Using Wood Working Plans

Wood work requires talent and patience. It also takes attention to detail. Measurements have to be got right and things have to fit. Parts must be symmetrical. Angles must be perfect. On top of all this, an object has to be robust and good-looking. That is a very tall order and so the furniture maker, cabinet maker or carpenter needs all the help he or she can get. One of the best forms of help is to follow a set of wood working plans.
A good set of woodworking plans should show an exploded diagram of the object in question, say, a garden bench for the patio. The plans for such a bench could include recommendations for the wood to be used, for example, hardwood because it will be exposed to the elements, a range of appropriate sizes, say minimum one metre and maximum three metres and how long the project should take to complete, say, 24 man hours. The plans might also give a complexity rating: novice, intermediary or skilled.
Wood working plans are not there for dumbing down the creation of an item, although their function is to make creating it easier. The plans will give you measurements so that you do not have to work them out for yourself, although you may decide to make the object 10% bigger,for instance.
You could for example that the plans are there so that you do not have to keep reinventing the wheel. They take some of the drudgery out of creating something and permit the carpenter more time to get on with the actual production process.
In spite of the fact that people use wood working plans, it does not mean that everybody who uses the same plans will produce identical objects, say, furniture. Two people might use the same plans for a garden bench, but come to a decision to finish their bench with different edge patterns, a different back or different legs.
The plans will give sizes and suggestions, but for the craftsman, they can be just pointers, sizes, the real ingenuity goes on in the mind. A little twirl here, an extra flourish there - the true craftsman will use his wood working plans only as a reference for the tedious, but critically necessary measurements, the detail will come from his head.
There are a few places that you can find wood working plans. Traditionally, craftsmen or hobbyists would go to craft shops, home improvement stores or even the library, but these days, it is simpler to find precisely what you want on the Internet. Not only that, but the plans you find in books are necessarily small and the centre crease in a book can mean that a photocopy will become distorted, whereas a download from the Internet can be printed out neatly and enlarged very easily.
If you decide to use the Internet for your wood working plans, try to find a site that specializes in this sort of plans, because there are a lot of plans about that are just a bit too vague to be of any use to anyone but the expert, whereas a good set of wood working plans will enable even a complete novice to make a very decent object of furniture.

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