Jimmy DiResta

Jeremy Perkins 0:00
This is bucket talk, a monthly podcast taking you across America meet the most badass trades, people, industry leaders and personalities. If you're looking to level up in the trades, you're in the right place.

Jimmy DiResta 0:13
All right. So we're here with Jimmy deresta On this episode of bucket talk. We're in East Durham, New York. East Durham, New York, home of the Maker Camp. Yeah. So we're up here for Maker Camp. That's one, one event that we sponsor. It's near and dear to my heart, because the maker community has supported us since day one, and we're doing our best to support them. But yeah, it's an eclectic group of people with a whole bunch of different skill sets that come together for a weekend. And it's fun, it's informative. You get your hands dirty. It's cool. Yeah, it's a great weekend. And even everyone thinks I know how to do everything, I still try new stuff. Yeah, yeah. So Jimmy, obviously, I don't know, are you the ring leader? It's funny. People think I started Maker Camp. You guys know Austin? Yep. Austin is basically the ring leader of maker campuses. He's the, he's the ring master. I'm, I guess you might say I'm like, What the hell would be? I'm like the muse. Basically, this was Austin's idea. Me and Austin made friends when I first moved to East Durham full time. I've owned my house up here for 21 years. But it wasn't only it was only about six or seven years ago I moved up here full time. So this is the seventh This is the seventh Maker Camp. I met Austin the year before the first one. So I met Austin eight years ago. Okay? And he said, Hey, I got this idea, and now that I know you live in town, because he was already a fan of mine, he just bumped into each other in 10 he goes, What are you doing here in East Durham? I go, I live here. He goes, I knew you lived upstate. I didn't know you lived here. I go, Yeah, I live up the road. So Blackthorne and my house are on the same road a few miles apart. And Austin came to me. He's like, hey, I want to do this thing. I want to do like a Woodstock gathering of makers. And I don't even think we had Maker Camp yet, the name and sat down with his family and me and his father's like, what do you get out of this? I go, honestly, I don't want anything. Yeah, I just want to see the community grow and I make enough money from my sponsors. I don't need to make, you know, five or seven or 810, $1,000 off of there, right off of that did entry fee. So I said, all I want to do is just help Austin Get this thing off the ground right. And I made so many, I made all the introductions in the beginning, but now Austin is totally on his own. He's running he's running the show on his own. And if he does need my advice or needs me to help massage a deal or an introduction, that's what I'm there for. Awesome. So if anything, he knows that I'm working with Weaver, and I made that introduction. He knows I'm working with a on laser. I made that introduction. But because Austin is who he is now at year seven, he makes a lot of relationships completely on his own. Yeah, totally. So if you're ever interested, it's in October every year, except at the Blackthorn restaurant Columbus Day weekend every year. Yeah, and we're in year seven at the moment. Yep, awesome. So you're pretty famous in your craft, which is multiple crafts. But how'd you get your start? Like you said earlier, you're from the city east side. Well, the lower east side is where I lived. I went. I grew up in Long Island. I grew up in a small town called Woodmere, Long Island, five towns. The only other famous person, I'm not that I'm so famous, but the only famous person that I know of from Woodmere that I could think of is Perry Farrell from pono for Pyros, okay? And Jane's Addiction, yeah, he grew up there as a young man, and they moved to California, so he's like, his hometown is Woodmere, which is crazy. I didn't know that till I heard him on the WTF podcast, but I grew up in Woodmere, went to art school in the city, into New York City School of Visual Arts, and I ended up staying in the city. After that, I couldn't afford to live and pay for school. At the same time, I paid for school myself, so I was living in my mother's house, commuting to the city. And then after I got out of school, I got an apartment in the Lower East Side in 92 with my brother. Then we got a storefront shop in the Lower East Side, so we had the apartment above the storefront below. And that was my toy business prototyping. I was designing and developing inventing toys in the Lower East Side with my brother. He was on the marketing side. I was obviously on the invention development side, prototyping, model making. And we did a lot of model making for other inventors and toy companies. We developed relationships with a lot of the smaller toy companies, and we got into this situation where we would do product development, product managing, for about five different companies, and each one of them would pay us, basically pay us like a draw or a retainer, yep. And so we were collecting money from about five or six or seven, depending more or less, sometimes. And so we were just hired hit men for the toy business, whatever anybody needed if they wanted us to go to Hong Kong to see through a project. And we developed a reputation of doing things fast and efficient and always on the go. You know, we're two single guys willing to go to Hong Kong. It's hard to get someone to go to Hong Kong for two weeks, yeah, if you have a family. So we would always do whatever anybody needed. We developed a good client list, and that's, really was the 90s for me, yeah, and you're, you're known for gurgling guts. I did a product called gurgling guts in the 90s. Yeah, it was just the squishy ball. We developed that in our shop in the Lower East Side, stupid, stupid product that I have

Jimmy DiResta 4:46
had a Shelly Goldstein was my toy agent. He's a real character. So Shelly occasionally would come to my shop and say, What do you have? What do you have that has no life anymore. Like we take products and show it to everybody, and then we just throw in a box we ever been passed on that.

