Lost Art Press is going to have a booth at the Woodworking in America show this year, Sept. 30-Oct. 2 in Covington, Ky. And as Eddie Murphy once said: “We need eye-catcher.”
So I’ve begun sketching out some booth furniture, including a set of wooden dividers that are almost 6’ tall. I based them on a vintage pair that I have in my shop at home. I don’t think they were manufactured – they look like the work of a blacksmith.
SketchUp is the perfect tool for this sort of silliness. I put the dividers on my scanner, took a 300 dpi scan of them and then imported that photo into SketchUp. Using the “Scale” tool under “Tools” in the menubar, I enlarged the photo until it was almost 6’ tall.
Then I just drew shapes over the photo. Less than 20 minutes later, I had templates that I could print out full-size on my cheesy laser printer and tape together. Then it’s all work on the band saw, followed by some drawknife and spokeshave work.
I’m trying hard to think how I could actually use these dividers – my plan is to make them a fully functional tool. Perhaps we can use them to step off where we are going to plant some more boxwoods in the yard.
— Christopher Schwarz