Modern woodworkers


bywc

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I'm not picking apart the "baby stepper" phrase. I understand what you are saying. A drawing on a napkin is still a plan. Its just not telling you how to "paint by numbers".

What I think I was trying to say this morning (very sleepy) was if we were building a kitchen isn't the cut list that baby step plan. The way I would collate the cuts and assembly an outline. I would very methodically lay everything out for cutting, assembly, sanding, finishing, and whatever else. Would probably go as far as to make that written list. Because one half inch off on a coffee table is not the end of the world, but it can be on a kitchen.

The other thought about the boxes. I can't fathom building one hundred boxes without starting with a model. If I built a single model and then 99 more would that not be a plan? Following a predetermined cut list, pattern, and now a 3D plan.

Maybe I am a little off topic, but are modern woodworkers to dependent on plans? Maybe, but not all people are wanting to be the next great designer. Those step by step plans are necessary at some point even for the best woodworkers.

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Maybe the real question isn't so much being dependent on plans since we can see the definition of 'plans' can be fuzzy at best. The question may be "are some woodworkers too dependent on OTHER PEOPLE's plans" that they didn't prepare. Some things I've designed had detailed plans (for me) and others had a mental image. They were my designs and my plans so, yeah, I followed a plan. Following someone else's plan, I would have a difficult time doing; I'm terrible following instructions.

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I think it is the difference between designing and woodworking. Some people just want build something that has been thought out and others like to design their own. I definitely like plans on complicated furniture but prefer to go my own route on smaller projects.

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I figure if you plan to build a box and after you finish it is a box then life is good but if you end up with a bowl you might want to retrace your steps and see where it all went wrong. I record stuff as I create it if it is complex. A simple jewelry box= Lid, four sides and a bottom a way to open it and close it maybe even lock it. Enough of a plan I figure right there let the material dictate where it goes. Build a Trestle table without designing and planning and you are gonna have some troubles along the way. The thirty five steps for building a simple box in a weekend with cutting diagrams cutting lists etc is a bit much for me :) I love a good set of plans for something complex I have not built before. If I ever get around to building a dresser I will use a plan that resembles what I want it to look like. I will then modify it and make it my own but it will be written out so I can check my progress.

I worked with a forming carpenter who decided to build a form in the air We did it his way after much arguing (language barrier) We then wedged it shimmed it and strong armed it into place then built the rest of the form to hold that one face in place. The reason we did it this way was because he could not make a better plan for this unique situation. I figure if we would have made a plan we might have saved some time and a lot of effort but the end result was the same.

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Yeah I have nothing against plans at all if someone wants to use a plan thats fine, if someone doesn't want to use a plan thats fine. my issues is when a plan becomes a crutch and they are so dependent on a plan they cant even build a box without a plan.

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I'm probably going to ruffle some feathers here, but I've never been one to keep my opinions to myself. I'm reacting more to the design comments, where quite a few folks talk about "winging it". I would suggest you could probably build some fairly interesting things by winging it, but that would fall quite short of great design if done without plans and design process. I would go as far as to say that in practice, "winging it" is more accurately described as prototyping. Almost any book or resource I've read about design emphasizes how great design is a highly iterative and well thought out process. For something as simple as a box, you might have the design in your head and be fairly successful with the final piece. But for more complex or show-quality pieces, I find it difficult to believe anyone could mentally design the entire piece with all the best joinery choices, source the components from the stock properly, and end up with a piece with sound design principles, proportions, and integrity. I've designed pieces that have gone through a dozen design iterations, a full-size prototype, and still found that I needed to go back and fix a curve, change a stock choice, or even go back to the drawing board entirely. By designing "on the fly", I suppose you could continually go back and keep fixing things along the way, but this seems like a lot of wasted time, effort, and finish-grade stock.

Just to give an example, I am wrapping up a design on a unique chest of drawers for an upcoming series on my blog. I spent several hours on design thus far, applying quite a bit of effort ensuring that the drawers are graduated in an appealing fashion, tackling some fairly challenging joinery issues, and even selecting the stock (bring on the butternut). I got through the entire process before I realized that the material thickness I had chosen for this project(3/4") just doesn't work for the final piece. It really needs to be thinner stock (1/2" or 5/8"), which means my drawer blades will be narrower, thus meaning I have to completely re-proportion all of the drawers and even change some joinery choices. At least I can still use the stock I bought, but in the worst case I would even have even had to go with a whole new batch of lumber. So how would I ever be able to fix this kind of problem had I simply designed this in my head? Or worse, actually dimensioned and cut all my components only to find I needed to throw away all my butternut and start over? The answer is I would have gone ahead with the original design using 3/4" stock, and ended up with a really expensive prototype.

