Ep 136: Desperate Hardwoods

Season four is officially here and the guys are kicking things off in the best way they know how — a little food talk, a lot of woodworking problem solving, a full round of rapid fire trivia, and some genuinely useful shop and business tips sprinkled in for good measure.The guys open with the new season four title theme, which is TV show names, and they could not have picked a better opener than Desperate Hardwoods. Things get comfortable fast with a crockpot recipe conversation that includes Ross pulling up his bourbon bacon baked beans recipe live on the podcast, Colton reminiscing about bachelor cooking survival mode, and Jess drawing a hard line in the sand against baked beans entirely. The white chicken chili and buffalo chicken dip crowd will feel very seen.The real meat of the episode is a full woodworking consult where Jess walks Ross and Colton through a seriously complex ten foot soft maple table build with serpentine ends, tapered angled legs that kick out one degree in both directions, and the question of how to get the aprons to land cleanly against a conical leg. Ross comes in with the key insight of scribing and notching into the back of the leg rather than trying to shape the apron to meet it, which Jess admits he never would have thought of on his own. There is also a solid conversation about internal cross bracing strategy for a table that long, and why notching and interlocking beats pocket screws every single time.After the build talk the guys cover the Graco Ultra QuickShot airless sprayer. It runs on a standard Dewalt battery, barely drinks power on a full day of spraying cabinet enamel, and the low pressure tips mean almost no overspray. Ross also explains the grounding wire mystery, which has everything to do with static discharge.Then it is trivia time covering questions from previous episodes including what hardwood baseball bats are traditionally made from, what MDF stands for, the Japanese wood charring technique Shou Sugi Ban, and what Lignin actually is and why it matters for steam bending. Colton takes the season win at 25,902 to Ross at 23,099. The circular saw inventor Tabitha Babbitt gets her moment, invasive buckthorn turns out to be workable hardwood, and the African wood Iroko somehow leads to a Woody Allen detour nobody was ready for.The snugits at the end are worth sticking around for. Jess breaks down BannerBuzz.com for vehicle decals, sharing how he wrapped his dumpsters for around twelve hundred dollars with full color outdoor graphics that would have run six thousand through a traditional sign shop. Colton makes the case for carrying two mechanical pencils with different lead widths in your apron. Ross rounds it out with the FastCap Pro Carpenter tape measure, which has a built in pencil sharpener and a dry erase side panel for writing measurements before you lose them walking back to the saw.Season four is off to a strong start. New episodes, shorter run times, and the same three guys who clearly enjoy giving each other a hard time while actually knowing what they are talking about.Find more at BeatAroundTheBench.com and follow Jess, Colton, and Ross on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.Tags: woodworking podcast, Beat Around the Bench, season four, serpentine table build, tapered table legs, soft maple table, @Graco QuickShot sprayer, Shou Sugi Ban, Janka hardness rating, woodworking trivia, BannerBuzz decals, FastCap tape measure, woodworking tips, furniture building, woodworking podcast 2025, JessBuildIt, ColtCrit, R&C Woodworking