[00:00:08] Speaker A: Hey, welcome to the DIY Garage, the podcast for hands on, do it yourself automotive enthusiasts. I'm Brian Joslin coming to you from inside the workshop studio of the Eastwood Company in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. With me today is Jamie Jordan from Handmade Seat Company. As the name suggests, Jamie builds incredible hot rod and bomber style seats from scratch. Hes a multi talented metal shaper and a master on the bead roller. If you havent seen his work, youre really missing out. Before we get talking with Jamie, I just want to remind you that you can catch the DIY garage podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and other popular podcast services. You can catch video episodes on Eastwoods YouTube channel. Or just go to eastwood.com garage and click on the podcast tab for links in the podcast in either format. Whatever you choose, we hope youll subscribe so you never miss a new release. All right, so with that out of the way, welcome to the DIY garage. Jamie, great to have you here.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: And I guess we should probably say that you're in town specifically for us for the Eastwood summer classic 2024, which we'll get to in a little bit. We got some special reasons behind that. But it's great to have you here in this studio and to get down and get to sit down and talk to you about some of your work, which, as you've been unpacking stuff the last couple days, I'm just truly in awe of what you do here.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Thank you. I appreciate that very much. I really do. Thank you for letting me be here today.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's great. First things first, bomber seats. We're looking. We've got one off to the side here, so you may or may not see it, certainly not if you're listening. But let's talk about these seats that you built, because that's kind of your core business and how you. It's not how you got started, right?
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's not how I got started. It's just kind of where I wound up going after a while. But yeah, it's been a passion of mine for a long time. I really enjoyed building them for a long time.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: So where did you get started? I know you've got mini trucking background we were talking about with the guys in your studio and some motorcycle background as well.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really come from the mini trucking background is where I started. I grew up just a poor kid in Mississippi. Wasn't really good in school, but I loved to make things. That was always my passion. Just creating. And, you know, I think as poor kids in Mississippi, we didn't have anything like hot rods or, you know, we didn't have any the traditional things that most people would think about. We just had trucks. That's all we had. That's all we could afford. So, you know, we just figured out how to make something out of nothing. And that was where we. Where I started with was doing that, you know, back home.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Did you have a shop at home, dad, granddad? Someone that had tools around for you to start doing this?
[00:02:25] Speaker B: No, it was a friend of mine, Robbie Odom. Actually. His father actually believed in what we were doing at the time and really just wanted us to stay out of trouble. You know, growing up in a small town in Mississippi, trouble was easy to find. It wasn't hard, you know. So for us, we just wound up staying in the garage a lot. And I loved just being in the garage making stuff, and he saw that passion in us, and he was able to set us up a little shop behind his house. And that's where we started. I just started working in that shop, just making stuff, and, you know, my teens and high school years, and then as that went on, we just started building, you know, neater, better stuff, I guess you could say.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: What was the first thing you built? What did you put together in high school?
[00:03:01] Speaker B: I think. Well, the one that I actually really built and finished out was a little 94 Toyota pickup truck.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So that was the one that really started me off. It was my own personal project that I actually finished up and got done and was able to get in the magazines. Courtney Hallowell shot it for a street trucks magazine back in the day, and it was like zero one. You know, it was a long time ago, but that was really my first little project that I ever got together and finished out. And I was able to join a truck club, negative camber. And that truck club, many trucking days was, you know, the start of my whole life, where I started fabricating and running around in with cars.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Yeah. What was that build like? Was it like a cosmetic or mechanical kind of project or a little bit of everything?
[00:03:38] Speaker B: It was everything. It was airbag. You know, back then, it had 18 and 20 inch wheels, which was unbelievable, you know, for us. I did all the sheet metal inside the bed, and then we sheet metal underneath the hood. And that was kind of my first start and actually really getting into it and really enjoying it in the finished project. We had done things before, but this was something that I really, you know, was able to go all the way through with, and it was all painted. My friend Don Bracken painted it for me. I had the interior all finished out, and it was. It was a complete truck, you know, a magazine truck at that time. My first one.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: And what kind of tools did you guys have available in your buddy's dad's shop? What were you working with? Was it drills and drills and mechanical stuff or mallets and sandbags? That kind of stuff.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: Craftsman Mig welder and two grinders. That's all we ever had. Yeah. So we didn't have anything. We had nothing. We had a vise, and other than that, we really didn't have anything. But we knew what we were doing, in a sense, of how to use that stuff. So once we figured out how to use a welder and then we realized we couldn't weld it very well, then we learned how to use a grinder better.