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I think I am on your page there Bois. There is a line that gets crossed between the creative and the practical need for function. In smaller simpler projects winging it is fine to some degree because the cost in time and materials is much less. The chest of drawers with materials in the hundreds of dollars urges me towards much more careful design and consideration including prototyping in cheaper materials full scale if possible. Nothing says mistake or nice idea better than a full scale model to look at. Matter of fact I am gonna build a model of some shelves today for a customer to view built to 1/3 scale in 1/4" ply. Good time to work out the bugs and gives them something to put their hands on. If the shelves were for my shop I would not bother past a simple sketch with some measurements on it and I doubt they would be round :)

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I think its also important to consider who the woodworker is and who they are building for. If you're a planner and a perfectionist, you are probably going to gravitate more toward a situation like Bois described. No need to waste time and effort in what will at best be a glorified prototype (that's what I consider my "wing it" projects). But if you are building for yourself, for fun, and for creative exploration, wingin' it can be pretty damn exciting! But keep in mind, you have no customer to satisfy, no timelines, and if you screw up, you only have yourself to answer to.

I do believe that some people can design on the fly and wind up with a great piece of furniture. But I think the person has to have a certain amount of experience to begin with. If a new woodworker just jumps in and starts slapping boards together, I wouldn't expect much in terms of overall quality and adherence to design principles. But an experienced craftsman typically has these principles locked into their brain and their version of wingin' it is really just an exploration within the confines of these existing rules. So even if the piece is a little "out there", it can still be a fairly good design with sound construction.

Its a lot like making music. While it might be safer for a band to write a song from start to finish, tweaking every note and melody to perfection, its a heck of a lot more fun to see them simply grab their instruments and jam their hearts out (jazz anyone?). As experienced musicians, they know how to avoid sour notes and they stay within the key of the song and the tempo of the beat. But their creativity is unleashed as they simply let their ideas flow from their heads to their fingers/hands. It can really be something special. I believe the same principles can exist in woodworking. For some, its just not practical but for those that do it, it can be incredibly gratifying and can unlock ideas that might not otherwise find their way to the surface.

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the one thing that plans never predict are problems and mistakes. That's where working in the "moment" can give a big picture perspective and aid with creative solutions....that's something detailed plans can never do. I say go with your gut and your skill level to put your own personal touch to a project.

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I think you hit it on the head here Paul. I think a lot of new woodworkers (including myself) get trapped into the idea that you have to work of off someone elses plans in order to build a project "the right way" when in reality you have to try an get back in touch with your creative side. this is certainly the part I'm struggling with and have found that the best thing to do is to look around at furniture and projects I like and try to use it to spark my own design ideas. Its certainly easier follow plans that someone else has done for you though.

Maybe the real question isn't so much being dependent on plans since we can see the definition of 'plans' can be fuzzy at best. The question may be "are some woodworkers too dependent on OTHER PEOPLE's plans" that they didn't prepare. Some things I've designed had detailed plans (for me) and others had a mental image. They were my designs and my plans so, yeah, I followed a plan. Following someone else's plan, I would have a difficult time doing; I'm terrible following instructions.

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I'm a big user of plans from magazines and books for a lot of reasons:

1) I have very little time for woodworking, and very little space to store or use things that didn't turn out good enough to be given to a friend or used in my house. It's not that I think using a plan will avoid all mistakes--lord knows I make plenty of them--but my time is too dear and wood is too expensive to just wing it as my primary mode.

2) I have nearly zero ability to visualize in 3D. If you try to describe where something is to me in the next room, I have to essentially memorize the description so I can repeat it back to myself once I'm in the space. When I took the Armed Forces Aptitude Test I scored in the 10th percentile for visualization. So it's literally impossible for me to do as many of the people here have described how they do things.

3) One of my favorite things about woodworking is learning a new technique. While I expect this to change as the years pass, I always prefer a project that has some variation on joinery or assembly that I've never done before. I use plans to find something new that I'd never thought of before and then I go try it.

That being said, I almost never (except for puzzles) actually fully follow a plan. Something gets changed in the midst of the project.

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...that dependency completely stifles your creativity.

On this point i would disagree. There is nothing that says that you need to follow a plan to the letter and/or that a plan cannot be changed mid-project to better suit design, functionality or creativity. Creativity and planning are not mutually exclusive - ask any architect.

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I couldn't create a piece without at least designing it first. Creating a design is all about the proportions and scale. I don't start planning in until the design is complete. The plan would have the dimensions, joinery and any possible working order (create the tenon first, then the groove for example) that needs to be done. Then I use the plan as a reference, not the law. There are situations where the thickness of a component isn't critical (table apron), and I try to keep the stock as thick as I can. If the plan calls for 3/4" for an apron, but I am able to get 7/8", then I keep it 7/8" and adjust the joinery on the fly. I have made mistakes, but the more I work this way, my mistakes get fewer and fewer.

As Marc eluded to, I think it depends if you are making something for yourself or a client. If you are making something for a client, you need to be pretty dang close to what you agreed to build.

Dwight Eisenhower said it best I think "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensible."

Jonathan

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I think that all of us use some sort of plan. Lets say that I want to build a chair, which I have never done before, or really care too. Just useing it as an example. I could buy a plan, or take some measurements of a chair in the house to get a rough idea of how wide, how deep, and how high the seat should be, as Johnny pointed out, to get proportions and scale. Ofcourse I would write this down because most of the time I have CRS ( Can't Remember S--- ) I usually draw up my own plan. I did well in Mechanical drafting in high school, I enjoy to draft something up. A few years ago I stumbled upon a large oak drafting table that is very old. I refinished it, and found an old drafting arm from about the same era, I needed to buy new rulers for it, but I was very happy to have found it all, I've wanted one for many, many years, being an antique is just iceing on the cake.

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My thoughts:

In my opinion there are two types ofplans Design/dimensional, & procedural.

Defining dimensional plans is pretty easy, they can be anything from some numbers scratched on a paper, to full blown mechanical drawings. If' I'm building a pencil holder, all I need is some rough sizing dimensions. If I'm making a Bombe chest, I'm going to have some detailed plans, because it's a more complicated, time consuming, and expensive project. In other words,the complexity of the plans, is heavily dependent on the complexity of the project.

A procedural plan is a more abstract concept, it's just a list of steps to be done in a certain order.Let's consider a simple mitered corner pencil holder.

Steps:

  1. rough dimension all the lumber
  2. thickness the sides
  3. cut the sides to length and width
  4. miter the corner of the sides (some people do this as part of step 3)
  5. cut a dado in the inside bottom of the sides
  6. tape the sides together
  7. relatively dimension the bottom to fit the sides
  8. glue up
  9. finish
I defy anybody to tell me they don'thave a procedural plan for every project. It doesn't have to bewritten out. For people that have been woodworking a long time, it's subconscious, because “it's just how things are done”.

I think procedural plans are what beginners struggle with the most. Pretty much anyone can pick up dimensioning lumber in no time. Learning to do things in a certain order, that takes trial and error, either by your or the person who taught you.

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One thing is for sure, each of us here wants to woodwork, however, how we woodwork is as different as each snowflake that falls from the sky.

There are so many different ways to woodwork, from picking a specific design like Greene & Greene or Mission to figuring out which tools to use: Hand tools vs. Machine tools. I think the one thing to learn from this conversation is knowing that there is no right or wrong way to woodwork. I believe woodworking is a personal endeavor and if you want to woodwork by following plans for the rest of your life and that's exciting to you...then do it. Who's to say that those who are woodworking from plans are not woodworkers....you are still working with wood....RIGHT!!!

With that being said, there is something amazing about the moment in time when you decide as a woodworker that the plans you've been using are just not "cutting" it for you anymore. There's no doubt that the plans were a stepping stone in helping you build your skill level. You learned a lot of different techniques and NOW you're ready to expand that knowledge.

In my experience, I came to this understanding that there are a lot of techniques that are used over and over again in building a piece of furniture. Once you've built a few items, your eye begins to lean towards a certain design that you truly like. Heck...you may have found that you like a hybrid style (composed of 2 or mores different styles). I think this is the point when people transition from woodworking plans to designing their own pieces.

Sometimes I feel the modern woodworker is overwhelmed with a plethera of information out there about woodworking. I myself have been paralyzed by the overload of information out there and not knowing just where to begin. That's what it comes down to really...Just beginning. If the main objective here is woodworking, then we need to be doing more of it, with or without plans!!!

Personally, I do think following woodworking plans takes a lot of the FEAR out of woodworking. When you follow a plan you are almost positive it's going to turn out just like the picture on the front of the plans. There's not much room for error in these cases.

However, I've found in many cases in my life (not just with woodworking) that when I stretch myself and push through the fear, spectacular things happen. Sometimes pushing through the fear is helped by lowering my expectations of the final outcome. Many times saying to myself...what's the worst case scenario. Big deal if this design doesn't work. It's a stepping stone from one spot to the next.

