Posts made by Sawduster

I think I like it without stretchers or aprons. I like the simplicity of the first one.

Only other thing I'd be tempted to try would be making it into a 3 leg table.

Here are some pictures of my only styleof cordless drills.

For small holes.

For holes a little larger,

and for large holes.

For solid panel door, the coopered method is about the only way I can think to go other than starting with really thick slabs and carving out the curve. The rail for the face frames might get quite tedious doing it that way, so a laminated bend might be a better option. It would add interest with the grain going perpendicular to the door and would also be a much quicker build, I think.

For a frame and panel door, I would do bent lams for the rails and either cooper a solid panel or use a double thickness of 1/4" hardwood ply. The individual thicknesses of the ply would easily bend to conform to the shape.

I like the second from the left, top row, though his and your favorites are sorta tied for second best.

Chris' book is available here: http://www.lostartpress.com/product/3513e08a-2f07-4616-8f2f-74017f296377.aspx

Some great ideas built into that bench. I like the planing hook as well as the board jack. My tail vise mostly serves as a place to store my bench dogs, though I have used it as a big clamp on a couple occassions to glue up a panel. But that is just me, and I understand other folks use the heck out of theirs. I only mention it since the one drawback I see to that bench is the limitation of benchtop space in which to drill dog holes. I use my hold fasts constantly at the bench and the mechanism cover for the tail vise precludes an operator side row of dog holes. Planing rabbets (rebates) and some other edge treatments need to be braced against movement across the width of the bench as well as to the end and I'll often use a batten held in place with hold fasts for those operations.

Also like the versatility of using a couple of pipe clamps as a front vise.

One of these days, when I get caught up in the shop, I'm gonna build a workbench from scratch. Right now I'm using a store bought that I've made some alterations to, replaced the cheapo front vise with a leg vise, added a thick front skirt with dog holes for my hold fasts, added a planing stop on the end.

I think the biggest mistake a lot of folks make is over-accessorizing a bench. They want to include every gadget they see out there. A simple, but versatile bench that works the way you work. Before CS's book, I looked all over trying to find a central repository for work holding methods, but found almost nothing. Going through old magazines, I found some stuff, but it was usually bits and pieces. I added a page to my web site some time back and posted some of the methods I use, and solicited stuff from other folks. If you're interested, here is link to the page.http://www.sawdustersplace.com/Workholding/Workholding.htm

Joe,
Great stuff you've got there. Especially like the plans page. I'll need to revisit your page when I've got some time. Thanks for the link.

I've just recently started using a few rubys with SketchUp and was wondering if there are some that lend themselves particularly well to woodworking design. I've got Cutlist and Exim and a couple others that are not quite as useful to me, as well soapskin . . . and sketchyphysics, both of which are mostly just fun to play with.

So, anyone got any other favorites they might want to share info on?

That is quite nice, Gidon. Question, though, since that is a "girl's bathroom unit", do you have a boy's unit?

In addition to designing detail furniture pieces, I find SU is also handy for describing how to do things in woodworking. The adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is very true, and having some way to quickly make a model of something to include with the vergage makes is a lot easier to explain processes, describe jigs etc. I use it on wood working forums quite a lot.

#3 would be very cool except that folks wantingto shove the stuff you or me might find distasteful would create numerous user names to post under and we'd still see their stuff.

Let me go get my running shoes, be right back. . . . OK, I'm back. Let me ask this, how much are you paying for the stuff you're looking for at the 3DW? Maybe you're getting what you're paying for. But with the investment of a little time and effort, perhaps you can get more than what you're paying for. And if your time is worth too much to waste it looking through stuff that you personally, individually think is junk in order to find some jewel which is the fruits of someone else's labor given to you freely, then put your money down and buy what you want from someplace selling the stuff.

Keep in mind that the stuff you see as junk is likely someone else's pride and joy. Something they put their heart and soul into. No, I don't work for Google, and I've never put anything in the warehouse, in fact I seldom go looking at stuff there. I pay for web space and have placed a number of my sketchup works on my site and you're more than welcome to them. I believe my sig line has a link to my website. But unless you're looking to build the furniture in those skippies, they probably way larger than what you want.

Everyone likes to be "published" and that is one of the things that makes the internet such an eclectic place with never a shortage of stuff to look at and learn. It's why folks with a whole ton of talent come to places like this to help us with less talent strive to improve. And they're giving of themselves freely, sometimes burning up their keyboards to be the first to respond to someone's question. Would that my employer got that sort of excitement from me when it pertained to my job.

Guess what I'm saying is don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Either take the horse or move on, but don't hold up the line of folks with horses they're willing to give away because the thorough bred you're lookin for isn't right there in the open.

Ducking and running for cover.

Yep, I do detail drawings of furniture to make in my woodworking hobby. Exploded views with dimensions, even parallel perspective full size printouts to use as patterns.

Some folks just got WAY TOO MUCH time on their hands.

Only time I've had SU get unstable was when I put a rather detailed and large model of a piece of furniture into the bed of a rather detailed and large model of a pickup truck. These each were done as separate models and I think I overloaded the non graphics oriented laptop I was working on which also had some other network and administrative type stuff running in the background.

Only thing I can say is cleanup the model, get rid of any geometry that is not needed, get rid of anything eating memory and reboot to reset all them things in the computer that need to be reset every now and again.

Didn't know if it was the board or an offsite link to some pics in one of the posts yesterday.

I, too, had tried several different CAD programs over the years, as well as some more basic drawing programs to draw up designs for furniture for my woodworking hobby. They were all either too basic or way too involved to learn as quickly as I wanted to get going. Heard about Google SketchUp on a woodworking forum, downloaded it, did the initial tutorials and some other stuff online and never looked back. An excellent tool at just the right level for getting results quickly, and for continueing to learn and explore.

I'm getting the same thing.

Cool. Thanks for the replies. I've been away from home and computer access for several days so haven't gotten back sooner.

I figured there were a variety of reasons, not the least of which being keeping your real "work" from being borrowed.

If someone can gain some insight into techniques or if they even wanted to use the stuff I've posted as plans for making a piece of furniture, that is fine with me. It has been awfully muggy in my part of the woods lately, so my woodworking has slowed down. Being able to design and "build" pieces in SU in air conditioned comfort is almost like being in the shop. And it helps to work out problems I might encounter when I actually go to build one of the pieces, saving wood and time.