Jimmy DiResta 5:00
Burgling guts was one of them. It was a rubber ball inside of a condom. And at the time, I didn't have the breakthrough invention. This is an interesting story. So it was just a hard rubber ball in a condom with blood in between. So the rubber ball looked like a brain. So it looked like the brain with that mucus on it, yeah, and you squeeze it in, the blood would flow through the convolutions of the brain sculpt and so we sold that, and Shelley took that idea, which I had shown everywhere, this small little companies like, we love this idea. It's gross. We like gross is in now, once was when all the gross shit, you're probably young enough to remember all this gross shit was a big deal in the late 90s, and so we, we developed this thing called the gurgling guts. But in the design, development of manufacturing it, how were we able to make this skin? Because at the time, I just tied a knot in a condom, but you can't tie a knot in a finished product, so they came up with this injection molded silicone cup shaped like a ball. You put the sculpted object in there, and then you glue the cap, but there was all the blood was interfering with the glue joint. And so they left it up to me to R and D and figure it out. And I was like, Okay, what if the ball was hollow because we were still stuck on the hard rubber ball, because you could bounce it like, what if the ball What if the ball was hollow? We fill the ball with the goo in a separate operation in the factory. So now the ball, you just have to face it up like a glass full of water, put it inside the rubber skin, glue the skin, let the skin dry for 24 hours, and then squeeze the goo out. So now you have a safe, clean manufacturing process, and it's just prepped. And when everything's glued and dried, then you Yeah. And then when I made that first prototype, I did it, and it went, I'm like, holy shit. So this the product is the noise. Yeah, the product had no noise. It was just the visual, gross feeling. And then when we did that, and then that's we changed the name to gurgling, God, so we just called it Gross. Gross guts is what we were calling it. And when we got the sound, you know, is doing that. And then that basically became gurgling thoughts. And so how successful was it? We made millions of dollars, but we split it four ways. You know, my brother, you know, we had Harleys and Corvettes, you know, we would like, we're idiots. We didn't save anything, total idiots, but we split it four ways. I mean, it grossed millions of dollars. As far as royalties are concerned, we probably made over a million dollars in royalties, you know, but we split it four ways, evenly. It was me and my brother and my buddy Pat, my buddy Perry, was on that, and Perry designed all the brand look. I came up with the invention. My brother was sort of the sales rep on it, and Shelly got a piece of it. So, because there was four of us in the toy business, is sort of this tradition of, you know, what it's like when you get a good idea, and then you got to, like, cut a piece out for this guy, and cut a piece out. And then we always had this thing, me and my brother did this. If there was two people on an invention, if I invented it, I own 100% of it. If you come in and you go, you should make it really make it green. That would end I'm like, You know what? He's right? He really should. So, all right, let's split it 5050, right? You know, because you came up with the thing that now makes it a real thing, right? And if somebody else comes in and goes, you know, you should do a do Hickey here, and I'm like, All right, so me and my brother would be like, let's just split it now. It's 33.3 each. It's honorable, it's honorable, and it makes life easy. No one's fighting

Jeremy Perkins 7:48
if you but if you look back on it, right, without Shelley and that discarded box of toys, yeah, it would have never been exactly.

Jimmy DiResta 7:54
And that's why we say, even though it might seem minuscule, everybody plays what we believe is an equal part, right? And that we still believe that if we I see these guys come into TV, they're like, me and my best friend have this idea. I own 53 I'm like, he's your best friend now you're never going to talk to him in about two years. I was like, if you keep it totally even, I said, and by the way, don't ever try and pitch a show with your best friend, because the minute you sit down and somebody wants to show they'll be like, Who's this guy? This is a guy we went to high school together. We're best friends. Are like, all right. And they're like, you see the executives trying to, like, immediately be like, how can we get rid of this guy? Yeah, we just cut him out of it. He's just dead weight, no, but he's my best friend, you know, like, I've seen so many relationships get ruined in the TV and and the toy business, and that's why me and my brother would always just so anyway, getting back to we made over a million dollars in royalties. So if each one of us made it, you know, 300 grand a piece or more, you know, we blew it

Jeremy Perkins 8:42
after taxes, you know, yeah, exactly. And then,

Jimmy DiResta 8:45
you know, at the time I was in the Lower East Side, I had a workshop like this with a garage door and a second floor. So we were paying rent on a building in the Lower East Side. We had the whole building and my apartment, my brother's apartment, so we were living large, you know, we were like, ball and butt stupid, yeah.

