I like looking at woodworking books from the 1800s and up into the early 1900s. I find the plans they usually include to be almost works of art. Minimalistic in the info they present but complete. Clearly they expect the woodworker to apply his skills to completing the project. I believe it would also encourage a bit of creativity and originality since each woodworker will approach it in a slightly different manner. By contrast, these days it seems the plans have to give all of the dimensions of every last detail. From my experience drawing plans for various clients, I've found that I have to dimension things that I think should be self-explanatory. I wind up dimensioning both the mortise and its mating tenon which seems a bit redundant to me.
I was curious about creating a very simple plan in the style of those old books and came up with the plan, below. I used SketchUp and LayOut to create it. the background image of the old paper is there for looks but I think I'd remove it if it was going to be used as plan by anyone. Do you think it contains enough info so that you could build a table like this? Would you be comfortable working from something like this?
Here's the model I used for the plan:
I was curious about creating a very simple plan in the style of those old books and came up with the plan, below. I used SketchUp and LayOut to create it. the background image of the old paper is there for looks but I think I'd remove it if it was going to be used as plan by anyone. Do you think it contains enough info so that you could build a table like this? Would you be comfortable working from something like this?
Here's the model I used for the plan:
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