And then as it just kind of went on, it went from there.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Yeah. What kind of stuff did you make with a welder? A grinder, and a vise. I mean, what were you hammering out.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: Of at the time? Back then, we were body dropping trucks, which was actually cutting the floors out of them before they were building chassis. So it was actually, that was always my thing. I love to just cut the floors out of trucks and then weld them all back together. So it was just that stuff, you know, just cutting out sheet metal plates and then weld them into the floorboards so we can get them on the ground and building out the bed kits for them.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: So had you already gone, you went to school, right? Wyotech. I understood.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I went to Wyotech. So. Yep. So when I got out of high school, I went to a local community college, got my associate's degree in drafting, and I just knew then that I wasn't going to be a cubicle guy. It was something to do at the time. I got to go to college for free because I graduated in that school district, so I knew it wasn't for me. So I started looking around, and back then, there really wasn't fab schools. There wasn't somewhere to go, and I knew I just didn't want to sit in a cubicle. So I was able, very fortunate enough to be able to get some grants and go to Wyoming. Went to Wyotech, the original one. And I loved that school. It really changed a lot. You know, I tell people, it doesn't really teach you how to be a fabricator. It just kind of teaches you how to work in a fabrication sense. Like, you learn the idea of what's actually happening, you're going to pick it all up later, but it just gets you started. It's a great starting point. It was for me.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: And so what kind of skills did you learn there that you've really taken into your professional? What did you really come out of there armed with?
[00:06:03] Speaker B: I think work ethic was really what really helped me there.
Back then, it was like boot camp, so they didn't care. They were rough and hard on us. They were really tough on us. And I think building that work ethic there back then, we all wanted to be Jesse James.
Everybody's 2000. They were all bending their hats up, and all I wanted to do was get on a power hammer and get on a pullmax. That's all I wanted to do. So I'd duct tape my wrist and, you know, and got in there and played and tried to do my thing with it. And that was the fun thing about going to school. There was being able to touch so many different tools and then getting into the paint department a little bit and learning about paint, which I never really followed through with. But just being able to touch a lot of stuff back then really helped me.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Have you painted any of your own stuff? I mean, no.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: No. Like I said, I never really got into the paint, but I did paint then and I enjoyed it, but it was just the exposure. I think that was really the most fun about being there was exposure. And I realized then I had a passion for learning how to weld. And for me at that time, still to this day, I get bored quickly, and I want to learn more things. I think there's more things out there for us to learn every day. And I try to teach myself something every day. And I realized I love welding. There was a welding instructor there that really helped me. And after leaving Wyotech, I went to Tulsa Welding school and spent about a year in welding school in Jacksonville, Florida, just learning welding and everything, every ins and outs of that. And that was a lot of fun for me.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: So, Mig, Tig, what's your, what's your preference? What do you, what do you prefer to be?
[00:07:24] Speaker B: I wish I was good at Tig welding.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Doesn't everybody? We hear that all the time.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's just time, you know, I think it's just more time with it. I just don't get as much time with it as I want to. But, you know, obviously I can make with, you know, stick, tick. I can do all of them, but I, you know, I wish I was a better tick welder and hope, you know, that's kind of my goal, is just to be, you know, better at that.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: So when you got out of Wyotech, you started, was it a motorcycle shop? Were you working in a motorcycle shop at one point?
[00:07:53] Speaker B: No. I actually had bounced around trying to find what I wanted to do. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And once I finally got out of school, I started a small hot rod shop back home called Mike Goldman's customs. We started there in Mississippi. In Mississippi. I started in a small little shop there, and I was there for about a year, and I kind of realized that as much as I enjoyed working there, I wanted to be more into fabrication back then. They weren't heavy into fabrication at the shop at the time, and that was really what I wanted to do. So I left there and still got a fab job, honestly. It was at a place called Allied lock. We built roller chain is what we did.
After that, I just. I really found a passion for creating stuff. Every day was a challenge. I was on a press break, a flame table, you know, indexing saws, and then Mig welding every single day. And it really just kind of.
I found a lot of peace in that, just being able to learn and create and actually get my hands dirty and, you know, welded, you know, and fabricate. And that's what I was looking for in life at the time, so.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: So when did the seats come along?
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Well, the seats came along a few years later, so I jumped around. You know, I went down to Louisiana, worked in a shop down there with some friends of mine, and then wound up coming back up to Mississippi, and I restarted. I started a new shop there with a friend of mine. Don had painted my truck when I was younger, is a good friend of mine, and that was around zero eight or so. And it was tough. And if you were in the automotive market back then, it was tough. It was not good. And we were struggling as a shop. And I would get online every night, and I would kind of get on eBay, and I would see these bomber seats that were for sale on eBay, and I kept seeing them, and I. Two, $300, you could buy a set. And I'm looking at all the tools I'd already acquired, bead, roller stomp, shear brakes. And I'm like, man, I could make these things. I really could. And so what I was doing is I would work all week long, and then I would take all the money that I made that week, and I would go straight down to sleigh steel. And I would go buy.
