A Rumination on Building Things

Building the drafting table or, for that matter, any of the benches in the shop is an interesting kind of improvisation. I say improvisation because it involves planning and a lot of spur-of-the-moment decision making. Before I build anything, I always make drawings - often dozens of them. This is really a process of thinking - working out the salient details of the design: what characteristics do I want the table to have?; how do I make it structurally sound?; what are the tricky parts of the design that deserve special attention?; etc. In the case of the drafting table, two things concerned me: how to make the drawing surface stiff and how do I hinge the table. Many hinge ideas were worked out until the simple decision to use door hinges was made. I think that is the reason for the drawings: something that seems complicated occupies the drawings for a long time until you come to a simple resolution.

During building, I use the final drawing, which is usually a simple 2D sketch with dimensions, in an "advisory capacity." That is, the drawing gets me started - for example, with a basic frame with dimensions - but I have already internalized the details of building and can make changes as I want them. Fortunately, with "glue and screw" construction, there are many moments when you are letting glue dry and have a moment to assess your progress. This is usually when the design gets altered, simplified, or, in some cases, expanded.

The drawings leave an enormous amount of detail out. This is because decisions like "how many screws should I use to attach this brace?" or "how am I going to join these 2x4's at right angles?" are left to when those questions must be answered. This is the improvisational step. In a sense, the sketch is a skeleton of the essential structure. In the drafting table, I used many different joining techniques: screwing braces on edge with glue (no way to clamp these), plates (where I could adequately clamp but had to attach to end-grain), and corner bracing (for example, where 2x4's join at right angles and screwing would be into end-grain). You generally have a choice of more than one joining technique and I tend to leave that choice until I am doing the building and the problem is in front of my face. In this project I used the router and routing table sparingly and so a ton of joining options were not even considered.

Another thing that happens is that I often omit things in the design. For example, the drafting table was going to have a bottom board and cross bracing using tensioned threaded rod. I was worried about the stiffness of the frame. When I got the basic frame built, I could test how stiff it was and, so far, I am happy with it. If I get dissatisfied, I will add the stiffener. This kind of design approach uses more thinking and drawing then building and if the design is modular then I can stop when I "feel" that I have what I want. During building, I also realized that when the drafting table was down I could use it as a table - in this function, the design is a little weak as the table-top is supported on the hinge-end and in the middle but not on the opposite end of the hinges. If I find myself using it a lot as a table and it feels unstable then I will add a rest for that side - this is the kind of thing you can do easily with this kind of approach to building.

I wish I had purchased a jointer and planer years ago. I have build over a dozen work-tables over the years and have always made due with raw lumber (with only one exception). This to me seemed like the "simplest" approach but I was mistaken - it is perhaps one of the more complicated for the simple reason that nothing is really straight or flat and you spend a lot of time trying to adapt to this reality. It is a design style in its own right. For example, I realized long ago that having "flexible legs" on a table allowed them to wiggle just enough to eliminate small differences in length and angle. If you used big legs - such as 4x4's, the tables can essentially settle themselves into a very sturdy position - particularly if they are holding something heavy.

One last comment is about aesthetics - the drafting table is in no way a piece of furniture: it is a tool. To make it into a piece of furniture would vastly complicate the job as one would want to make the joints nice, use fancy wood, etc. I think that we spend too much time on that aspect of design and indeed it is a kind of trap: you cannot easily leave details out of the drawn design and as such the opportunity for improvisation is lost or at least greatly reduced. I love beautiful furniture but to use that as an aesthetic ideal leads many of us to buy things that we want rather than build them for ourselves - this is a genuine loss. I certainly looked at the available drafting tables and if I were to apply "money value of time" economics, I might not easily justify building the thing myself but that misses the entire point - it was fun to do!