Click here if you’re anxious and just want to see the fantastic woodworking plans I found.
Let me recap the story for you really quick. My daughter wanted a cedar hope chest made for her. She liked the one her grandmother had and wanted one like it. So I started looking online for chest plans. If you read my earlier post you know that the search didn’t work out all that well for me.
Those great free plans you find online … well, they weren’t so great after all. They were actually pretty bad. When I tried making the one that looked the most promising, it almost collapsed on me and ended up as firewood.
When I ran into my buddy Rick he showed me a great site online where I could find some good chest plans. No, they weren’t free, but at that point I was fed up with wasting my time on free project plans off the Internet and just wanted a high quality plan for my woodworking project. While Rick wasn’t making a hope chest like I was, he said that this site had all sorts of plans and I couldn’t go wrong.
Boy was he right. I checked out the site that he recommended to me and it didn’t just have a few plans, it had FOURTEEN THOUSAND woodworking project plans available. I was floored. This site would cover my project plan needs for life. It was a real one stop shopping site.
Click here to see the site Rick recommended to me
I was expecting to have to buy a single plan for $10 or $15 and I was ok with that. But I was extremely pleased to find that for one flat fee I got access to all 14,000 plans. Fantastic!
Once I went through the chest plans section of the site I found the perfect plan and downloaded it to take a look. Rick wasn’t kidding when he said that these plans were detailed yet simple. Step by step directions, detailed drawings, it was great. I couldn’t wait to head out to the shop and get started that weekend.
Well, soon enough the weekend came and I spent Saturday in the shop working on the cedar chest. The plans were as easy to follow as they looked. My daughter loved the end product. What do you think?
Click here to see the library of 14,000 woodworking plans!
The best place to start any major woodworking project is with a wood working plan. This starts your woodworking or scroll saw project off right!
Your finished piece will look much better and will be of a much higher quality if you start with the right plan. Well designed woodworking plans guide you through the entire project with clear and informative instructions and detailed illustrations.
You can buy a high quality plan online or you can sometimes find them for free. If you can draw you can even design your own plan.
Locating the right plan
If you can’t afford to pay for a high quality plan you might be able to find a suitable free pattern online. Most free plans you can find online are low quality and no real substitute for a high quality plan. High quality woodworking plans are available for low reasonable rates which make the low quality free plans less attractive.
Collections of project plans can be found, or you can find individual plans suitable for a specific project. You can find simple plan designs such as bird feeders, to more extravagant furniture design packages.
If you want a specific item you can find websites dedicated only to certain types of projects such as toys, puzzles, or even decor. These kinds of websites are easy enough to find with your favorite search engine
Your local library will often have books with plans or you can always check a nearby bookstore. Magazines for woodworkers usually have a few popular project plans in each issue. You can collect these plans by tearing them out of the magazines you buy.
A simple project is the best place to start when you are new to wood working. This will teach you about the techniques and how to read the plans without getting too stressed with complicated design. Once you have a few projects under your belt you can start more complex and intricate projects.
Be sure that you choose a high quality plan that is full of clear information and detailed instructions. Try and find plans which have diagrams and pictures so that you know what you should be doing. Think about buying a binder for your project plans so all of your woodworking plans are in one spot.
If you feel up to it, you can decide to not follow the plan as written and instead make a few minor changes. Just by changing a few steps in the plan you end up with a personalized project. Since most projects are stained with wood stain, you can add character to your piece by painting it instead.
Creating your own designs
Once you feel you are ready to take on a challenge you should consider designing your own plan. This sounds difficult but it is actually far easier than it seems. Always start by roughing out a design and then add details after you have the basics completed.
Material selection
Now is the perfect opportunity to choose which wood kind you’d like to use on your project. Be sure to calculate carefully to make sure you order enough wood to complete your project.
This is the time to buy any additional materials you may need to finish your project. Make a comprehensive list of other materials you will need and don’t forget quantities. Be sure to write down everything you will need, even paints or stains.
Don’t forget to write down any tools that you will need if you don’t own them already. By taking this list shopping you will be sure to get everything you need for your project.
Click here for the best woodworking plan site on the Internet.
So if you recall from my post the other day, I was looking desperately for chest plans for my new hope chest project. My mockups had failed miserably.
I decided I could at least make some progress by going and buying the wood I’d need for the cedar chest I was making. I hopped in the truck and drove down to the local hardwood supply store.
As luck would have it my buddy Rick was there. Him and I sat and talked about what we were working on. He started telling me about this place online where he got some good bunk bed plans.
As it turns out he had a great time building these plans. He said they were some of the most detailed plans he’d ever seen and they really make his woodworking project easy. Rick said the site had a ton of other plans and were bound to have plans for my hope chest project.
Well, i’d heard all I needed to hear. When I got home I went to the site he showed me and downloaded the best looking chest plan I found. I couldn’t wait to get started.
Hey there, it’s Matt. I thought I’d start off this website by telling you how I began my search for chest plans. I started mainly because my daughter asked me to make her a hope chest.
She had seen the cedar chest that my great-grandfather made for my grandmother and wanted one just like it. I’m a pretty decent woodworker, but when I tried to mock up cedar chest plans based on the original,the results weren’t all that pretty.
I decided I needed to go out and find a good set of professional plans. That couldn’t be all that hard, I figured, you can find everything on the internet!
Well, I was half right. I could find lots of plans. The problem was none of them were any good. They were either complicated, dull and boring, ridiculously difficult, or just plain incomplete.
Once I even found a bunch of free chest plans at a woodworking plan website and tried to build one but what I ended up with was so unstable and structurally unsound I ended up using it for firewood.
So what did I end up doing? That’s for another day, my wife is calling…
Click here if you’re impatient and just want to see the best woodworking plans on the Internet, period.
PS: Every woodworker likes to brag on his shop, so here’s a quick picture of mine!