Back then, I was buying four by eight sheets of aluminum for $60. So I would buy the aluminum, and then I would go right back to the shop that night, and I would stay up there all night long, all weekend long. And I would build a set of seats. And then that weekend, during that weekend, after I built that seat, I'd post it right on eBay and try to sell it, and I would make three $400 off of it, and I'd probably had $100 of material, and then that would become. It just became a hustle. So during the week after hours, I would build another seat. So I was trying to build two sets a week, one on the weekend, one during the week, and just to make enough money to kind of get through life at the time. And then after I started doing it, it just. It wouldn't stop. You know, people started recognizing what I was doing. And then I got in this habit where. And I still, to this day, once I built one, I always wanted to build a better one.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: So the next one had to be better, and the next one had to be better. And then I would just invest more time and energy in it until the point where it just kept going and kept going. And then eventually I thought, at the time, I said, well, I've got enough work to last me two years, probably, you know, which obviously was not. So I think we all know that when we start our own business, and we think that, you know, so I started that, and I still went to the house, took all my tools, went to my house, and just said, okay, I'm gonna make this work. I'm gonna make this work off just building something on my own. And after I started doing it, about a year into it is when I kind of started to realize that this wasn't gonna be sustainable, you know, just building custom seats. And that's when a friend of mine, Courtney Hollowell, pointed out that there was a website called the ham, which I was on at the time, and it had a forum about bead rolling.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: And that's what kind of led me into the bead rolling part right there.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: Got it. So the.
We're going to reference the seat that's here in front of us. If you're just listening, we'll walk through some of the details here, because the seat's really a piece of, you know, art in itself, and it's a. For me, I'm an interior guy myself.
I find that's the most overlooked part in a lot of showcase cars. You know, everyone does the paint, the mechanical, and I've always preferred to have a nice interior. And seats are at the center of that. So you're kind of speaking my language here with a nice seat like that. So what we've got here, and we'll have it on screen as well, is an aluminum bomber style seat. Is that the, that's it, yeah. The description of it, and with a leather, leather seat bottom pad and a very open kind of naked aircraft bomber style. So pretty popular in hot rod scenes and custom scenes.
Looking at that construction, there's just, there's so many layers, so many tools. I mean, how many different tools go into making a seat like that?
[00:12:14] Speaker B: There's a lot. I mean, you've got, obviously, the bead, roller stomp, shear press, brake, and then you got, you know, the dimple dies. You've got that, the louvers on the back of it, so.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: And the three layers are sandwiched together with rivets.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Yeah, and then you got the rivets. So that's, that's a whole other story. And that was something that I, I mean, all honesty, I just taught myself how to buck Rivets when I first started doing it. Like I said, I love welding. And I felt like I was at a point where I kind of knew how to do most welding. But this seemed so foreign to me. It's so scary. It just, I didn't understand it. I didn't understand how to do any of it. But I was reading forms online like most people and just thinking, well, I can do this, you know? And this is before YouTube was really popular, before you could just learn everything on YouTube. And so I called up a company called aircraft tool supply, and I had this very awkward conversation looking back on it, where I told them, I called and said, I want a buck rivets. And they were like, what size? And I was like, I don't know, an 8th? And they were like, how long? I'm like, I don't know. And they're like, what do you need? I was like, I don't know. You tell me. And we went back and forth for a while and then bought about a dollar 400 kit and then got it home and just started trying to teach myself. And then I bucked rivets for days and days and days until I thought I knew what I was doing. And then I tried my first seat, and then I wound up messing it up, so. And it wound up being in my car, in my hot rod. So it was okay because it was my seat.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: The construction on this. So walk us through a little bit because you've got three layers here that are, you know, punched and all lined. How do you make all of that happen? Like, do you pre punch everything together or do you punch it once it's assembled? I mean, I'm just looking at those holes on the side strakes there and how perfect those have to be.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, well, the ones on the side with the dimple dies on the side. I'm going to drill those last. So really when I do it, I'm going to fold up. I call it a pizza box. It's kind of like a pizza box. So you just fold up all your flanges all the way around. And then once I get the back and the bottom flanged in and get it to where I want it, then I build the seat sides. And then build the seat sides. This one's got rounded sides on it. So you're shrinking and stretching, pulling the ledges around and kind of making the form there. And then once I got that all in place, then the front outer lip is all one piece that wraps from end to end on it. So that's the tricky part. So the tricky part is after you get it all together, then it would take, you know, that piece is probably 5ft long once you stretch it all the way out. So you stretch all that out on the table and then just kind of say, okay, I know where this rough. Start taking measurements and pulling off of it. And then once I got it kind of roughed in, then I would take and vise grip it to the seat and just kind of clamp it all the way around to the seat. And then once I get it there, I pull marks from the backside of it and then lay it back down on the table. Well, I would cut it out with a beverly shear. And then once I get it all kind of laid flat on the table, then I would lay out all my rivets. And then once you lay out the rivets, then you can lay out your bead rolls, your dimple dies, you can lay all of that out. So all that work is done on the face of the seat. And then you just kind of wrap it and then you go from there.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: And what were you saying about how many hours go into a single seat like this at this point?
