April 17th Meeting of SF Bay Area SAPFM

[TheWoodWiz]

The next meeting of the SAPFM Bay Area Chapter will on Saturday April 17 at the home of member Tim Killen.

Tim is both an accomplished woodworker and an expert at using Google Sketchup. He’s a weekly contributor to Fine Woodworking’s Design.Click.Build. blog. You can find out more by following this link: 

http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2009/07/killenwood-increasing-woodworking.html

The agenda for the meeting is as follows:

1. A short tour of Tim’s projects, including some furniture and an old growth redwood timber frame.
2. A short presentation on SketchUp which will emphasize the process of building classic furniture from 3D models developed using SketchUp.
3. Meet in the shop where there will be pieces under construction using full-size templates created from SketchUp.
4. A discussion of future plans for the chapter.

If you live near the Bay Area and are interested in learning about your local SAPFM chapter, please send an Email to [email protected].

 

[TheWoodWiz]

On Saturday, April 17th the San Francisco Bay Area SAPFM chapter held its second meeting at the home of member Tim Killen. 11 members were in attendance.  The meeting started out w/ a tour of some of the many fine furniture projects Tim has built. The living / dining area is furnished w/ a panoply of Windsor chairs, each a representative of one of the common 18th century American types. Other highlights from the extensive tour was a grandfather clock w/ 18th century rope pulleys, a William & Mary walnut highboy, mahogany Chippendale display cabinets, and a comfortable Sam Maloof style rocker.

The tour moved onto a small timber framed cottage that Tim had built entirely from old-growth redwood. Samples of the joints used were shown. All framing members were joined using neatly cut traditional through mortise & tenons. Even the small mullioned windows were made in the traditional fashion, w/ the mullions joined w/ half lapped and mitered joints.

After the impressive tour we sat down for an overview of Sketchup.  Tim pointed out that the free version available for public download has all the
features one needs to design furniture. He showed us how a scanned image of a drawing by Sam Maloof that appeared in a Fine WoodWorking article was used to create full-size plans for the chair he built. The outlines for the parts were drawn on top of the scanned bitmap creating a part that will reproduce exactly as shown on the original drawing. Various tricks and quirks were discussed about Sketchup, lending some valuable insight on how Sketchup works.

Tim demonstrated how the x-ray view of the joint work was a valuable tool for visualizing how the intricate joints for a tray top tea table would come together. He also showed us how full size cutting templates are easily made by gluing full size printouts of the model onto thin plywood. He stressed that Sketchup allows him to do all the design and visualization work ahead of time, so by the time he enters the shop he can execute the project efficiently.

Next was tour of his shop and the projects underway. A number of his tricks and techniques were discussed
and demonstrated.

The meeting concluded with the group sharing some potential ideas for our next meeting. These will be finalized and
communicated in the next few weeks.