rilanda

I have been retired now 20years, worked all my working life in woodwork, ultimately retiring from teaching furniture manufacture and production, with timber technology a specialist subject. My love of wood and woodwork stems from the early age of eight years old, my first introduction to lathe turning came when I was about 11years old, by the age of 13 I had built my own lathe from an old treadle sewing machine table, a headstock complete with bearings and an old electric motor. Owned a lathe of one description or another since then, a time period of well over 60years. Love working on my lathe and enjoy making items of furniture for the family. sadly I can no longer find the time to follow my hobby now for my wife is now disabled and a great deal of my time is taken up with her needs. A great deal of my working life has been in producing drawings for the shop fitting company I worked for; these drawing were construction details of all the fixtures and fittings the company was to produce. These drawings were produced on a very large drawing board about 30feet long and 30 inches wide. but now I produce working drawings for all the projects I make on my computer using a CAD program. The Cad program I use is Turbo Cad version 12 which is by today's standards an old version I think it is now up to version 19. I have been using Turbo Cad for about 16 years, preferring it to other Cad programs I have tried. I produce drawings for most of my projects in 3D which is easy and convenient allowing me to view the finished project all round without a shaving being made. The drawings are produced to detail including all joints; the 3D drawing is easily converted to Orthographic for working drawings and I produce an exploded version of the 3D to show construction in detail. This exploded diagram also allows me to work out assembly and any assembly problems that may occur. One other advantage is that Turbo Cad allows me to determine the finished size of every component in the project which allows me to prepare an accurate cutting list; I find it to be one heck of a tool. As my old boss used to say better to scrap a piece of paper than to scrap a load of timber. Many of the projects I have shown on here I still have drawings for stored on my computer. Some of the older projects were set out using traditional drawing board & tee square and although I still have these drawings they are not easy to make copies from. Love working with wood and equally love drawing and constructing the project in my mind before it is made. The computer lets me do that very effectively, allowing me to see this project before I have cut the first piece of wood.

-- Bill, Nottingham. Remember its not waiting for the storm to end, but learning to dance in the rain that counts. If you dont make mistakes, you make nothing at all.