Jeremy Perkins 8:58
So then, honestly, just going back to how you got into the toy business. Obviously, went from school of artistry to school.

Jimmy DiResta 9:05
So I graduated School of Visual Arts, and I was going to be a prototype. I was going to be a model maker, like a 3d illustrator, because I got into May my last couple of years at school. I got him with a with a prop maker, and he would teach us concept and execution, and I was already, already good. I was just because of my dad, and I was already good at making things, yeah, so I was going through this. I was going through this course with my friend Kevin, who was my mentor at the time, and I knew how to do everything, so I was kind of his teacher's pet. So I basically became his, like teaching assistant. But still, I learned a lot from Kevin. He was in the trades of show business, developing things for commercials. And, you know, we need a big fake jet airliner. And he would figure out how to make like visually, like a little model and put it in camera, close feels big, you know, this type of stuff. So I was learning all those techniques and little bit of that business from Kevin. But the last year I graduated. Just before I graduated, I took a small class called toys and games with a guy named Nick mark set a Ducati, and Mark became my new mentor. Tour. And it's funny because Kevin got a little jealous. He's like, You sure you want to do this toy business thing? But Mark, Mark, I credit both of those guys with the beginning of my career. I love both of those guys, but Mark was in the toy business, and he says, You have a really good mind for coming up with crazy ideas, right? He said, You should really, you should foster that. So when I graduated, Mark kept giving me work. He's like, I got this idea with glasses. I wanted, like, glasses to bump up and down on your nose. I'll just give you free reign. You just come up with five versions of that. Yeah, and, and I would do that for for mark all the time. And Mark would introduce me, and I met all the inventors through Mark. And Mark had a very successful line of products. He was a magician. So that he came up with this product line for, I think it was Hasbro, called magic works. And instead of a magic kit that has 20, well, there was always the numbers. It's like, I want a magic kit that has 25 working magic tricks. I want a magic kit that has 30 so they would compete with each other, these companies. Mark said, why don't we make one really good magic trick that works and impresses the shit out of everybody, yeah? And you sell one trick for 25 bucks. And everyone thought he was crazy, but he developed like, 50 tricks, and each one was 25 bucks. And so you'd go to us, you'd go to a side cap in the store, and then they would be all these so, like, basically, kids would collect them, like, hearts, yeah, or, like, Beanie Babies. So you collect them. The tricks made more money than Yeah, and then. But each trick, that's always called magic works. Each trick really worked. It wasn't just like some random thing. You got to read a pamphlet to learn how to do like you could open each trick, and they were real, real working illusions based on all real magic illusions that all the real guys do on stage and just mini versions of them. And there was very successful. That's cool. Yeah. So anyway, Mark was one of my teachers in the toy business, in school and out of school. And he was a big, big he was a big part of my life. And then he introduced him to my brother, and they got along because they have the crazy six sense of humor. So that was your

Jeremy Perkins 11:51
kind of intro into the toy business. Toy business, woodworking, working with your hands, type, yeah. Well, I always been

Jimmy DiResta 11:56
working with my hands, with my dad, doing carpentry, and then cabinet work. And a little bit like we like that old sign hanging on the wall that says, Let it be my dad made that in the 70s with a router, you know. So my dad was always making stuff, okay?

Jeremy Perkins 12:07
So you really got that from your father? Yeah? Okay, yeah. 100%

Jimmy DiResta 12:11
and then when I was in the toy business, I had a different mindset, because I had come from construction, and I had, I had already been solving all kinds of problems. I had several inventions that I never really patented, but I had all these ideas. So in the toy business, it was just constantly just exercising, coming up with crazy shit.

Jeremy Perkins 12:28
So did toy making kind of dry up? What was the shift there?

