laos, Guyana, Botswana, and Papua New Guinea get their trees identified one by one while Ross and Colton guess the Janka hardness rating and are wrong almost every single time. African Blackwood from Tanzania sinks in water and was historically used as bearings on boats. Mopane from Zambia rates around 3000 Janka and will destroy your planer blades. The Marula tree from Mozambique produces fruit that ferments on the ground and has been documented getting elephants genuinely drunk. Frangipani from Laos rates under 500, which Jess describes as one you could fart on and dent it. The national food trivia woven in is equally unhinged, including larb from Laos, blood sausage with lingonberry jam from Estonia, and a Uruguayan dish Colton identifies from personal West Texas experience as requiring a full week of recovery after eating.

Ross closes with a nugget about threaded insert bolts for table bases, Colton finally committed to SketchUp and recommends the Sketchup Essentials YouTube channel, and Jess says use YouTube for every tool purchase decision you ever make and also just buy the good drill the first time.

Legal complaints go to Barone Barone Barone Barone Barone and Barone Legal Partners. Motto available upon request.

Beat Around the Bench is a woodworking, DIY, and general nonsense podcast hosted by Jess of Jess Build It, Colton of Cold Crit, and Ross of R&C Woodworking and Designs. Find them on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Patreon.

Ross is back. Jess is missing in action. And it was almost the shortest episode in Beat Around the Bench history because a tornado showed up and tried to end the whole thing early.

That is not an exaggeration.

But before nature launched its attack, Ross dropped a full debrief from his trip to London and Edinburgh and it is everything you want it to be. The man walked through 800 year old doorways. He stood inside Edinburgh Castle where actual kings and queens watched woodwork get installed that is still standing six centuries later. He described Gothic white oak carvings so intricate and so clean that Scottish carvers were literally shipped across the Atlantic to build out the lobbies of major buildings in New York and Chicago during the roaring twenties and that work is still up today without a single seam coming apart. Ross looked at it as a woodworker and said it would take him 30 years to get to the skill level of someone who was only five years into their apprenticeship.

Meanwhile Colton jumped on a coat rack he built to prove Jess wrong about whether it would hold and it snapped immediately. So that is where we are.

The episode also hits hard on food. Ross broke down haggis poppers flash fried and dipped in jalapeño stone ground mustard at a bar in Edinburgh. He ate lamb shank at a Greek restaurant in London where they told him to put down his fork and just use his hands. He found beignets at a Paris based bakery called Paul that were so good he had to stop himself from eating a dozen. He also confirmed that the sandwich culture in London is basically non existent which was genuinely distressing for a man who would eat sandwiches at every meal if nobody stopped him. The Sensational Sandwiches meetup did not happen by the way because Frazier was in Paris running a marathon and forgot to check his phone. So that chapter stays open.

Back in the shop Colton ran through SharkBite push connect plumbing fittings and how he added a water spigot to the front of his house in about an hour by crawling under a pier and beam foundation with 14 bucks worth of parts and zero special tools. Ross dropped a Harbor Freight shutoff quick connect that lets you swap air tools without losing pressure and without launching anything across your shop at dangerous velocity. Colton gave Ace Hardware its flowers for specialty hardware bolts plus the legendary old guy named Greg who has been doing plumbing and electrical for 45 years and just works there because he likes it.

And then the tornado warning hit. Ross had to shelter in place and the episode ended faster than a bull rider getting thrown in the first two seconds.

This is Beat Around the Bench. Episode 139. Two and a Half Maples. Follow the show everywhere and keep Jess and Colton honest while Ross digs out from under the weather.

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One man is sick. Actually scratch that. One man is completely destroyed. Colton showed up to record this podcast after a week that included a Creed concert, a karaoke night, felling trees across his yard, and what he describes as looking, feeling, and sounding like hammer dog you-know-what. And yet here he is. A true hero of the craft.

But before the sawdust flies, the crew does what they always do first and they talk food. Specifically sandwiches. Ross is heading to London and has a mission to personally visit the Sensational Sandwiches shop and hand deliver Beat Around the Bench stickers to the man himself. The debate over the greatest sandwich meat of all time gets heated. Colton goes Cajun turkey. Jess goes Reuben on marble rye pressed like a panini in a George Foreman. Ross drops the truth bomb that nobody asked for but everybody needed. Salami. Salami is the answer. Throw it on anything. It just works.

Then the show pivots hard into the shop. Ross has a customer table in crisis and the breadboard ends are warping like a propeller because Chicago winters pull indoor humidity down to six percent and the wood is screaming for mercy. Jess and Colton walk him through his options. Cut it. Seal it. Rubio it. Ceramic coat it. Accept that wood moves because wood has always moved and wood will always move. This is woodworking. These are the stakes.

Then things get really dangerous because Jess rolls out a 25 question lightning round trivia challenge and the rules are brutal. Eight seconds to answer. Five hundred BATB bucks if you are right. Minus five hundred if you are wrong. Questions fly faster than sawdust off a drum sander. Pine. Plumb bob. Dovetail. Bandsaw. Kiln dried. Ipe. The adze. And the final boss question that neither man could answer. The word is chatoyance. It is a French term for cat's eye and it describes that shimmering three dimensional figure you see in curly maple and sapele when the light hits it just right. Use it with your customers. They will never question your credibility again.

The crew wraps it out with three heavy hitting nuggets. Jess swears by the framer rig suspender tool belt that changed his life on the jobsite. Colton puts the Woodworkers Companion app on the radar tipped off by patron Greg at Platte Valley Woodworks. It is free and does quoting, invoicing, wood movement calculations, and customer management all in one place. And Ross drops the truth about surviving slow seasons. Find the easy job. Clear coating guitars for an artist. Three hundred bucks. Done. Keep that tap running even when the big projects dry up.

This is Beat Around the Bench. Episode 138. The Walking Deadwood. Go follow the podcast wherever you listen and if you need someone to keep Jess and Colton accountable while Ross is eating sandwiches in Scotland, that responsibility falls on you.

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