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Well, that one right there is probably about 30 hours in that one. I try to do a set of, you know, two buckets together. If I'm just going to do a set.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Does it save you much time? I mean, doing them in pairs?
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Yes, it does. When I'm doing them singles, it's just because when you're doing them in singles, you're just kind of free forming. You just kind of do what you want and just kind of have some fun. So you wind up just kind of doing whatever the extra time that's going to take. Like I said, probably 40, 45 hours to do a set that comes in when you're just. You're just repeating. Everything's just. Washrooms repeat.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: So that's a week's worth of work at a nine to five, right?
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Yeah, for most people, yeah.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: So that's a significant amount of work and material as well. Do you work from patterns at this point, or do you free form everything? I mean, how do you get two seats that match each other if you're free forming everything?
[00:15:54] Speaker B: I just do it by hand. I just kind of draw it.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: True artist.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, once you understand kind of the actual format of what you want to do and the actual rough measurements. Whenever I would build a seat for someone, all I need to know is a few measurements. I need to know your width. And I would always tell people, that's cheek to cheek, how wide you want it to be. And then it's cheek to knee. That tells you how deep it needs to be for your base, and then how cheek to shoulders, and that tells you how tall it needs to be. And then after that, we would discuss, like, an angle for how you want it and then everything else. That's just flair. It's what you're looking for, what you want, how much money you want to spend and what you want to do with it. You know what I mean? And that's kind of the next step.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: How many different designs have you done over the years? I mean, I don't know. Do you have any kind of favorite styles that you've done or.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: I like bench seats. I like building them. Yeah, I like building a bench seat. Bench seats versus buckets. I like a bench versus a bucket, because the buckets, you're just repeating. So imagine every step you're just doing twice or four times, you know, for the sides, you have to just keep washer and repeating, and that's just. It just becomes monotonous. But whenever you're building a bench seat, it's a lot more fun because it's just one giant seat, and so you can just kind of go for it. You just got to have two sides, and you just know what you got, you're doing. And just. It's a lot more fun that way. A lot more area. The thing about b rolling the, I think is you have to have room, you have to have space to move metal.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: That's what I was thinking, a bench seat. I mean, how much material are you starting with for the main panel on a bench seat?
[00:17:18] Speaker B: The biggest one I ever made was 5ft and that actually wound up being a couch for a gentleman. But, yeah.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Is your blank larger than that? You start with an eight foot piece?
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Yeah, everything starts out with my shop. Everything was started as a four by eight or four by ten sheet. And then we just go to the stone, pull the measurements off, whatever it is that I've got, and then everything just starts laying out as those pieces and then once I start shearing them up, it's just go time after that.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Any significant builds you've been involved with, you know, your seats in any vehicles that have gotten big notoriety?
[00:17:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's been a few over the years.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: I mean, it's been calls from the big boys looking for a seat.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I've done them. I've done it for, you know, a good many people.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: So modest.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: I don't like to be that guy, you know what I mean? I mean, if, you know, kind of know my work, I mean, you know that some people that have seen some of the stuff that I've done, I've been able to, you know, rub shoulders with a lot of people over the years and be able to meet a lot of people over the years. And that's been, you know, that's been fun for me.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: Yeah. You've also grown, you've talked about bead roller a couple times now. You've grown into bead roller art as a secondary business or is it just something you do to like, blow off steam?
[00:18:23] Speaker B: No, it became, it really honestly, back when I realized that, you know, a couple years back when it, or when I started to realize that just building custom one off seats for people was a very, very hard business model, you know, so then I started to realize that I could take that same pieces of material, the leftover scraps that I was building these seats, and I could actually make artwork with it. And that started, that really became my main focus in business. It really did, it changed everything for me because back then I didn't really have a lot of people to ask questions for, you know, and go after, and so I just spent the time teaching myself and so I wound up just finding a lot of passion and just being able to sit down with the scraps that were left over from these seats and just started sitting in my garage and just spent the time and just would go for it. And I think, like most of us, we all kind of realize at some point in our life, like, if you. If you're working for yourself, you just realize, this is how much money I'm going to make. This is it. This is. This is the best I can do. And then you got to start saying, okay, what do I do to fix this? How do I go different? What do I do better? And believe it or not, the artwork became a lot more profitable for me because for me, as I said, I got. I get bored quickly, so it became a lot more fun. So I wasn't locked in for a week or, you know, three or four days building a project. I could do it in a day or do two a day or three a day. And then that's really what led my bead rolling passion, was just being able to quickly turn out artwork and things and projects.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: So I have to be completely honest with you. The bead roller intimidates me. I've done a lot of diy stuff. Every time I step up to the bead roller with intent, like, if there's something I have to make, I always stumble a little bit. I'm intimidated by all the different dies, and I never quite know where to start.