Jimmy DiResta 12:33
That's interesting, because the toy business, and my other brother is an actor and comedian in TV, and right around 2001 it was like 911 the toy business started becoming very heavily license driven, so inventions weren't as important as a licensed product. So for instance, Britney Spears kind of broke that open. Our friend got the Britney Spears license, and he made millions and millions of dollars, and he didn't need an invention. All he needed was somebody else. He basically like your parasite. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Yeah, I would do it if I could. You could You parasite off of somebody's fame and fortune, and you make their doll, you make their camp set, you know, if it's grills or whatever it is. So licensing really took hold, and it's like everything now, you know, Brunt where, you know, license you license to. I mean, you guys, I know you're running a little bit more of a bigger show, but eventually you might license to, you know, this type of apparel that you don't want to make, you might license the brand to this type of shoes that you don't want to make, Yeah, but you're still, it's still your brand, yep. So that's licensing and deploy business. Licensing basically became, you remember in the arts, when all of a sudden, like, all these old brands from when we were little, like Mr. Potato Head and fucking etc, sketch and operation, they all started showing up everywhere, yeah, because Parker Brothers and Hasbro and all these companies started. We companies started realizing they're sitting on this already. They don't need to pay New Inventors. They don't need to. They just, you got all these old brands that you associate with, like, a little mini version you associate with this, and it's a little bit and but they would so all these old school brands, and then celebrities Pixar really blew that up too, right? You know, with all the new Pixar movies, where entertainment and toys really started to combine, yeah, and that's really where the inventor really wasn't needed.

Jeremy Perkins 14:04
It was kind of funny. I grew up in East Long Meadow, Massachusetts, and that was the home of Milton Bradley. Yeah, that's right. Floor was bought out by Hasbro. So it was kind of funny a lot a lot of people in the area that and actually it was American saw but it's now Lennox saw blades, both in the same area. And it was either a lot of people's parents either work for the saw blade company or the toy company.

Speaker 1 14:23
Oh, yeah, that's funny, two things that are kind of and then Lego was down

Jeremy Perkins 14:27
the street for a while, but yeah, it's kind of interesting that there is a niche for toys in this area.

Jimmy DiResta 14:32
So then with computers and this that, yeah, oh, so I brought up my other brother, he's I started experimenting with videography and video editing, and I started playing with Final Cut Pro all the while, from 92 until 2018 I taught at the School of Visual Arts. I went back to teach all students. That's awesome, yeah. So I had, I was teaching 20 year olds for about 2425 years. So all that while my students were keeping me young in the way of like, Hey, you want some software? I'm like, yeah. So my students would give me hack software. So that's how I really learned how to use Photoshop. The list. Editor and editing software I learned from my students. So, like, they were on the cutting edge 360 I was already, like, past that, yeah, you know. So they were on the cutting edge of all this new technology that was coming up in the in the early 90s. And my students introduced me to

Jeremy Perkins 15:12
all that. That's really cool. And so the shift from Toy making to tvography, yeah. And now, now, what's all this like?

Jimmy DiResta 15:19
So I went from, I went from making toys in the Lower East Side to when the toy business started. What then I got, I got a little there was straggler royalties coming in here and there, but not enough to survive. So what I started doing with other inventors, like, if you want to take a chance to be like, they come to me and they go, I have this great idea for a microphone. It's just that the other thing, and in my mind, I'm like, they're like, I'll give you three points on the idea. I go, how about you just pay me five grand a month to develop your idea? So I started doing that. I'd be like, I take a retainer from inventor. I'm like, I will build five prototypes this month and help you develop package and figure out all the engineering issues. You give me five grand, and I take five grand from like, four or five different inventors a month. So that was really my number. I'd be like, I'll develop this product for you five grand at the end of the month. We need to do more. You give me another five grand. I did it monthly, a monthly retainer, and that's kind of how I was making my living. And I would invent my own ideas sometimes, but that's when I also really started doing interior design work. I got with a couple of neighborhood interior designers, and they would help me. They'd introduce me to restaurants, and then I'd start working for the restaurant. Hey, we need five tables for an event. I'd make the tables, hey, we need a big, long dining table, 13 feet long table. And I'd make the table look like it's old and like it's been there forever, yeah, the big, like, distressed look, yeah. So I was doing a lot of that in the city, and it was all working within like a five mile radius of my shop, yeah, because it's in Manhattan, so there's so much to give and so many people to work for. And I was doing that. And at the same time, I was dabbling a little bit in the toy business, but I got disillusioned with it. My brother, he got married, moved to Jersey, so we didn't share a shop together anymore. He was developing his own career. He started working for product development company in Pittsburgh, and then I was on my own. And so that's when I started doing videography. And then me and my brother John started pitching show ideas. This is all before YouTube. And me and my brother John sold a few TV show ideas based on the films that we would make in the Lower East

Jeremy Perkins 16:55
Side where and you guys were on, like HGTV. First, my brother

