Traditional approaches in woodworking are generally reliable and efficient. If you know something has worked well for other woodworkers for a few hundreds years, you can likely assume that adopting it will be a good way to accomplish what you want to do. But the traditional approach isn’t always the best method forever, and when … Read more
With SketchUp, you can use a photo of a piece of furniture to make a model of the piece. From that model you can develop your plans for building a reproduction. Here’s an example using the Shaker Stepback Cupboard made by Glen D. Huey for our April 2010 issue. I swiped the image off the … Read more
How productive would you be in the shop if you tried to build furniture from blocks of Silly Putty coated with Crazy Glue? Imagine the mess if one board stuck to another automatically and both parts stretched and distorted if you tried to move one. This is exactly what happens if you try to make … Read more
Next year I’ll be teaching two classes on using Google SketchUp for designing woodworking projects, and a new class about making authentic Arts & Crafts period details. In April, I’ll be teaching for the first time at Annapolis Woodworks, in Annapolis, Maryland, with a weekend workshop on SketchUp, April 21-22. In August, I’ll be returning … Read more
The Woodworking in America conference is an opportunity to indulge in sensory overload, and for the third year in a row, I’ll be doing my part to keep your head spinning by teaching two different sessions on using our favorite design and planning tool, Google SketchUp. On Friday morning at 9:30 and Sunday morning at … Read more
One of the secrets of working effectively in SketchUp is keeping control of all the bits and pieces in your model. The more they look (and act) like individual hunks of wood, the closer modeling is to playing around in the shop. My thinking is that every object that would be an individual piece in … Read more
I will be at the Atlanta Woodcraft store teaching a three-day weekend class on using SketchUp, Friday July 15 through Sunday July 18. There are a couple of seats available if you want to join me in learning how to use the software that we use here at Popular Woodworking Magazine for planning our projects. … Read more
