How and why the Hoard exists.

ᚲWhat the Hoard is

The Tinkerer's Hoard is my pyrography shop and workshop channel, run out of Spokane, Washington by me, Tyler Wright, the Tinkering Catdad. I burn designs into wood by hand, paint and finish them, and share the whole process: on YouTube, on the site at thetinkerershoard.com, and through my Etsy shop.

The workshop is the TinkerForge. It's a patio for anything that smokes or makes dust, and a room in the house for sketching, CAD, painting, printing and assembly. My wife Bethy (the Weaver) has the final say on color and design, and three cats have supervised over the years: Rorschach, Gideon, and Kiri, who is remembered on the site.

ᚲWhy it exists

The Hoard exists for me first. Building things helps me more than talking about them does, and woodburning is where I go to get my head right. It's an outlet, not a growth plan.

It also keeps me sharp. I spent years as a technician, a trainer and a digital skills instructor. Streaming a build keeps me practiced as a presenter and an instructor. Running the site keeps me practiced as a technologist. The burning keeps me a tinkerer.

I'm not an influencer and I don't want to be one. My role models are Bob Ross and Fred Rogers: show the work, talk plainly, and leave the door open for anyone who wants to come in. I make stuff and I share my process freely. People who watch are hoarders, and they're welcome. Nobody owes me views.

It's also a record of what I can do. One person came up with the idea, made the pieces by hand, and stood up a full-stack site with an AI collaborator. That's worth showing anyone who asks what I've been building.

ᚲThe Laws of the Hoard

The Laws are posted on the About page, and everything else here follows from them.

1. I make stuff. Like it or don't. I don't chase approval, and I don't let imposter syndrome set the pace.
2. This hobby has an audience of one: me. You're welcome to watch. Traffic numbers don't decide whether a stream was worth doing.
3. Want to collaborate, swap tricks, or build something together? Pull up a camp chair. Collaboration is always welcome.
4. Here to tell me my technique is wrong? Kindly fuck off.[redacted]. Some things on the site are for finding, not for reading here. Some of my habits, like sanding to 3000 grit before staining, look wrong and are on purpose.

ᚲHow a piece gets made

A piece goes from pencil to finish in the same phases every time, and some take an afternoon while others take months. I don't use AI to make designs. AI helps me pick runes, sort colors and plan layers, and the arranging, reworking and burning are mine.

1. CAD. When a stencil doesn't exist, I model one from an SVG.
2. 3D printing. The Prusa Core One+ prints the stencil. The iron never touches it, so a stencil gets used again and again.
3. Layout. Most designs start from store-bought stencils that I combine, arrange and rework. I trace them in pencil, freehand what's missing, and fill in the bridge gaps.
4. Burning. Lines go in at an even depth. Darkness comes from the overall toning: edges, vignettes and gradients.
5. Painting. Color goes in where the design wants it.
6. Sanding. I sand to very fine grits, 800 up to 3000, on purpose. It changes how the stain takes and gives a stronger black-to-color-to-white gradient over the char.
7. Staining and finishing. Gunstock, Phantom Gray, Honey Maple and Candlelight are the regulars.
8. Assembly. Hardware, mounts, and printed parts held with M3 hardware rather than glue.

When there's room, the piece gets my maker's mark, a bindrune for Bethy, me and the cats. When there isn't room, it doesn't, and no mark gets added afterward with a paint pen.

ᚲThe Forge on stream

Streams are long and quiet: a tight shot on the wood, music under it, and sometimes me talking through what I'm doing or reading aloud. People pop in and out, hang out with me and the cats for a few minutes, and stay longer when there's action on the bench. That's normal and healthy. Streams aren't monetized.

Every stream is also footage. The recordings become timelapses: a short for each phase, or a long-form compilation once a piece is finished.

• The rig. A Pixel 7 Pro is the camera (through DroidCam Pro), with a Yeti X a few feet away and OBS running on the laptop. It streams at about 6,000 Kbps, which the Wi-Fi can carry. The rig is modular, so I move the shot when the work moves.
• The overlays. One browser source in OBS shows Starting, Live, BRB and Ending, and crossfades between them. A second plays the music: Rainwave's OverClocked ReMix station, with a library by phase as the backup (metal and shanties for burning, lo-fi for ideating, classical for painting). The Ending screen tallies the stream: time on air, hands-on time and the swear jar.
• The Command Center. A private page on the site, in three tabs. Live runs the stream: the Go live switch, the run order, the screen, the phase, music, the swear jar, the work timer and a small preview of what OBS is sending. Stream is what the session is: the piece, today's plan, the reading and the ticker lines. Broadcast is the tech: YouTube, the Forge log and the OBS sources. This Codex is linked from its header, and published on the site at /codex, minus the team's reviews. Anything I change shows on stream within a second.
• The run order. Preflight on the Live tab lists every step from the bench to Go live, in order, and ticks each one off when the Command Center can see it done. On air it watches the YouTube sign-in; after the stream it walks the wrap-up.
• The work timer. It counts hands-on time per piece and per phase. It pauses itself on BRB and when I end. Phase switches keep counting: the setup between phases is labor, and I don't count time down to the second.
• The Bracer. The same controls on my phone, strapped to my wrist (eventually). I flick my wrist to page through them, and going live or ending takes a press-and-hold. It warns me when the laptop's YouTube sign-in is running out.
• YouTube. While live, the title reads "Live from the TinkerForge · Painted Bird · Layout" and follows the phase. When I end, the recording keeps the piece and the phases it covered, and gets chapters once a stream covers three. It's integrated but never required: if YouTube is down, the stream and the site carry on.