Jimmy DiResta 16:59
had already done a couple shows, got a couple of big movies, but he came up with this idea of finding garbage and making it into stuff. Is that hammered? That was a show called Trash to catch that was our first show together. And so we went out. I went out to LA and I filmed him. And my whole motivation on this show. I've told this story 100 times, but it's so interesting. When we did trash to cash, I went out and filmed him, pick the garbage make it into a table. And that was the that was the arc when he made and the whole time he's being funny silly. He's very funny, naturally funny comedian making you laugh and saying those crazy references. And he said, This wood is old and sexy, like, Madonna, you know, like, stupid shit like that. And the show had a lot of laughs in it. I edited up a 30 minute clip of the movie, and my brother's agent, to his surprise, it was good and funny. He's like, this is actually fucking funny. Yeah. So he my brother's agent is in New York. He came to me, sat with me at my computer, and we cut a 22 minute pitch tape down to five minutes based on his experience in the toy business, in the TV business. So Barry Katz is his name. You can look him up. He's still a big deal. So Barry and I sat at the computer and like 2000 and like the end of 2000 and like, maybe the beginning of 2002 because it was still 911, was still fresh in the air. And we edited this tape down to seven or eight minutes. And then on that seven or eight minutes, Barry sold it to a fox affiliate, Fox TV show, FX network, yeah. And so we had our first meeting with FX to pitch the concept and talk about, you know, what the show could be. And in that meeting, I came and me and my brother sitting there, and this guy, David's like, he goes, so let me get this, right? You make things that you find in the garbage. And again, my brother says, Yes. And the guy says to me, because what do you do? This is one of those moments where it's like, we don't we need to get rid of him. Yeah, get rid of him. He's like, so what do you do? I go, Well, I shot and edited that clip. You saw. I said I would be behind the scenes. I would be and I had a whole book of ideas. I was like, all hand drawn with marker and stuff. I was like, if you look through this book of ideas, we could make, like a canoe out of bottles and, you know, water bottles. It was all about recycling and making shit. And he goes, just what you do for a living? I go, What kind I go? I kind of do this. I make toys. I do all kinds of shit. And he goes, he sits and thanks for running. Goes, Well, why don't we do a brother thing? Why don't you be the guy on camera that makes shit, and you'd be the host, and you'd be funny, because you're better at it, and if you really make all that shit, he goes, maybe we'll just do a pilot, and you make the shit and you make it funny. Okay? He goes, You okay with that? He looks and he goes, would you be okay on camera? I go, Yeah, I never. Was never the intention. And so David put that concept together, and so we shot a pilot, and then we did eight episodes of that show called Trash to cash. It was very funny. We did it out in LA and we shot it in the summer of oh two. It aired no three. And then FX network started putting on shows like The Shield and Nip Tuck. So they basically became, like a mini HBO. Yeah. All these took off, yeah. So on our little block of time, it was me and my brother and Bert kreischer had a show called hurt Bert. This is like when Bert really was a college student. Yeah, now he's like a 60 year old college student, but at the time, he really was a college student. So Bert and and my brother were friendly, and Bert came to some of the shoots of trash to cash because we shot it in the valley and and he was another client of Barry's, so we shot trash to cash in that summer. Of oh two the show aired. And because of Nip Tuck and all that stuff, the show never got reordered. And then I had made a pitch tape. Me and my brother came up with a pitch tape of a thing called Making it with John and Jimmy, okay? And we came up with this picture where we make stuff like people. We pretended that people wrote in and said, Could you make a go kart for my son's birthday? And when we make kind of similar to what we ended up doing with the Netflix show. And we made that pitch tape, and it ended up at HGTV through a friend of a friend, and then they called us and said, Hey, will you help us make this show? We will help you make a show. They hired a production company. They liked that concept that show, but it got a little bit morphed into hammered, and that's what became hammered, right, right? And so it was kind of like a cooking show. It's like, today, we're gonna make a dining table, and it's funny and stupid, and I'm giving tips, and my brother's given banter, yeah, and that was hammered for HGTV, and then we ended up going on DIY Network, and then my brother ended up doing a different project, and I ended up doing another show called against the grain, with Jimmy to rest. And my assistant on camera was this girl. I forget her name, but she was from Trading Spaces, and so she was my on camera assistant, and that show never did anything. And then I ended up working on a show called Blog cabin for he TV. And that's when I met the guys at this old house. Developed a friendship with them there that lasted and then they ended up bringing me back

Jeremy Perkins 21:14
to Yeah. They're from up in our neck of the woods, Lexington, yeah.

