Posts made by Sawduster

Wondering if I have broken a rule of etiquitte here by posting the SU file as well as a jpg of my amatuerish furniture pieces. I see most everyone else posting only "stills" of their stuff and not the SU files. Was wondering if it is storage capacity, protection of your work, or some other issue. I like to have a lot of my stuff from home available to me for posting, and so upload a lot of stuff to my storage at my website so I can get to it when I'm goofing off on my day job. My stuff is just play, so I don't care if someone who can benefit from it downloads it for their own use. Fact is, that'd make me happy. But, like I said above, my stuff is amatuerish in comparison to some of the stuff I've seen here.

Haven't gotten around to exploding this and showing all the parts, but here is a tallboy chest I may make in wood one of these days.

http://www.sawdustersplace.com/Sketchup%20files/Tall%20Case.skp

Man, turn a danged old cast iron pony pipe clamp into "Art". Great job, Dave.

Garfield,
Over the many years I've been playing with computers (back to the days of the Commodore VIC20 if anyonbe remembers that) I have tried on several occassions to use a number of different CAD type programs and could just never "get it". Not saying that SU is CAD but it sure seems a lot more useable to me than the other stuff.

You can make your drawings as simple or as detailed as you like. For woodworking, I use it to develope detail plans right down to the M&Ts and dovetails. By doing detail plans, I run into those "issues" on the computer screen instead of after I've cut an expensive piece of timber a quarter inch too short.

I've got a few completed plans on this page on my website: http://www.sawdustersplace.com/Sketchup%20files/SketchupPlans.htm Just click on the "stills" to download the SU files and mess around with them. Take stuff apart, move it around. Maybe that'll help some with learning.

Biggest advice I can give you is to make components of each piece of "wood" in the project.

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.

Wondering if I have broken a rule of etiquitte here by posting the SU file as well as a jpg of my amatuerish furniture pieces. I see most everyone else posting only "stills" of their stuff and not the SU files. Was wondering if it is storage capacity, protection of your work, or some other issue. I like to have a lot of my stuff from home available to me for posting, and so upload a lot of stuff to my storage at my website so I can get to it when I'm goofing off on my day job. My stuff is just play, so I don't care if someone who can benefit from it downloads it for their own use. Fact is, that'd make me happy. But, like I said above, my stuff is amatuerish in comparison to some of the stuff I've seen here.

Alan,
Thanks for the compliments. Went and too a look at your post with the DT templates and knives. Like the idea of altering that utility knife blade to work better as a marking knife, and the DT templates are cool too. I've got a soft spot in the heart for layout and marking tools.

The main reason I got involved with Sketchup was to help in my woodworking hobby. I seldom use other folks' plans for stuff, generally building from either an idea in my head or from a picture from a magazine or advertisement with some overall dimensions.

In the process of learning Sketchup, I've designed a few simple furniture pieces, some of which I had built previously, others that I may build at some time. This bowfront table is similar to one I made some time back, though I didn't use cabriole legs on that one.

The Sketchup file contains several scenes, some of the overall table, then an exploded view showing the joinery used, and finally a profile of the cabriole leg which could be used to create a full sized pattern if one were wishing to do so. I've not included any dimensions, though someone could add those themselves using the dimension tool. My method of work is to start with overall dimensions for major parts, then fit the remaining pieces individually. I find this method works best for me as wood has a tendency to "move" when the weather changes. Since woodworking is seldom done to tolerances of less than 1/64th inch, a measurement clearly visible to the human eye, small errors, even 1/128th inch, seem to aggregate rather than cancel each other out, so marking pieces directly from the pieces then are meant to house etc. works better for me than just cutting things to dimensions on a drawing.

Anyway, here's a jpg of the table and a link to the sketchup file.

http://www.sawdustersplace.com/Sketchup%20files/BowTable.skp

Gotta say, that does a lot more for me than the old fashioned hand drawn construction detail drawings we did in the olden days of drawing boards and blue line machines.

I've been looking for a haul of wood like that for a long long time. THANKS!!!

I used some 1/8" diameter mild steel rod from Home Depot. I had to get that one done in a hurry, so no time to order any high carbon steel online. Seems to work ok, so I'll use up the rest of it before order drill rod or something else.

Well, lets try this again. With the holidays and visitors from out of town time just went flying by with none left for cruising the www, so I'm just now getting around to posting my captured wedge French Marking Gauge. Managed to complete a real one in mesquite and ship it off as a gift to a young woodworker on a woodworking forum, and he was nice enough to take the time to provide me with a photo.

Here's the still from the skippy.

And here is the pic of the one in the real world.

And last, but not least, the skippy: http://www.sawdustersplace.com/Sketchup%20files/MarkingGauge.skp

I provided the recipient of the gift one with a total of four rails and a second pin for three of them. He'll use 3 of his mortice chisels to mark the location for the second pin in three of the rails and there-by have dedicated mortice gauges for each of them.

Soon he'll be merging the two and adding firemen to the group.

Very cool cats!

So, you got the rest of the solar system, too? Cool, and even properly on the axi (is that plural for axis?).

Dave,
Very cool. Been meaning to make me some of those but always something else going on in the shop, or else shop time gets severely limited by stuff like holidays.

Or else some other tool making project takes precedent. Right now I'm making some French Style marking gauges that use a sliding captured wedge to lock the arm in place rather that some sort of screw etc. Popular Woodworking had plans for one a while back and I've made a SU model to work from. If I remember I'll post it tonight when I get home.

Yeah, that cabriole leg tut is a great one, and you can use the same sort of procedure for bracket feet.

Extremely accurate bevel angles on chisels and plane irons is something of a recent "requirement" in handtool woodworking. I think it stems from a lot of folks migrating from totally machine woodworking backgrounds.

That old style Stanley does have that flip down "gauge" which is plenty accurate for me, but the gauge being made of plastic does not give promise of more than minimal longevity.

Those cut to length templates are a great idea, sort of like a story stick in woodworking. Quicker and more accurate than measuring each piece individually.

Both are quite nice. Hard to think of both, with such differing styles, being in one house. But, from the pics, looks like a rather large abode.

On one of the woodworking forums I frequent several of us handtool neanderthals decided to help out a young slightly mentally challenged member by providing him with some handtools which were "extras" in our shops. One of the items I sent him was a guide used for sharpening accurate bevels on chisels and plane irons (blades) and I also knocked together a shop made jig for repeatable angle settings with the jig. It is a simple jig, but he wanted a bit of a tutorial on using it, so I knocked out a quick Sketchup of the guide and the jig and exported "stills" of the process for the tutorial. While the guide is not pictured in great detail or even completely to scale (I was working from memory and didn't have it to refer to) I think it gets the point across. Anyway here are the stills I used in the tutorial and they saved at least a thousand words each.

Preparation for using the jig.

the beginning step.

Final position before snugging the blade holder down.

I tried and I tried and I couldn't get it to turn on. Batteries must be dead.

Cool!