First light. The first stream went out on Oct 27, 2026: Painted Bird, Session 1, layout into painting. It ran 5 hours 19 minutes on air, with 4 hours 38 minutes hands-on. The first half hour dropped half its frames, pushing 16.5 Mbps over Wi-Fi; dropping to 6,000 Kbps mid-stream fixed it. 78 people dropped in, and nobody had to.

ᚲThe site, and how it was built

The site went from an empty Firebase project to a live, custom-domain site with a stream control room and a commission studio in five days, Oct 22–26, 2026. It's plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with no build step, hosted on Firebase's pay-as-you-go plan behind a $25 budget alert.

• The lock. Only my Google account can change anything. Visitors can read the site and send commission requests, nothing else. App Check and reCAPTCHA keep strangers from running up the bill.
• No tracking. No analytics and no tracking cookies on the Hoard. That's a personal standard. My AI collaborations are done under the name "The Mythic Artisan Team," and ephemeral sessions are a signature: I don't want anyone claiming I'm using their data to train AI, or for anything else. I'm not perfect, and I say that in good faith; there's more in my portfolio.
• Honest versions. Every change is logged in a changelog, and the version stays under 1.0 until launch. Today it's v0.26, First Light: the round after the first live stream. The version comes from the top of the changelog at every deploy, so the site can't show a stale one.
• Works when things break. If the database is unreachable, the site falls back to a local copy. If YouTube is down, the stream carries on.

Everything I change in the Command Center or on the Bracer lands in Firestore, and the site and the OBS overlays pick it up within a second.

It was built as a team, and I'm plain about who did what. I'm the Tinkerer: the idea, the product and design calls, the content and photos, the accounts and domains, the deploys, and the testing on the real rig. Claude is the Codewright and wrote most of the code. Gemini (the Forge-Hand) drew the comic covers and drafts alt text and tags. Copilot (Vox Machina) checks that the copy still sounds like me. Bethy, the Weaver, keeps the scope honest and has the last word on color. The site credits all of them in its footer as the Mythic Artisan Team.

ᚲCommissions and money

Commissions are art, not a production line. The price covers materials and my hands-on time at $20 an hour, and nothing is paid until the piece is done.

1. The Studio. At /commission, people pick a blank (live-edge slab, round or plank), then a design: an SVG they upload or a sample from the Hoard. They choose toning and color and see a rough mockup.
2. The ballpark. The studio measures how busy the design is (Simple, Detailed or Intricate) and shows a price range, not a quote. Uploaded files get extra prep time and extra room at the top of the range, so I come in under, not over.
3. My review. I look at the design and send a real quote and timeline. Nothing is owed until they approve it, and I can say no to a project that doesn't fit my bench or my timeline. I reply by email. A phone number is optional and for texts only: progress photos and updates from the Hoard's own number. I don't take calls.
4. The work. It gets burned, and maybe streamed. The mockup is a sketch, and the wood always has its own opinions. Happy accidents happen.
5. Payment. When it's finished, they get a private Etsy listing and check out there, with Etsy's buyer protection and sales tax handled. Nothing ships unpaid.

Pricing stays simple and leans toward the customer. Line items round to the dollar and totals to the nearest $5. Ideation and curing time don't count, only the time my hands are on the piece. Pricing my time has always been the hardest part. I'm a self-taught tinkerer who takes his time, and $20 an hour feels fair for that.

ᚲWhat success looks like, and the honest limits

Success isn't measured in views. The Hoard is working if these stay true:

• Pieces get finished, and the process gets shared.
• I stay practiced as a presenter, an instructor and a technologist.
• There's a real, working body of work to point to when someone asks what I can do.
• It keeps restoring me. If it starts draining me instead, that's the signal to change it, not to push harder.

The honest limits:

• The audience may stay small. The channel has followers from before, but streams might draw no one. That can sting, and by the Laws it doesn't count as failure.
• It's one person's bench. Commissions run on my timeline, and I'll turn work down before I rush it.
• I'm self-taught. I'm a tinkerer, not a trained artisan, and most designs start from store-bought stencils.
• The site is pre-launch. It's live and public, and the version number stays under 1.0 until the official launch.
• I didn't write most of the code by hand. The product, the design calls, the operations and the testing are mine, and Claude wrote much of the code.