Jimmy DiResta 21:18
So that's when I first met Kevin was on a blog cabin down in Tennessee, and it's just been, it's been a really wild ride. And I always say to my brothers and, you know, even fans and people that asked me my advice, like, you just never know. Answer every phone call, answer every email. You just never know where it you know, like, I hang out with guys, like, I don't know that number. I'm not answering it. I'm like, Just fucking say hello if it's somebody you don't know, just hang up on them. Yeah, literally hang up in the middle of a conversation. No, it doesn't fucking matter. Might be somebody, it might be somebody, it might be the next thing. Right, right? You know, it's like, the other example is, like, last two weeks ago. I'm like, shit. I need money. I need money. Ryan, my friend, comes and goes, Hey, I got this gig. And Mike, and he said he lays out the scope of work. I'm like, that's about $50,000 to work. He goes, Hey, that's what I was thinking. I go, hit him with the number. And he goes, will you help me build it? I'm like, boom, like, from like zero to, like, we split 50 grand, yeah, in seven days. Oh, yeah. You know, it's like, you just, you never know. You never know, as long as you're, like, primed and ready to do, ready to go, you know, you got to be ready for these opportunities to say yes on a dime.

Jeremy Perkins 22:14
So we did the walk and talk earlier, and we were just kind of, I don't know, you got like, phases of your life. You got carpenter you got blacksmithing, yeah? Like, there's just, it seems like there's nothing you can't do, even though, even the sewing room. What's your favorite thing to do?

Jimmy DiResta 22:27
Honestly, I mean, lately, these days, I like doing leather work. Yeah, it's like it's not so taxing on the physical. And leather work is so forgiving. So I always say this, people, so is welding and metalwork. And even though it seems so permanent, you just cut it, weld it again. Absolutely. Drill a hole in the wrong spot, fill it with well, drill it again. You know. So leather work is much more forgiving than people think. So you can get, like, a you can get a lot of value out of leather work. You know, if you're trying to make money, you can get a ton of value, like, even the smallest little leather thing. Somebody makes it. When I see a student of mine, or a fan or somebody makes something out of leather, they get, like, so enthralled with, I'm, like, I'm, you know, it only took me a few minutes. I punched some holes, I did some hand stitching, and I still feel that when I make certain things, like, I made this, I talked about this stupid thing, yeah, you know, I made a couple of handmade prototypes. Like, can cut prototypes, and then when I zeroed in on the shape and size that I want this, I still consider a prototype, but I zeroed in on this, and I laser cut this one and assembled it, and I'm like, this feels right. It's starting to feel right. Like, when it comes in focus, it's still really sick. It's kind really sick.

Jeremy Perkins 23:23
It's kind of like an ode to your father. I mean, I see all the firemen wearing that, oh yeah, that's funny radio holder when they're on details exactly. It's funny.

Jimmy DiResta 23:29
I showed it to my friend Mike, who's a fireman. What do you think of it? Because it looks like a radio holder, yeah. Oh yeah. I didn't even think about that. So this isn't really an invention, it's just for me. It's an accessory that works for, like, my my workflow, right? And I made one for my girlfriend right away, and she's been using it. And, you know, it's funny, like I said, I never know where my phone is. It's in the other room. It's in the car. I just, I leave it at the register where I just bought something, like, the only if I'm listening to a podcast, which I'm usually listening to a podcast, or a YouTube video on my ears, and it starts cracking up. I'm like, fuck, I left my phone in the store, like, right where I took my change out of my pocket, I do it

Jeremy Perkins 24:03
all the time. So, so leather work is kind of what leather work, leather work

Jimmy DiResta 24:07
these days, has been, like, the most rewarding. But I also, like when I spend time in the blacksmith shop, I'm like, I got to do this more often. I don't do it enough. When I see, like, Cliff and John at the Maker Camp, and like, the excellence that those guys can put into a hammer and the quality work that those guys do, I'm like, I gotta do more work. I gotta do more blacksmithing. You know, it comes

Jeremy Perkins 24:27
in phases. Yeah, yeah. And what's your, what was your most challenging build?

