Do you find designing furniture difficult? I sure do. Thankfully, we don’t have to design in a vacuum. To simplify your design process: team up for success! Whenever possible, I try to run my designs by at least one other woodworker. In many cases, that other woodworker will come up with ideas and solutions you wouldn’t have thought of. And even if you don’t include all of their ideas, the conversation generated by the collaborative process will help unlock your creativity.
Team Up!
One of my favorite people to collaborate with is Brian Benham. Brian is a top-notch craftsman/designer and he’s well-versed in SketchUp. In fact, you can learn SketchUp directly from Brain with his Intro to SketchUp Course in the Guild. With a quick Zoom call and Brian’s quick drafting skills, we can often hash out complex design concepts quickly and easily.
Just for fun, we decided to record one of those sessions as I began designing the Shop-Made Mortising Jig. The presentation is somewhat raw and unfiltered as we didn’t know what we were going to do with the recording. The more I thought about it, I realized that this kind of content is often missing from our current options. You’re probably used to being told what to cut and how to cut it. But how often is it explained WHY something is being cut to a particular size or in a particular way?
What Do You Think?
I suspect this won’t be everyones cup of tea, but I’m guessing many of you will really enjoy it as it really shows you how you can simplify your design process. That said, please let me know if you found this useful. Obviously this particular discussion is about a simple mortising jig. But the really cool stuff happens when we collaborate on furniture pieces. We’re more than happy to share that if the interest is there.