Friday, April 10, 2015
SketchUp for Woodworkers: Creating Compound Miter Joints
Popular Woodworking Magazine: If you are like me – compound miter joints always make me a little nervous – your blood pressure rises a little when you have to draw or cut a compound miter joint. So I am always thankful for SketchUp, where I can build a prototype and make angle measurements to assist in setting up my table saw or compound miter saw.
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2 comments:
I always feel like I'm cheating when I model up a complicated joint or piece of furniture on sketch up instead of just drafting it out on paper because sketch up gives me all the answers. Before I knew sketch up I hand drafted projects and figured everything out by hand (granted, I was much younger and wasn’t making anything too complicated). On sketch up it is so easy to find exact dimensions and angles that can easily be converted to wood, so often your measurements are more exact but there is something gratifying about staring at your table saw or miter saw wrapping your head around a cut you have to make. I sometimes found myself relying too heavily on computer programs to help me plan out a project and while I do need it to model stuff, it is not always necessary for things as simple as a compound miter cut (which I guess are fairly complicated). I need to make sure I don’t use all the modeling tools I know now as a crutch.
Drew and I had a conversation about this briefly and I agree with Drew in someways. Sketch-up or any computer aided drafting is a crutch but only if you were supposed to or are saying that you made this all in an old-fashioned or traditional way. I think of Sketch-up as a tool and if the product is not the model itself it is just a step in the process. i think it is important to know that it is an interchangeable step and should not be thing you have to do to make a joint. you should be able to make anything if you are down in the shop granted you have all of your materials but if you can t without sketch-up then it is a "cop out". tools like this and the tools in the shop should all be helpful to you and your knowledge of which ones to use to keep you safe and to build something in the best way possible are all part of being a craftsman. just know the difference.
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