Jimmy DiResta 24:31
Probably this building. There's so and I'm now restoring the house up the road. It's a never ending fucking bird nests of fucking unsolvable loose ends. When you build a building, unless you're like, in it, and it's your day to day. But if you're like, I hear these guys go, I'm gonna buy a piece of land and buy a building and build a building. I'm like, yeah, good fucking love. You've no idea what you're getting into. Yeah, I didn't either. But I'm like, if I'm gonna build this building, I have a shop down the block. So that was my show. Up. But it took me, like, almost four or five years to finish this place, like, to the point where it's at now, and I still feel like I still haven't put the floor in that I want, but that'll come. I got plenty of floor space at the moment, like I thought that was going to be my clean sewing room upstairs, that was the idea, yeah, and then they ended up using that horse bond for it instead. But I guess when it comes down to challenging bills. My most recent, really challenging build was the Cadillac. I built it right here. We dragged that caucus of a car right here in. All these stains are from this car. We dragged it in right here in January. Bought the car in September, me and rob my guy, Rob Rojas, we went to go look at the car, and I was like, 1500 bucks. Like, if it doesn't work out, we'll just sell the nose, break up the parts and sell the parts, or just fucking push it in the woods, whatever. And so we dragged it down the block to the to the race track property. I got a big parking lot over there just to get it out of public and then it sat there. And then the first order of business was to free up the engine. And at every step of my this may or may not work. Was it locked up? The engine was totally locked up. Oh, wow. And we didn't know if it was blown. We didn't know if the piston rods or the cam was broken. We have nothing. Drive Shaft could have been broken in half. We had no idea. It says 64,000 miles. 64,000 miles. It could be 364,000 and there was no drive shaft. There was no the there was no linkage to the rear axle. The drive shaft was just dragging. Was like tied up with a rope. So when we got it to the parking lot, I put a big monkey wrench on the drive shaft, put it in gear to see if the engine would turn. And the engine was locked up. We knew it was locked up. And we took the heads off and started soaking with kerosene. I looked online. Some guy says, Take a rose bud and just heat the whole block up. So I did that. Heated the whole block up for like, a half hour, and then the all the fucking oil was on fire, blowing through all the ports, and it started moving really. I was like, All right, that's one hurdle down cool. Got the fucking engine freed up. Now we got to make sure, like, it turns completely over, and there's not a broken linkage or anything started turning completely over. One of the valves was stuck. So it would get to a hump and it would be hard to turn, yeah, but I didn't know where that hump was. And so by order of process of elimination, we took the whole top of the engine off, and we found the valve up. Kept staying up in the air, and I tap it and go down, and it was hard to push up. So that was the one valve. I took that out and cleaned that valve off. I never done that. You know, I could have popped the spring and dropped it into the engine. Into the engine casing. That would have been the end of it. It's all right there, and it falls right into the engine cavity. So I was able to keep that from happening. I got a valve compressor.

Jeremy Perkins 27:10
Did you use compressed air to push it up? No, no. It's all right there.

Jimmy DiResta 27:13
You know, once you take off, everything's right there, because it's a flat head, yeah. So it was all right that you got the two valves in the piston right here, and the valves are all like in the valley there, in the valley there, in the middle of the engine. And so it was easy to get at. But of course, it was the valve that was all the way here, just under the cast. So I had to, like, get this way and, like, everything was just out of view. I was looking at using the Milwaukee scope camera to see exactly where I was. Get those two little things off of the keeper. Yeah, you keep the keepers off of the off of the valve stem. And I didn't drop anything in the engine. Yeah, it's, like, amazing.

Jeremy Perkins 27:40
So the way they do it rags jammed everywhere. The way we do it is take the spark plug out, put compressed air into the cylinder, within that top dead center, so all your valves close right below. Compressed air into the cylinder, and it'll keep the valve up so you can work on it. Okay, yeah,

Jimmy DiResta 27:55
oh, I didn't say you just keep it pressurized. Keep it pressurized, and all this brings it down. Yeah. Oh, that's Yeah.

Jeremy Perkins 28:00
So that's how we do, like, Valve Spring replacement on engine is by putting compressed air right to the

Jimmy DiResta 28:05
Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Well, that one's another flathead in the in the donor car. So we might pull that out engine out just to have fun with Yeah, I've been contemplated putting it on a stand to see if we just get it started. Yeah, build a steel frame for it. Just have it ready to go into something. Yeah, so we got to go take a look at that car. Yeah, it's over at the baker campus. We need the total boat time, yeah, and that was, that was a most challenging build. That was a challenge. So like I said, once we got the engine going, then rob ripped apart the brake system. Rob did most of the brakes. And then, you know, DTB fab. You guys know Dave, DTB fab. Dave came and gave us his expertise on the engine. We got the engine running. It seemed like the engine really wasn't shot. So we were good. And, you know, started thinking, I started thinking, I started seeming more and more like that. 64,000 mile could be original. No, no. 100 added to it, because the car drives really well. It's not too sloppy. I mean, sloppy for like, you know, because the cars are made a little sloppy compared to new cars. But it's not, you're not like driving it like this. Try to stay in the middle of the road right, and then taking the cab was the only thing left of the of the of the hull of the boat under the car is a boat. The only thing left of the chat of the cab itself was just the front cab. Everything from the thing back was cut off. Yeah, it was just a naked frame, no gas tank. You know, fucking cut off. Pipes hanging out everywhere, right? You know, there's a lot of dead ended, you know, gas lines and stuff on there, the brake lines. We all just put new ones next to the old ones. And then starting to build the chassis back the cab. And I built the floor first, and then I started build it up and around. And then I built the roof, and then we got the donor car, and I put the rear fenders on. It was nice, because it was a rat rod. It was easy. I didn't

Jeremy Perkins 29:37
have to make wood on the inside of it. Was that did still have wood on the inside of it.

