Saturday, October 26, 2013
Full-scale Drawing for Woodworkers
Popular Woodworking Magazine: Here’s some expertise from Freddy Roman, professional furniture maker, on the use of full-size plans in your woodworking. Even if you don’t have a background or experience in drafting, or the desire to draw in full size, it’s essential that you know the basic terms. Freddy not only explains those terms really well, but he also points out the practical usage for each major plan angle of a well-drafted project.
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6 comments:
Honestly I don't really see the use of this article. Sure knowing the views is important but to someone who has a basic understanding of drafting it's nothing new and to those who have never drafted before, this article doesn't really give detailed enough explanations to be useful. Sure knowing the basic definition and use can be good but without more detail about how to actually draw or use these views, this isn't much help. I realize that you couldn't include a totally complete breakdown of full scale drawing, at least in a single article, but maybe they could run a series explaining in more detail about how to draft for woodworkers.
Where exactly was the article part of this article? I do not understand this at all. A guy wrote three sentences about a top, front, and side view. First of all those three things exist in exactly the same way in normal drafting, there is nothing special about them, at least that he mentioned, that applies specifically to full scale drafting. Also it was rather comical that the introduction to his "article" was as long, if not longer, than the "article" itself. I also think its pretty funny that this article was on here even if it had actually consisted of real information because it would just be so ridiculous if the school of drama tried to switch over to full scale draftings. Also I was looking forward to hearing what this guy thought that full scale drawings could provide, that in scale drawings were lacking. I guess I will just have to google it.
I know a fair bit about drafting after my classes with Dick Block, so I already knew all about top, front, and side views. I've also worked in our shop enough to know that sometimes when we are creating smaller objects we will use full scale or large scale drafting. I have always found this very helpful when building things. The way I see it there is no reason to abstract the drawing from the object any farther then it has to be. When I have a full scale drafting I feel free and confident as I build because I can be much more confident in the correctness of what I am building. I wasn't sure if full scale drafting is something that just CMU Drama does or if it is a thing that people out in the real world really do. I'm very glad to see that it's a more wide spread practice.
I agree with Philip, I was hoping for a more elaborate or insightful article about drawing for woodworkers or furniture makers. Maybe something that spoke a bit more about patterning, but not quite. I mean, we almost always draft in full scale (when working digitally - right? That's how cad works, when you want a 12" line you draw a 12" line. However, we don't always detail or plot in full scale unless it's necessary to provide the appropriate detail needed to produce the part. The introduction kind of hyped up the article a bit, so I'm not sure what the end goal was for the author, but I generally expect more the articles I read in Popular Woodworking.
I guess it's good to know that drafting has application in places other than just ground plans and such, but I still don't understand the true purpose of this article. Telling us that there are views called "Front View," "Side View," and "Plan View" do not really provide new information to anyone. It is not hard to deduct what a view is showing us if it clearly tells us that it is a FRONT View. It seems as though the article could have gone into detail about at least one other part of drafting/scale drawings.
The most interesting, and substantive it turns out, thing about this article are the comments at the bottom. People really are kind of funny when they want to be "right." I especially love the guy at the very bottom explaining 1/12th scale to the author as if he had never thought of the possibility of drawing in anything other than full scale. That being said, I agree this isn't really an article at all, it's simply a link to Popular Woodworking's line of plans they want you to click on and buy. The author's suggestion that full scale drawing allows him to get a "sense of proportion" of a piece is ridiculous, as proportion doesn't change with scale. The only thing sensible he says about full scale is that he can take patterns directly off the drawing. This is and has always been why carpenters of different types, notably boatwrights, chose to draw full scale. Especially when it comes to boat building, until the advent of CAD (and some would say notwithstanding the advent of CAD) there was no other way to produce a pattern for the complex and changing curvature of a boat frame than drawing it out as part of a full scale "lofting" of the lines of the boat. The three views described in this article as front, side and plan, were drawn overlaid on one another in views known to loftsmen as waterline, buttock and station. The process of mapping all those lines as they arced around the complex curvature of the hull into "fair" shapes that all agreed from view to view and described a cohesive picture of the sculpted object was a little bit of math and a little bit of art and a little bit of magic. The guys (unfortunately not too many women in that trade back then) in the shop who knew how to do this well were very valuable and guarded their secrets carefully, often passing them down to their sons as a guarantee of future employment. So when dealing with anything small enough to be drawn full scale and complex enough to warrant it, this approach can offer the builder advantages that no amount of CAD modeling can. Sometimes I think you just have to get out of your head and into the shop.
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