How do you get through that? For someone who's new to it? How do you get comfortable with working with a bead roller?
[00:20:10] Speaker B: I think the main thing is just understand that you're not going to be good at it.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: That's proven to be true for me, at least.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Nobody's ever good at anything when they first pick it up. And if you go into this idea of knowing that you're not going to be good at it and that you're just going to, you need to learn. You got to take the time. And I think so many people with the bead roller just expect that they're going to be good at it because they can do something else. And just because you can do something else doesn't mean you can do this. And once you step into just grabbing a hold of a piece of material and forcing yourself to focus on a line and focus on this project that you're doing, you start to realize there's a lot more, a lot more to it than what it actually looks like. And the biggest tip I give anybody is get scrap metal practice.
Don't just grab this piece of metal and throw it in your car and just think that you're going to just b roll this one panel perfectly the first go, especially if you haven't spent time practicing with it or preparing yourself. So for me, it's take the time, just sit down and think about it like this. If you're going to pinstripe a car on the outside of a paint job, it's going to live there forever. If you're going to do something that's going to live forever, well, you probably want to prepare yourself for it. You probably want to take a few steps. You probably want to make sure and everything that you b roll, unless you're painting it and covering it up, it's going to live forever. It's what you're going to see. You're visually looking at it. So that's the intimidation part of people getting nervous about it. So for me, it's just practice. It's just take your time and don't get in a rush and don't expect to be the best at it when you first start. But understand that this can be something that you can become good at with time and effort and just impatience. And that's the biggest thing, is patience.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: How long did it take for you to get good at it and comfortable with really producing good, consistent work?
[00:21:49] Speaker B: Years.
I'm not gonna lie. I mean, it just took years because I look back on the stuff that I did when I first started and I just kind of laugh at myself then because then I thought, oh, wow, I'm killing it. I'm doing great with this stuff. And then it's just years. It's just years of time and just understanding the process. And once you start to know, realize, like, what happens when you do this or you lift something or you lower something or how much pressure is involved or what the speed is, then you start to develop that little skill sets that you need.
[00:22:18] Speaker A: You do a lot, obviously, with motorized bead rollers, but I imagine you start out hand turning everything.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: My first b roller was an Eastwood hand crank b roller I got when I was, I think, 18 years old. Yeah, it was one of my first tools I ever bought. It was that in an english wheel. So, yes, I started out with the first east blue one.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: Do you think it's easier for a beginner to start with a motorized or a manual one?
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Honestly, I'd say motorized.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Really?
[00:22:43] Speaker B: Yeah. The reason I say that is just, I mean, it's because you're gonna have more control. You're able to hold both hands.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: Yeah. One more hand.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: Yep. Unless you've got a friend that likes you or doesn't like you, depending on how it goes with that. But yeah, I think it's a bad.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: Position to be in being the guy that's holding and guiding though, too. I've been there. Yeah. There's a lot of pressure on you, even if you're not running the machine itself.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you're running it, you just don't know. And that's the hard part. But I think that a motorized one, honestly, is probably a little bit easier for people to get started with because they're going to have less frustration in what they're doing. They're going to have more control and a little bit more fine tuning of the product than having to do it. A two man or standing with one hand, trying to reach over and actually do a to turn this and steer this.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Yes. I think a lot of people make the mistake of going with the cheap one, which is without the motor.
And it can be frustrating to ride a bike with a lens here at the same time.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: It is, and there's nothing. Look, I've seen a lot of nice B roller work done with a hand crank machine. Not to say that you cannot do nice work. You can. You can do really good work with it. And there's nothing wrong with the hand crank machine. It's just time and patience and understanding how the process goes. And as long as you're willing to just kinda to put the time in and have a good friend, I always recommend you got to have a friend that likes you so that you can work well together. I have one of the first machines I ever had, back when it was a hand crank, and my friend Don Bracken and I were doing a project where we were trying to finish it up in the middle of the night. We had some long runs we were doing on the bed of a truck, and it didn't work out right, and we started getting aggravated with each other, and then we had one sheet left that was going to finish this. And then we, like two in the morning, and we were like, we're gonna do it. We're gonna get this done. And we started. And as soon as it started, I started, I was steering, he was driving, and I started to stumble, and I leaned over into him, and I just kind of braced myself, holding it with one hand, leaning against him.
