Do I Use Plans?

Let us first establish an understanding here. I am not a furniture artisan. I am not Krenov, nor do I ever wish to be. Fancy, designery furniture is fine for rich folks, but most of us use it every day just as a place to sit or set our coffee. I build things to be used, not displayed. And I am not exclusively a furniture 'craftsman'. I am a woodworker. If it has wood in it, I can build it. If you are looking for artistic inspiration, go here.

Keeping this in mind, I find that the vast majority of plans can be categorized very generally and are not suited to specific tasks for which I need a solution. For example, if I were to build a sewing cabinet for my wife, I could not find a plan that would store the types of things she requires. You can modify a plan but that can be problematic. The best thing to do is come up with your own.

A knowledge of basic joinery is required for this. For example, most shelves are installed in the sides of a shelf unit using a dado joint or a sliding dovetail, or a clever combination of the two. So pick one that works the best for you and that is your joint of choice. Similarly, drawer sides are usually attached to each other using through or half-blind dovetails. That is the traditional way. If this is what you prefer, look into ways of making those joints, a Leigh dovetail jig for example, master one, and that is your joint of choice. There are newer methods, such as routered mitre lock joints or plain dadoes with glue and brads, and you may prefer to start with one of these. Personally I prefer to use as close to the traditional joinery as possible because those joints are tested by time and hundreds of years of precedence. Remember, quality must not suffer or the piece is useless. However, in response to those purists out there with their bronze handplanes and hundred dollar chisels, I still say that there is more than one way to skin a small, furry, un-named creature. Find the joints that work the best for you then make them your own.

Why is this important? Once you know the basic joinery, then everything else is just a box, frame, or a platform with legs. After the joinery, you need to know the basic parts of what you are building. For example, a table has a top, legs, and apron and possibly some stretchers. There aren't very many parts involved. A shelf is two sides, a top, a bottom, a skirt or plinth of some kind, back, and shelves. A chair is just a seat with some legs and maybe some stretchers and a back. Once you know how to create a basic box, you can make shelves (no front), cabinets, dressers, or anything else like that. Then learn how to make a basic frame and you can make doors, or with slight modification, chairs.

The plans aren't really necessary. A story pole or a good drawing will help you keep your dimensions straight. Then it is just a matter of adding a bit of length for the tenons on each end of a stretcher, or a bit all the way around for a drawer bottom to fit into the dado in the bottom of the drawer sides. You will also need a good drawing to make your patterns from, if you are going to cut cabriole legs on the bandsaw for example.

Make sure your drawing is detailed. Draw in all of the joinery so that you can calculate the proper dimensions of a part. Make sure all of the dimensions are written in clearly. Don't make it too small, or you will have trouble reading and updating it. And don't worry if it is not a masterpiece. You should worry more about the accuracy of your measurements.

But how big or what shape or...? If you are making something like a chair, and you don't know how high to make the back, or how far off of the ground to make the seat, then you have to do some research. It is just as time consuming to find pictures and examples of what you like than it is to find plans. Look for pictures of the style and type of furniture you wish to build in library books. You can also go to furniture stores (probably a better idea) with a pencil and paper and a measuring tape hidden on your person. If they ask you what you are doing just tell them you have a small place and you want to make sure that it fits. If they put the hard sell on, just tell them that it was the only thing in the store you liked and it didn't fit. The point is that making measurements and looking at books with scale drawings of historical pieces will give you an indication of proportion.

It is important that you understand that the size of most chairs today was determined by the size of people about 300 years ago. It is a fact that people are larger and taller today. A standard windsor chair will not be as comfortable to a 6'5" person as it is to a 5'5" person. Thus you may want to make your pieces larger. Proportion is the most important design element of the furniture. It is not that the seat is exactly 18 inches off of the floor, but that the hieght of the seat off of the floor stays perfectly in proportion to the height of the chair back. Here is an example, although rudimentary.

Let us say that you are looking at a Queen Anne chair (although we will simplify the idea here) with a seat that is 18 inches off of the floor and the chair back rises 22 inches above the seat. Let us also imagine that you are a woodworker that is 6'5" tall and, after doing mockups with a couple planks and a saw horse (which, by the way is a very good idea), you decide you would be more comfortable if the seat were actually 21 inches off of the floor. Now. If you were to continue your drawing with the seat back rising the original 22 inches above the seat, you would be making a grave mistake. Using ratios, calculate the following solving for 'x':

    18 inches off the floor       21 inches off the floor
    ------------------------   =   -----------------------
    22 inches above the seat                  x

That same calculation can be used again if you are artistically inclined and want to make something the world has never seen. Make yourself a drawing or sketch that shows the piece in all dimensions, then do a mock up. Get some 2 by 4's and mock up the height and seat angle to find out what is comfortable. When you have your basic dimentions mocked up the remainder can be calculated using an amended drawing and the above calculation. Then you just have to find the wood, decide how to rough out, then smooth the parts, and cut your joints. "A little glue and some assembully", as Norm Abram would say and you are there.

I would leave you with one word of caution, however. And this is a mistake I have made in the past. Don't cut out all of the parts and then start fitting them together. Break the piece down into component parts. For example, if you are doing a panel sided blanket chest, make the front and back panels first (to ensure that they are the same size), then the side panels, then fit them together to measure out the bottom to be sure that your calculations were correct. Once you are sure of the bottom, make it and assemble. Then measure, cut and fit the top. Or, if you are building shelves, make the sides, then fit your dadoes or sliding dovetails, or whatever you are using. The top and bottom shelves will be glued on place so do those next. Then fit the main case together and take measurements for the back. If your shelves are NOT adjustable, do them then assemble. If they ARE adjustable, do them after assembly if you want. On a chair I start with the back legs, then front legs. You will have some kind of apron to hold them together so do that next then join them, but don't glue them yet. Then work on the back or the stretcher system so that your measurements will be more accurate. There is nothing worse than cutting everything out only to find that you didn't allow for the length of the tenons on your stretchers.

Boy am I a long winded bustard. I summary, however, you don't really need plans. Find an example and work up a set of measurements. Make any adjustments you like and create a working drawing, with all the dimensions and patterns for curved pieces. If you know which joints work best in an application select the one that works best for you. You don't need to know every joint that has ever been conceived. Just have a repertoire of joints that you can adapt to the situation. It is just like not needing every tool invented. There is more than one way to do anything. Fit your skill and tooling to the situation and go to work.

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Last updated December 1, 2006 • Site Map