From detective to Jonny Builds: How an OKC YouTuber is helping others get into woodworking

Jonny Lambert held his breath a bit when the thin, fragile wood grid fed through the drum sander.

“That was nerve-wracking,” the Oklahoma City resident said. “I was afraid it was all going to come apart.”

Lambert, a former Oklahoma City police detective turned YouTube creator, had spent weeks learning to do Kumiko — a Japanese woodworking technique that produces intricate patterns — for a dining table build, and then preparing and assembling the pieces.

The two lattice panels came through their trips through the drum sanders unscathed.

They were inserted into the voids in a pair of connected myrtle wood slabs.

The result of the slabs, the Kumiko panels and black epoxy poured into the voids was an elaborate one-of-a-kind table mounted on a metal base.

'The joy I got from that was just like nothing I’d ever experienced in my life'

The project came out of a group chat between Lambert and some other prominent woodworkers with large YouTube followings.

Jonathan Katz-Moses asked if any of them would consider doing projects to benefit his Katz-Moses Woodworkers With Disabilities Fund.

The charity started after Katz-Moses saw a Reddit post from a father who was trying to encourage his son Vlad’s interest in woodworking.

Vlad was born with Apert syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes fusion of bones in the skull, hands and feet.

Katz-Moses, teaming with companies that sponsor his channel, sent a large number of tools to Vlad in Ukraine.

“The joy I got from that was just like nothing I’d ever experienced in my life,” Katz-Moses said. “I did a bunch of research and I realized that making things was one of the most cathartic exercises — for depression, for people recovering from both mental and physical injuries, disabilities, things like that. I think people with lifelong disabilities, it gives them a sense of self-worth.”

In the last year-and-a-half, the fund has given away nearly $500,000 in tools.

Lambert jumped at the chance to help the charity and Katz-Moses.

“It’s just so neat what he’s doing, and Katz is such a good dude, just a really, really solid human being,” Lambert said.

The myrtle slabs had been sitting in Lambert’s Oklahoma City shop for about 18 months, and he decided they’d be perfect for the project.

How Jonny Lambert got into woodworking

Lambert hadn’t done much woodworking until about a decade ago.

“It all started just having a desire not to buy cheap furniture from Walmart and Target,” Lambert said. “So I just did what I always did when I wanted to learn something — I got on Amazon and I ordered a book.”

He started with Ben Uyeda’s book, "HomeMade Modern," and built the media console on the book’s cover.

“I always had some sort of creative urge within me,” Lambert said. “And I never had anything that fulfilled that. I’m not an artist. I’m not a musician. I can’t do anything artistic. But I can be creative, and I can work with my hands.”

Not long after, his daughter, Chloe, asked him to build her a bed.

“That really kind of set that first spark,” Lambert said. “This is really, really fun. I really enjoy this. I just think part of who I am is when I get into something, I really, really get into it.”

Lambert knew he wanted to do something beyond his police work and while following the work of Uyeda and others, learned as much about building a YouTube audience as he did woodworking.

A few years later, the Jonny Builds YouTube channel was born.

Lambert decided to give the channel a year to develop a following, aiming for 10,000 subscribers while working out of his garage.

After that year, he had about 75,000.

Eventually, he was making enough revenue from the channel to move into a commercial shop.

Lambert doesn’t confine himself to woodworking, using metal and other materials regularly for his projects. A CNC machine is one of the workhorses of Lambert’s shop.

“People tell me I’m not a woodworker? Fine. I’m not a woodworker. I’m a maker,” Lambert said. “Anyone can be a maker, all you’ve got to do is make something.”

Lambert has done it, developing a following of more than 650,000 on YouTube and expanding to other social media platforms.

He’s built an axe handle with a scorpion cast in resin, a Star Wars-themed coffee table, and plenty more out-of-the-box projects.

So far, the table for the Katz-Moses Woodworkers With Disabilities Fund is Lambert’s pièce de résistance.

The table was originally listed for $19,000, which would’ve included six matching Kumiko chairs, on his website. It was recently lowered to $12,000, which doesn’t include the chairs.

All of the proceeds from the table will go to the charity.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of how something came out than this table,” Lambert said.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OKC YouTuber Jonny Builds brings woodworking to audience, charity