Laying out "or" copying a pattern

What I do

Jim Reed @ Tallahassee

>for complex parts. I glue up 2x4 pieces and then make a replica. You can learn alot about building a part using junk lumber. Full size part lets you see the curves and understand the piece. You can even improvise on the original pattern. When you finally get a part you like, it is easy to make a real one with good lumber. Best part is that next time you have something good to go by. Good luck with your project.

Re: Laying out "or" copying a pattern

thomd

>In the old days, what I would have done was try to figure out how many xeroxs I could get it on and I would have made a copy from the book, put some alignment marks, cut it into parts and blown them up, then assembled them with the comon lines.

These days I would take the picture on pages 141 or 142 photo them and load the digital picture into a simple cad program, draw the parts full size in virtual space, and then I could print off perfect drawings of any parts I need. The big advantage to the CAD approach is you can do everything from use it to do a furniture layout on 2D paper to making patterns in different sizes, to using it as a known departure for other designs. It's much more versatile. If you liked a particular detail you could expand it and change aspect rations to make design on a timber frame or a cross section for a molding plane. Or you could copy in designs from either of those sources to make special deatail for a particular room. So you could go to a client copy their chair rail, and use that detail in the arm and turnings with minimal design time. If your shop burns down, all your drawings could be stored in your free space at Yahoo.

You can also copy the plan with a transparency grid over it or draw your own grid, then loft the parts from the various intersections.

Keep in mind, though, that this is country woodwork, you can simply observe how the main arm contours the seat (I presume you already have the seat) and work from there in some cardboard. Do a few patterns until you get one that flows. Use some curves of splines to make sure the lines are strong, trust your own eye. I have patterns like that I did for paddles decades ago, and they still stand up today.

Re: Laying out "or" copying a pattern

woodburnbob

>I'm curious about your CAD program. Photographs of furniture and cabinets show foreshortening with visual perspective. With your CAD program, can you scan a photo, load it into CAD, hypothesize camera height and distance to the object, then remove perspective and thus produce 2D front, side and top elevations? I know the opposite can be down even with cheapo CAD, wherein you produce front, side, top elevations and then define/control point-of-view for various 3D representations. I'm curious if you can do the obverse.

Re: Laying out "or" copying a pattern

thomd

>Mine won't, but what I do about that is just lay square lines in over the picture regardless. So I am kinda the digital version of the person in the gallery squinting over their thumb. Sure my subject may be distorted, but there are usually parts of the pattern that are proportional, some dimensions are given, or I will supply the proportion. For instance I can really easily draw squares in cad, just stretch them over top of the picture and drop them in there I will decide what line to follow, and which one to fall out of. I now have a box over the picture, and I will go to the next detail. After I have the template I will rescale the whole thing to whatever my size is. It certainly is preferable to have square departure points.

I was going to do a little demo for you but I found something more amusing. I like this Maxwell furniture. I might someday make one of those bench seats, and I make my own stair tansus, and like his. So I thought I would show an example of how quickly one could develop a language from some perspective pics. If you look here you will see a bench with legs that appear to flare:

http://www.maxwellfurniture.com/home.htm

I was going to redrawn that, scale it from dimensions etc... So I went looking for a stand alone picture but found these line drawings:

http://www.maxwellfurniture.com/home.htm

Look at the drawings midway down the page, perfect in every respect, or maybe they distorted them for this format, but with the picture, dimensions and line drawings a perfect example could be made in minutes.

Now keep in mind that even if I was a consumer I would have a bit of a job assessing whether this was a comfortable bench. As the maker I have technical and material demands, some might make a better product. Even though If I made that bench I would obviously be copying, I would have to add a lot of my own stuff to it also, I just don't have the detail, what chair heights and angles do I find comfortable. but you can see how even a simple cad program can dimension and produce shop drawings quickly.

I find that as maker, I do have some yacht packages that do the work for me to some extent, however getting a package for every type of work I do would cost thousands, yachts, sails, furniture, bikes, and many other areas. I think perfection can be the enemy of the good, and all one really needs is available in simple 2D, except where one is professional grade as with yachts. There are free specialty programs available so that can be an aid also. One thing about simple cad line drawing, like the one attached, is that everything is measured. I don't note dimensions on them it's all in the file I can measure, print, or create transfers for any part of it. If this was being made out of metal I could normally justify getting parts cut out using a waterjet. So any of the parts here could be converted into CNC instructions. I did build the table on the right. I didn't actually like the stretcher I chose here, it didn't look good in wood. Goes to show how drawings can diverge from what someting really looks like when it's built.