Jimmy DiResta 29:40
Oh, this. Yeah, this. So this, anything you see on the woody, the Caddy. Woody is all added by me, no guy, yeah, there was nothing there. Literally, there was nothing. It was literally, like, here's the drivers in the here's like, the bench seat. There's a piece of metal right here. From there back. It was just a frame, okay, all right. So, yeah, I didn't preface it. This was a hearse. And it's like. Lifetime. In the 40s, 1946 it was a hearse. Then it became an ambulance, because it's painted white, that's cool. And then somebody somewhere cut the entire box off the back and made like a makeshift flatbed. So there was really horrible stick welded, oh, yeah, like, tabs and clips that would have held on a flatbed, bubblegum, I cut all that off. Yeah. You know, it was all this real janky, like, done in, like, probably the 50s or even the 60s. That's how old this looked. It was really horribly done and welding, yeah, it was horrible. And nothing looked like it was done outside of, like some farmers, like field, you know, it was like all Nothing looked like it was done in the shop. Anyway, all that was missing. There was no flat bed, there was no gas tank. The straps for the gas tank were hanging and no carburetor, no starter, no radiator, no drive shaft, no brakes. And I said to Rob, I go, let's fuck it. Let's just attack each thing one at a time, see if we can make it work.

Jeremy Perkins 30:48
That's it. I mean, sometimes when you look at the whole list, you're like, Fuck but if you take it one at

Jimmy DiResta 30:52
a time, and then my goal. So we brought the car in here January this year, and I was like, We got till August, the rat's nest event at Maker Camp. We got till August 18. And August 18, I got the car basically running, drive and registered, insured. I just didn't have the windows in it, so didn't matter. Yeah, and so you see it over there, I put lexan windows in most of the spots, but I kind of like it with no windows, and it feels like an

Jeremy Perkins 31:13
old school bus. So you took us through, you know, the early part of your life, kind of what you do now, what's next for you?

Jimmy DiResta 31:19
I have no idea. I really don't know. It's like, I'm constantly reinventing myself. It's a little scary, yeah, but I've been a freelancer my whole life, so I've always been, my mindset, is I, you know this, of course, this is all beautiful possessions, and I love it, and I don't ever want to lose it, but I know that's possible, and I'm okay with that. Yeah, you know, I've come to be like, if I have to, like, dump this place and move to my spec house down the road, which is also on third that's on 13 acres. It's, you know, it's no it's no small change, but it's not done. The walls are gutted. There's no bathroom. There's no heating system at the moment, but all that will be done within the year. So that house down the block, then I'm working on the graveyard house. What's next to me? I don't know. I don't know. I'm gonna try and maintain. I don't want to.

Jeremy Perkins 31:57
Is there anything you haven't done that you want to try? I've

Jimmy DiResta 31:59
always wanted to either build motorcycles or cars, and I'm just now getting in by the woody. Doing the Woody is like my first big foray. Okay, cool. So I'm kind of approaching that. I guess. My girlfriend is an art dealer, and she constantly says, You need to make things that don't do anything. You got to create art. She's like, you have all the means necessary to create big sculpture, public sculpture. And so these ideas are brewing, you know, I want to take that old Fleetwood sitting there and just like, bury it nose up in the field, like in honor of the Cadillac graveyard in Texas. Yeah, you know? So these ideas come to me. Do want to do more abstract art? Basically, that's kind of where I feel like

Jeremy Perkins 32:34
I'm going, sweet. All right, so we got to get back to Maker Camp. But make your camp is good sitting down with you and go through it. But before we leave, if anybody likes you know this segment and wants to get in contact with you or find out where you are on Instagram or whatever. What are your handles?

Jimmy DiResta 32:52
Jimmy to rest at everything. My email is Jimmy to rest at me calm. I give out all my info. People find me anyway. Try and hide it.

Jeremy Perkins 32:59
People find me perfect. Well, thank you for being on the show. This has been, yeah, been, yeah, it's been phenomenal.

Jimmy DiResta 33:04
Thanks, brother. Thank you guys. Thank you all very much. Thanks. Brent.