And somehow that connection between us two actually made it all work together. So that's why I say, if you got a friend, maybe you can lean on him.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Triangulation, right?
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. We were all touching the machine together at the same time, saying it worked out.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: For someone who's just starting out, what kind of real practical projects beyond artwork and kind of high profile stuff, what's the best kind of starter project for a practical application?
[00:25:03] Speaker B: I think just learning how to do a step roll. I think a step roll in a regular three hb, something like that. If you get something, just learning a step role to be able to do. For any project, you can use a step or a bead for any bead rolling project there is out there. And if you can start working with those two diese, the step and the bead, you'll be able to start putting it together pretty quickly.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Maybe a panel that's hidden a reinforcement or something.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always, honestly, I tell you what, I wouldn't do it for a car. I would honestly just do it for yourself. And I think that's what I was saying before, is don't expect to just do it and toss it on the car.
If you're going to spend, invest the money and the time, get a couple panels and just practice, try to make yourself something that you can throw away. Go into that idea of knowing that this is going to be scrap and I'm going to learn and teach myself with that. And I think that that would probably be my best suggestion.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: Now that you've got some pretty advanced skills and experience with this, is there a die set or die that you go to pretty routinely and can do like a lot with? Is this universal one for you or.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: It's my stencil roll, yeah. So years ago, I didn't have the rolls. So the rolls didn't exist years ago when I was trying to figure this out. So I would take nilatron, just sticks a nilatron and turn them down. And then I would take and form them into different shapes. And then I kind of realized that there was one shape, it's just, it's a pointy, you know, plastic nylotron dye that I'm able to just kind of use those two edges as a small step roll. And then once I got started refining that roll, I was able to release that as a product. And then once that came out, it became my go to die for pretty much everything. And I just kind of taught myself how to use that die to do. And everything that you see on that seat there was all done with that same die. It was all done with one stencil roll. So I think that would be the one die that I would recommend for mostly anybody out there. Is that one.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: That's an easy one to kind of pick up and learn with it is.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: It'S really going to give you a lot of freedom and a lot of opportunities to be able to create not just simple things, but very intricate things as well. So it's a die that works in both ways. Rather, it be just using it to just do some straight beads inside a car. Or you can do something very intricate because it has small contact points on it and the nilatron doesn't mark or mar the metal up or tear it up. So if you're doing anything as steel or aluminum, the first thing everyone wants to know is, do nilotron or plastic rolls tear up when you use a little steel?
The same answer I can give you is the same answer I've always said you can roof a house with a rubber mallet, but that doesn't mean it's the tool, right? So what I'm saying by that is if you're going to do something that's going to get coated or painted or covered or not, that you're not looking for a perfect, nice, smooth finish on, well, then you might want to look at a steel roll. But if you're going to use something that's going to be seen and it's going to be obviously with aluminum or any softer metals, a nylotron or plastic rolls are exactly what you want to go with.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: Nice.
You've grown into teaching people bead roller as well, right? You take classes. So how did that evolve? And what do you enjoy about teaching people?
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Well, it all started with, I was listening to a sermon on YouTube. I was actually bead rolling, and I was listening to a sermon by Andy Stanley. And he was making a point that was saying that every gift that we have in this world is not ours. It's just given to us. You know, it's given to us by the Lord. And I believe in that. And as things come through you, it's given to you. As you open up those floodgates and share them back out to other people, you're allowing yourself to receive more blessings upon yourself. And so I started getting my mind in that mindset, and I really started thinking, maybe. Maybe I could teach this, maybe I could show other people how to do it. And then I was very fortunate. My friend Christian Sosa and I did our first class in Las Vegas years ago. And after I did that, I was like, wow, this is a lot of fun. This is something I really enjoy doing. I enjoyed watching people.
I guess it's just the spark. It's actually that connection. Once they start to realize, and realize they can actually do it, too. And then I was like, wow, this is a passion for me. This became something that I really enjoyed. And then I was fortunate enough to start doing larger classes, ten at a time. And then I started doing them at my home shop, the personal, intimate classes where we're only doing three to four people at a time. And that's really where my actual passion really started to come of art with teaching right there.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: So you get to work pretty much one on one on those small scale classes. I mean, do you get rapid growth out of it? I mean, do people really get it when you're able to work with them close like that?
[00:29:17] Speaker B: I think, like anything in life, it's your mindset, how you approach it, what do you come into? And the first thing I do when I sit down with people when they want to talk about classes is ask them, what do you want to learn? What do you want to get out of this? So I can make sure that I get you down that road. And that's what I want to know out of people first.
