Tag Archives: woodworking

Sketchup is a free drafting program from Google. They created it to be used to generate 3D buildings for their Google Maps feature. Woodworkers use it to make plans with.

Problem is, it has pretty steep learning curve. I gave it up twice. I know other guys that have tried it as well, and just gave up. I couldn’t blame them. However, I did go back to it, and forced myself to learn it, and a book called Google Sketchup for Dummies, by Aidan Chopra, helped out a lot. He also has YouTube videos too which are very helpful.

So why even bother using SU (Shorthand for Sketchup)? Why not just use paper and pencil, the old school way?

Well, obviously, there is a lot less erasing, lol. Besides that, I like the way I can play with pieces so easily in virtual space. I can concentrate on the look first, and the technical later. I can go into joints, and see how they’ll work; I can see if certain woods would go together nicely, or not, because I can give each piece a texture – make this piece oak, that piece cherry. I get exact measurements, whether it be degrees of an arc, or length of a piece. I can “explode” the drawing, like they do in magazines, so I can get a better idea visually of how everything goes together, and can even print out the pieces and their measurements for use in the shop. Also, you can print the pieces at 100% size, so you can use them as a template for a complex shape. I hear you can even make SU generate a cutting diagram on a virtual board!

In short, there is a LOT that SU can do for you, the woodworker, and you really should take the time to learn it, if you ever think you’re going to want to make up your own plans someday.

I make mistakes in the wood shop – too many.

Sometimes “mistakes” are just forced opportunities.

One example was Edison’s attempt to make a telegraphic-telephonic repeating and recording device, it didn’t work, but when somebody gave it a spin it sounded like human speech. Edison started from that chance observation and developed the phonograph.

It can also happen in the shop.

For example, I was making a mantle clock, about 16″ high, shown here:

I had to rabbet the sides of the clock to recive the back door. I did this on my router table. It was a 1/4” rabbett on a 1/2” stock. Of course, I set up and tested the rabbett on a scrap piece of stock. Worked fine. Right depth and so on. My mistake was, I did the whole depth in one pass on the real pieces. I should have done an 1/8” at a time, instead of the whole 1/4”. What ended up happening was, the bit crept out of the collet on the router, cutting deeper than I wanted. Ugh!

The only option was to throw out 4 nice pieces of maple ( I was making two clocks), or get creative.

What I ended up doing was re-rabbetting all four pieces to an equal depth, and then gluing in a strip of paduak to bring the rabbett back up to the originally intended 1/4” depth. The result was a more visually appealing ( I think) back of these pieces.

Obviously, sometimes mistakes can’t be fixed; if you needed a piece to be 8” long, and you cut it to 7”, you probably can’t just glue it back on and hope no one will notice. Some mistakes are final.

But other times, if you get creative, you can turn mistakes into a positive.

A great part of our time spent in the shop is for breaking down lumber into final (or near final) sizes. For the woodworker trying to make some production time ( as opposed to the occasional weekend project), time is money, and also frustration (sometimes) and even danger. So why not pay someone to take that on?

Let me get a little more specific. Let’s say you’re going to do a craft or trade show – you need to get quite a bit of product ready, in other words. Or maybe your’re making several of the same pieces for Christmas presents. Either way, you’ve got a lot of breaking down of lumber to do. Depending on your lumber supplier, you’re either going to get rough sawn wood, with no side planed, or wood fully dimensioned – like you would see at Home Depot or Lowes. With the latter, all you have to do is cut it to a final dimension, and you’re ready to go. With the former, you have to surface plane a wide flat side, then joint the two edges, finishing it to final thickness at a planer. That’s a lot of sawdust, and also more opportunities to get injured, nick a blade, or generally add wear and tear to your equipment. Not only that, but also the fairly large amount of time that takes.

More and more, I’m having my lumber guy finally dimension my stock. Obviously, I can’t have him cut final size lengths and widths (usually), but I can have him plane and joint all four sides; he’s got the larger jointer and planer to handle up to 8″ wide lumber, and I don’t. His thickness planer has a three-sided spherical head, which means I sand a LOT less. When I get back to the shop, I just have to rip and cut, and I’m ready. I can concentrate more on the quality of fitting the pieces together, and the finish, rather than breaking down lumber.

And if you think it’s expensive, it’s really not – check with your lumber supplier; it’s usually so much per foot, but I find it well worth the price.

Now I understand that some guys like to do all the dimensioning and breaking down themselves, because the need certain parts of the board, have an odd size, or whatever. But generally speaking, out sourcing this part of the process is well worth the money.

We’ve all done it; cut some piece in our project the wrong size, accidentally gouged it, or otherwise messed it up. Usually, we just move on to another piece, discarding that one.

Sometimes “mistakes” can actually be opportunities in disguise.

One example was Edison’s attempt to make a telegraphic-telephonic repeating and recording device, it didn’t work, but when somebody gave it a spin it sounded like human speech. Edison started from that chance observation and developed the phonograph.

It can also happen in the shop.

While developing my clock Keene, I turned would could have been a disaster into a chance to get really creative.

Take a look at this picture – especially the shot of the back of the clock: