Applying The Board Stretcher

[Dave R]

This morning I needed a model of a ladies makeup vanity for something. Rather than starting from scratch I spent a couple of minutes and modified a model of a small Becksvoort Shaker side table I'd drawn awhile back. I wish I had a board stretcher for real boards.

[mwm5053]

Ya wouldn't that be nice

[mrossk]

if you soak them in warm water and pull real hard you can get at least a couple inches out of them...

[Dave R]

Michael, I may have to try that.

[davidheim1]

It stretches the boards and adds a flip-up mirror, too. That's one smart tool.

[plesiosaur]

Here is a simple process that I use when I need to “stretch” a board that has dovetails and I cannot use Push/Pull without a lot of tedious editing; granted, it is not a one-does-it-all plugin but it is straight forward and it does work:

1. I make a copy of the component;

2. Make the copy of the component editable;

3. Use Chris Fulmer’s Zorro plugin to slice the component, I usually change the view to one of the cardinal views (Front, right, top, etc.) before I slice;

4. Once you have completed the slice, select the new portion of the component created by the slice by drawing a box around this new portion;

5. Now use the Move command and grab a corner of the new portion opposite the slice and stretch the board. You can either stretch the copy or the original depending on what you are doing.

[Dave R]

Thanks for that. It sounds like more work than the way I do it. There's no need to use Zorro in my process. Although there are some occasions when I do make a copy of a component to edit it, in this sort of thing I don't find a need to do that. I just edit the components in place.

Could you show us an example of how Zorro is used for your process?