Okay...now put down whatever you're doing and go get some woodworking in...you never know, you may become the next Sam Maloof or Norm Abrams. Wouldn't you love to know if these guys ever used plans? We all gotta start somewhere!!!

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Hmmm .. to me a plan is just another tool. And, like a lot of tools, if you use only that tool you can limit yourself. Right now I'm learning how to cut dovetails so I use a dovetail saw guide. There will come a time, if I cut enough dovetails frequently enough, that I probably won't need it. If I don't cut some for a while, I might return to using that tool.

I use plans but I almost always change certain aspects of the plan. As I become a better woodworker, I'm will probably become less dependent on that tool (plans). But if I build something I never have before, I might look for a plan to help explain how to do it .. or a class.

Seems like deciding which tool (including whether or not to use a plan) is really personal preference. But that's just how I think about it.

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It's been said before in this thread but I'll repeat. I think step-by-step plans are great for the novice just getting started. Otherwise it is difficult to know where to start. I did my first couple projects from step-by-step. That was about 6-7 years ago. I no longer use plans but I do look them over for ideas and maybe a trick or two. Maybe if you took a class then step-by-step plans would not be necessary at all.

Now I do my own "plans" which is really:

1. do a dimensional model in the rough on Sketchup to get general proportions down. No, I don't do a detailed accurate model since I don;t have that patience. If I did this as a living, it would be a great tool to show prototype designs to a client.

2. sketch subassemblies on a stenopads.

3. Write down a cut list for absolute measurement components -- all the rest is measure and fabricate as I go.

That's it.

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I think it's like what Mark Adams says, "woodworking is a skill" to be learned, "not a talent" that one is born with (i.e., a naturally beautiful singing voice).

The ability to do woodworking without plans is probably a talent in conceptualization (for lack of a better term at the moment), whereas the woodworking itself is an exercise in skill.

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Yeah I have nothing against plans at all if someone wants to use a plan thats fine, if someone doesn't want to use a plan thats fine. my issues is when a plan becomes a crutch and they are so dependent on a plan they cant even build a box without a plan.

After several iterations, what you haven't made clear is why you have an "issue" with how someone else chooses to work in the first place. It's their shop, their choice, and ultimately them who has to happy with the end result. It's not on us to judge them.

Heck, I've got a 'plan' (a list of steps) for making a simple plywood chalkboard on my workbench right now. Why? Because over time I've made three of them for this particular application and all have had problems. My plan is the result of several hours of thinking about the problems and how to solve them and then working out how to take those solutions and order them into a coherent, attractive, and functional whole.

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After several iterations, what you haven't made clear is why you have an "issue" with how someone else chooses to work in the first place. It's their shop, their choice, and ultimately them who has to happy with the end result. It's not on us to judge them.

Nah I think the thread got taken completely the wrong way, and partly due to my inability to get across exactly the intention of sharing the opinion in question.

I am not judging them or attempting to change their habits at all I was just curious if anyone else had noticed this pattern of dependency on plans.

As I stated in the post you quoted if they are happy with just replicating other peoples plans and never actually taking the leap then more power to them man I have nothing against them at all and have no intention of trying to alter their habits. :ph34r:

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I've got to follow up with what Dan said. I'll make rough sketches, and figure out any key dimensions that I actually need. But my actual 'plan' is more like a procedure. I'm not that good, and sometimes I have long breaks where I can't work in the shop. Having a rough plan written down about what I was doing helps a lot.

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Once more it depends pn what you call plans.

I used to draw detailed plans (drawings) of everything I made. Now 18 years later , I just do a quick sketch of the various dimensions and go from there.

That is unless it is a complex project such as a complete kitchen, then I do complete plans.

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After reading this thread and with some tribulation of offending someone, of which is not my intent but to only offer some clarification to this subject as I see it. I must first admit that I was an engineer for a construction company that built heavy industrial projects so my observation and following statements are certainly colored by my previous experiences.

First I believe that every project starts with a plan of some kind. This plan could be either a mental picture of a simple project of which someone has seen before or has imagined, a simple sketch, or a fully developed drawing including details, cut list, and so on, that was either purchased or made by the user. And of course there are many variations between these examples. Second chastising anyone who only uses prepared plans, as being somehow limited is grossly unfair. To interpret another persons and sometimes your own, drawings or design and coming out with a well executed project takes a great deal of imagination and the ability to execute turning an abstract idea into a real world functioning object. Thirdly, everybody has limitations and the most successful understand their own and learn to work around or with them.

Miles.

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