Tinkering on his projects – to the delight of millions

As a McGill undergraduate in the late 2010s, Morley Kert, BEng’19, spent his days studying civil engineering. Then, when he went home to his Plateau Mont-Royal apartment, he got busy making things.

He started with a nightstand that clipped onto the headboard of his bed, saving space in his tiny bedroom. Then he progressed to other projects after watching a variety of online videos made by woodworkers and other craftspeople. “They would pull off what seemed like wizardry with table saws and such,” he recalls.

Today, Kert is one of those YouTube wizards, with more than 810,000 subscribers and self-made videos that often attract millions of views.

In one video (8.4-million views), he uses 3D printing to create a replica of a renowned designer chair. Another video chronicling his efforts to transform discarded shipping pallets into a handsome desk valued at $1,200 attracted 6.6 million views. In a third video — this one with 4.2 million views — Kert refashioned a suitcase into a sleeping pod for long layovers.

Viewers are no doubt drawn to Kert’s buoyant on-screen personality, but the main attraction is the unvarnished enthusiasm with which he approaches his projects. He is a tinkerer, an experimenter, a learner. He is clearly having fun making things.

Creativity was always a part of the Kert household — his mother is an interior designer. When he was 12 years old, Kert read The Wright 3, a young adult mystery novel about three kids trying to save a renowned Frank Lloyd Wright house from demolition. It sent Kert down a rabbit hole of fascination with Wright: he loved the architect’s emphasis on natural materials, geometric shapes and rich colours. And it made him think he wanted to build things himself.

Kert considered doing a degree in architecture, before opting to study civil engineering. McGill had a good reputation, was close to his home in New Hampshire, and it was where Kert’s namesake, his grandfather, had studied as a young man.

Kert excelled in his studies – so much so, he ended up with spare time on his hands. “I wasn’t cramming for exams,” he chuckles.

He began documenting his projects and uploading them to YouTube. “I grew up with YouTube as this very exciting place,” Kert says. Having his own channel felt like a rush and watching his viewership grow encouraged him to keep at it.

He remembers spending time between classes editing videos in the common area between the McConnell and Macdonald Engineering Buildings. “But I had no illusions or expectations that I was going to get millions of views,” he says.

That came later. Kert moved to Ontario after graduating in 2019. While working as a project manager at a civil engineering firm, and later as a carpenter for events and film sets, he bought a 3D printer and began experimenting with what he could do with it.

His initial plan was to make custom embossed leather, expanding on the leatherwork he had been doing during his final years at McGill. But he was soon making everything from lightboxes to vases — even an articulated camera arm.

In hindsight, the videos he made during this time were “kind of boring DIY videos,” Kert admits. That changed in 2022 when he had his first viral hit. Missing a piece from a vintage punch clock, Kert discovered it would cost $100 to buy. He 3D printed the piece for nine cents instead.

“This was one of the first videos that had a concept that was really clickable,” he says. He watched with amazement as the view count ticked upwards. “It was a wave of relief,” says Kert of his reaction to the response. He had recently decided to leave his job to focus on the videos.

He and his wife, Eden Schwartz, BA’19, had a plan to embark on a year-long “van life” journey across North America. Kert took advantage of his growing YouTube audience to document their trip and especially their handiwork in transforming the van into a nice place to live.

Kert says he doesn’t mind having so much of his life on display — but he does exercise some caution. He enjoys seeing the first comments after he uploads a video, since they tend to be the most positive and constructive. He takes a step back when a video becomes popular enough to attract trolls. “I don’t want my happiness or state of mind to be in someone else’s control,” he says.

Kert and Schwartz now live in Vancouver, where Schwartz is a social worker. Kert built his own studio, first in an industrial space, and then at home, where he feels more productive. He has embraced his career as a full-time maker of things.

His main goal is to approach everything with what he calls “a childlike sense of wonder” — maybe even embarking on some of the many projects he dreamed about tackling as a kid. “There’s such satisfaction in bringing an idea to life,” he says.