Popular Woodworking Magazine: Many layout problems that seem to call for math can be quickly solved with a compass and a straightedge. Numbers can confuse and complicate the situation. What you need to know is how to make things fit –
not necessarily what numbers describe the lines and angles.
10 comments:
Remember in high school math class when everyone would complain about how we were never going to need to use any of the things we were learning?
Wow! It turns out that shit was actually kind of important because its applicable everywhere and can make your life so much easier if you just know where and when to use it.
I'm not going to pretend like I never uttered that phrase (after all, I'm still not sure when integrals are going to come in handy), but I definitely wasn't the worst of the bunch when it came to complaining about math. I mean, learning how to analyse The Catcher in the Rye isn't that practical either, but it sure does make you a much more intelligent, less ignorant, and overall more interesting person.
The point is, if you have an opportunity to learn something, LEARN IT.
Wow, these are basically the notes we took on the first day of drafting class. They're simple techniques that are helpful to know. There's really not that much to say about them. It just proves the age old idea that the basics of something really are important. I've used them quite a few times while drafting, when doing the same things with numbers would have taken much longer.
This is going to be a great article for Amish day in the shop. This is a good collection of basic simple geometric solutions to common problems. As we get farther into the digital age with advanced CAD projects I think that we loose sight of things like this which will allow for quicker layout and less cluttered drawings going to the shop floor. I personally need to look back on some of my notes from some of my basic hand drafting classes and I need to do further research into more of these simple layout techniques and memorize them. In the digital age I think we get complacent and with CNC machining I think that we get too invested in the new technologies and I feel that it has in my case caused my more basic skills to wane. I love CNC, I have drunk that cool-aid but I need to remember that I may not have a CNC router at times and I need to make sure that I can still implement the poor man's CNC when the real CNC is down for maintenance which these complex machines are frequently doing. It would be interesting to find where CNC becomes the most efficient means of layout and cutting and where good old geometry and skill with a saw can beat the machine.
I remember learning this in Pre-College and then again in the first week of drafting this semester. It is such a great "tool" to have at your finger tips and really simplifies things so much, I wish they had taught us this in middle school. It might have seemed a little complicated at first glance but once you really look at it it makes so much sense! And there are so many different things you can use these shortcuts for. Like PIa said, it is pretty funny how many things there are from our middle school and high school math class days that we use during our classes at CMU.
Another similar shortcut that I am fond of is when you have to split an awkward length into even sections, and you use a diagonal line that can be evenly divided by the number of sections you need instead of trying to do crazy math.
Geometry! Definitely one of my favorite classes in high school, and the best math class ever. Proofs were great, kinda. CPCTC! If you took geometry and remember that, then you pass. Remembering basic techniques, especially with a compass can be a god send. Good use of a compass in drafting can save you a lot of time, it can also help do those tricky things that you wouldnt get as close otherwise. I think it would be good for us all to review our compass skills now and then. The drafting and navigation kind. Amish day, I like it.
Admittedly it's the simple approaches such as these that I forget about often. And to go further, I had never learned a couple of the examples in the article. I'm not sure if that something about my former mentors and the education I received, or my approach to learning shop techniques and practices. I will certainly agree that all too often these days my colleagues and I are quick to revert back to CAD, even when it may be faster and more accurate to solve the issue manually rather tan digitally.
We learned most of this on the first day of drafting class however I have not really ever used this again. I used it once for Susan Tsu's class to make a color wheel but other than that all the drafting I have done has been a lot of tracing and visual copying and needing to know these things has not come into play. But like Joe Pino's lecture on measuring with objects from daily life, I think being able to do this when I do find a problem or need to create this I will look extremely impressive and it will be helpful at the same time!
Figuring out a custom miter between boards of different widths (like, say, in a planked deck which designers love so) can be a maddening exercise and a process for which CAD can be of little help as it is often in a "cut to fit" circumstance. Having a few tricks like this one in our pockets can be very helpful. Another similar trick is using what I've been told to call a "Spiling Block" to transfer lines, find the edges of odd shapes, and also find odd miters, like in this article. Even more troglodyte than the compass, for what it is, just a block of hardwood that fits in your hand, usually with one beveled edge, this little tool can be used in conjunction with a whole bag of useful tricks. Look up "spiling" if you're interested. I also wanted to mention a good use for the octagon trick explained in the article is as the second step in making a blank for the wood lathe. It takes the math and/or trial and error out of finding the right dimension to rip on the table saw.
We learned all of these tricks on the second day of drafting class with dick block. At first I found my self not really using them because it felt more natural to just measure, but after a few weeks of this I found that I was wasting time and making mistakes. It turns out that avoiding numbers and just using geometry works far better. In fact when they were coming up with math way back in the day they didn't have algebraic notation they only had geometric consents. So when Pythagoras was thinking about a^2+b^2=c^2 he was actually just talking about the sides of triangles and the literal squares that touched them. Sometimes we need to keep it simple and not over complicate the problems that we face.
Post a Comment