But, yes, I think that it depends on your work ethic. Depending on what you're looking for out of it, you can grow pretty quickly with it. I mean, I think that the way I do it, I do going to Wyotech and going to some of these schools, I learned how to do comps where, you know, where it's just a certain amount of 30, 40 minutes worth of work, and then we go back to the board and we sit, we talk, we discuss, and then you got to go back to it. I'm a hands on teacher. I think the only way to learn how to b roll is to b roll. So you can't stand there and watch b roll because that's not going to do you any good. And so I like to force people to just put themselves in very awkward and hard positions and hard things and learn how to do it. And then I want to be there to guide them and show them what's going to happen. And I loved watching them fail. That's the funniest thing for me, is watching a guy that I know he's going to mix and mess up because I've given him something very hard to do. And then to just try to watch and guide his temperament as he tries to learn and move himself through that to that next step. And then, you know, and if you can kind of help people guide their temperament and guide themselves through a challenging time when they're trying to learn something, then they're going to be okay when they're by themselves.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Yeah. In your experience, you say you're always asking people what they want to get out of this. Why do most people take a bead rolling class? Do they have project goals or do they have new skills they just want to learn? Or what's all motivation?
[00:30:47] Speaker B: All above. I think for me, over the years of teaching so many people, I think it's really just been all of the above. A lot. A lot of men, they've went to work, they've raised their family, they've done what they wanted to do with their life, and now they're looking around and they're seeing this that they didn't get a chance to do, and they're kind of looking around thinking, maybe that sounds fun. That sounds like something I want to chase after. So there's those guys, and then there's a lot of younger hot rod gentlemen that really want to learn a different skill. And then I would say there's the art guys. There's the guys that see this, that they're not really into shape and metal. They're not into building cars, but they have a creative outlet that they're looking to just release in. And that's something that they get into. And so I think it's a mix of really everyone. I've taught everyone from young children to older females to businessmen to just regular old joes that just showed up at my house or the shop and just wanted a b roll. And there's really no rhyme or reason to any of it. I love to say that there's a certain demographic, but I think it's just people just chasing a passion. And if you come to my shop or you take a class with me, it's about passion.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: Yeah. I just didn't know how much of it was car people and how much it was art, because you've got kind of two different worlds there. I mean, the art stands on its own. Yeah. And obviously, you've got a strong foundation in the automotive, custom automotive world. So I didn't know what was bringing people to you in that regard.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's a little both. I think it's probably a mix of both of those all the way across the board. I think a lot of it's automotive, too. I mean, it's an automotive tool, so it's always going to eventually go back to automotive because that's what we were talking about at the beginning. And most people are going to take this and go into their shop where they're going to be in their automotive sim, their automotive setting there. But I think it's a mix of both. But then there's a lot of guys and young ladies out there that have a passion for learning art. And I think that's been something that I've always wanted to see grow for people because I feel like this art form can be just as popular as any art form that's out there, as long as it's taught to people and people can get exposed to it.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: Bead roller art is very interesting. There's depth. You don't need color.
The material itself just shines through. So it's really something unique. I can see people being drawn to that just for the artwork itself.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: Yeah, we have a Facebook group called I love b Rolling, and it's a wonderful group. I started it, I think, like six years ago, and it's just dedicated to people wanting to learn the art of b rolling. That's really what it is. And on there, you can get this wild variety of people doing very intricate work inside of vehicles, all the way down to just very intricate, you know, small pieces that they're making. And it's a good resource for a lot of people to recognize and see the different forms of b rolling all the way across the board.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: So you're here this weekend. We're doing our east summer classic where today is Thursday before the show. Our show is Saturday. You're going to be presenting Saturday afternoon or Saturday midday and sharing some of your skills. I know 45 minutes. We didn't give you a lot of time to really get into the stuff you want to do. But I understand that's kind of a kickoff to some work you're doing with us down the road as well. We've kind of, I guess you can explain better what's going to happen because I'm not privy to that, but.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Share with us what you're doing with Eastwood going forward.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: Well, I'm very fortunate. It's about a year and a half ago I started talking with Bart, Bart apple about coming over to the Eastwood and start developing stuff I really wanted to further. I was working with a company for around twelve years, and that relationship had just kind of gone its way. And through years and time, it was just time for me to start looking for another outlet where I thought that I could grow. I wanted to continue to grow, and I wanted this passion for bead rolling to grow, and I wanted more people to get involved with it. And that was really what I wanted. And so once I started talking with Bart about the opportunities here at Eastwood.
