I wish he bought a CNC machine because a lot of what he’s doing can be done so easily with a relatively cheap $1500 dollar system.
Sometimes I'll spend hours making a meal. That's also fine, and personally, I find it more rewarding.
I love my fancy tools - I have a couple mills and a lathe I've converted to CnC, and also a sort of weird autorouter I put together for wood, for a specific project. (Probably going to recycle the parts, it was a good learning experience, but very limited.)
I also love doing things from first principles, or at least closer to that than letting the computer figure it out. It also makes me better with CnC - just like most things automation-related, doing it by hand illuminates a lot.
If you don't like watching his stuff, why not change the channel? There are many, many great CnC operators making video, too. No need to shit on things you don't seem to understand.
CNCs would let you accomplish more with less effort but maximizing productivity per unit effort is not what Mattias goes for(I think)
CNCs don’t interest me personally and they look fairly complicated but the reason I like woodworking is because I’m not in front of the computer. This is to the detriment that I rarely have a plan and get bored drawing things out but know I should be for better outcomes. It’s fun just winging it.
I am sure he would push the envelope in those areas too if he chose to.
Some of the most enjoyable videos I've watched are of people using Japanese techniques and only traditional hand tools.
At least, that's how his blog posts and videos used to be. I haven't read or watched any of his stuff for many years because I disagreed with him on so many things. I still do want to make a crokinole board like the one he made (I started many years ago, but didn't grt very far).
Did you see that article the other day about someone cutting their Gameboy in half so they could make it fold in half? That is so impractical. Why didn't they just buy one like that?
You may not learn by watching people work and listening to their reasoning, but others do.
The other advantage of machines you make yourself is that you can always fix and improve them yourself.
Both machines are an engineering challenge by the way. In the pantorouter, alignment/calibration was a big issue for me - there too many of degrees of freedom, combined with inevitable slop in the mechanism, that has to take a lot of force from the router. Also, even after calibration you need to be careful to not cut too deeply, and in consistent direction to prevent the router bit pulling too hard. But it's all worth it once you're making perfect mortice and tenons with minimal effort :-)
Once you build some skill, you'll develop a pretty good idea of what you want for your use case and where spending an extra nickel or two makes sense or doesn't.
I'll also note that a huge hurdle for a lot of people is grasping the differences between raster data, vector data, and actual CAD data.
I really started doing new things with a machine once I had my own and could run 12 hour jobs overnight.
The maker community online is pretty robust so I had no problems being able to pick up the necessary information that way.
You are exposing yourself to fire risk by running a hobby machine unattended for any period of time, and you are compounding it by not being conscious.
Spending that much on tools doesn't seem like his style. He makes his own tools using scrap wood and salvaged washing machine motors.