Well said Tom...

The more I work with wood, the more I realize how much I don't know
about design and proper proportion.

Nothing looks more absurd and "amateurish" than a well
constructed but poorly designed & out of proportion
piece of furniture.

I've made a few (too many) but I'm taking more time lately
with design research and less about "can I build it".

Lou

In article 1114036873.809666049cc8ac59312a28727017eaf5@teran ews, Tom
Watson wrote:

On 19 Apr 2005 13:31:20 -0700, "foggytown" wrote:

Making a nice but not fancy small round dining table. Time to cut the
legs. Says Norm, "We want the legs to be 28 3/4 inches." What? It
would betray his carpenterial integrity to round it off to 29"?
Someone is going to sit down at it someday and embarass him by
observing that the table seems to be about 1/4" high?

Sheesh!

FoggyTown


The big numbers on your tape are feet

The next biggest numbers are inches.

The next order of magnitude is half inches.

The third order is quarter inches.

The next is eighth inches.

The little bitty lines are sixteenths of an inch.

Some tapes have thirty seconds and sixty fourths but most people can't
see them.


They can, however, be measured by other means.


Cabinetmakers work to about a sixty fourth for gross dimensions and to
about the thickness of a piece of copy paper (avg. 0.010) for mortise
and tenons. When we get to the level of dovetail interfaces we have
to consider the RH and the EMC to calculate.


Nahmie usually works from an existing prototype that most people would
consider to be in proportion. Would it kill the piece to make the
legs one quarter of an inch longer? Not the pieces that Nahmie is
usually dealing with.


Let's take a Goddard-Townsend Block Front:

The drawer faces are ten and one quarter inches wide.

Would it hurt the proportion of the piece to increase it to eleven
inches or reduce it to ten?


Yes it would.


Why?

Because each rectangle fits in with another rectangle that fits in
with another rectanglel - and they all fit perfectly.

That's why the piece is in a museum.



If you know enough to know what you can mess with, you're fine.

If you don't know what it means - cut the damned leg to 28-3/4 and be
done with it.