That conversation just kept growing and growing and growing. And within the last six or seven months, we've been able to start putting together different packages. We've got some roll packages coming together. We've got some machines coming together, just a whole new line of tools that are actually going to be able to be very affordable, you know, and they're going to be very, very, very customer driven products, things that people actually need and want at a very good price point. And, you know, and my hope is that through East Wood and us, we're going to be able to reach out to a lot of, a lot of younger people, you know, a family based kind of, you know, DIY, those guys. We're going to be able to really get into their hands and really show them, you know, what's available out there through the whole range of the Eastwood bead rollers because everything from the hand cranks like we spoke about earlier, all the way up to, you know, then bigger 36 power machines as well.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: So we've had a line of bead rollers for years now. What are you bringing to the line that we've been missing all these years?
[00:35:34] Speaker B: Well, it's going to be a lot, so we got a few different things. We've got, you know, we've got a lot of adjustability, a lot of the things that you're going to need, actually. So the machines right now, I would say a very standard machine. That's where the industry is right now with some of this stuff. And so a lot of the products that we're bringing are just updated versions of a lot of the stuff that I've created over the last twelve years. It's kind of refined them down. I've been able to release a lot of roles over the years, but as those years go on, those roles have changed. The way I've used them have changed. The things I've learned have changed. And what I want people to actually have in their collection has changed. What I think a good investment has changed. And what I think that you'll be able to, to get out of these products is a lot different. So it's a lot of different roles. We've got tables and shafts and all kind of fun stuff that's actually going to be able to turn a lot of these machines into just a totally different animal. And then the hope is that we're going to be able to push in through with another machine, a fully built out machine that we're working on together, and then a lot of other sheet metal products and just different items that we can get into.
[00:36:37] Speaker A: But, yeah, it's a good relationship's going beyond just the bead rollers a little bit. We've got some other, well, can't wait to see what comes down the line here.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: It's very exciting. I mean, it's something that, you know, I'm looking for the future, you know, and I really have a passion for this craft, and I want to keep it going. I want to keep people involved in it, and I want to. And I want to work with a company that's willing to be a part of what we're doing. And seeing this compassion grow and seeing, you know, seeing people can learn and really test the younger students and the younger kids, I think that's where our future is, you know? You know, we were all told for the last 20 years that, you know, we needed college. Blue collar jobs were the wrong way to go. And I think so many people forgot, you know, shop class. They forgot how to weld, cut, grind, and get dirty, you know, and I want to put that back into people's hands and really kind of show them something with that, you know, and touch people again.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: You're going to be here this weekend with us. Obviously, people can come see you. Of course, this is going to publish after. After the show anyway. But where can people find you and find your work and follow you if they want to?
[00:37:39] Speaker B: You know, I'm kind of old school, I guess you'd say. I'm just on Instagram, you know, so. But, yeah, it's just Instagram. Jamie Jordan, if you just look me up on Instagram there, and then we have our website. It's www.jamiejorden.com.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: Simple as can be.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: Just as simple as can be. You just look me
[email protected]. and that's it. You go there and you can find all my stuff there. Or just check me out on Instagram. Please don't call me.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: Still taking seat orders if someone wants seats from you or is that kind of going away?
[00:38:10] Speaker B: No, I'll do a set of seats. I mean, I try to fit them in when we can. I do a lot of work in Las Vegas at divine one with my friend Misha Muniz. So I'm out there doing R and D work out there right now. And so I spent a lot of my time working on hot rods and doing the R and D work, working on product development. But I still really enjoy my passion as always. Md rolling. It'll always be d rolling, building seats. So if somebody is interested in a seat and they, they're willing to wait, they're willing to kind of work with me and my schedule, then, you know, I'd love to make them a set.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Same for commissioned art. If someone wants garage signage or any other kind of artwork. You take commissions.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a, there's a few people on the waiting list now that are kind of aggravated with me because I'm always just telling them, well, I'll get to it when we can get to it. So I. But I've honestly, I have this policy where if you really want something and you're interested, then we'll sit down and go over it, and then we'll discuss what you want to do, and then I want to make it, and then you can pay me. And my thing is that way it's when I get it done, and then if it's what you want and it's what it works, then it's. Then we'll do it. But right now, you know, our time is the most precious thing we have in this world. And, you know, and for me, it's just kind of one of those things where I want to make sure that when I do sit down to do the time, I'm doing it for the right reasons. And I'm not chasing it for money because I don't think that, you know, for our, for me, for a long time, doing bead rolling work and metalwork was always about paying the bills, making a living. And now I'm just in a different place in my life where I have different opportunities. And when I do sit down and do it, I want to make sure my passion is, I'm happy doing it.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Nice. Well, it's been great having you here and look forward to seeing your work again. This weekend, we'll share pictures online. For those who are listening, you can check out the article on eastwood.com garage. We'll have a post with this episode where people can see some of your work. And, yeah, it's been great. So thank you much.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Thank you so much, man. Thank you for having me. Thank you guys for watching.
