Cardboard and Sticks, Why an Interior Mockup is a Good Idea
What is a mockup? Generally it is a quickly built prototype.
• a mockup gives a good feel for the real space
• a mockup helps focus on usability and function rather than materials and small details
• a mockup allows you to interactively problem solve
• encourages experimenting, the materials are easy to work with and inexpensive
Mockups are commonly used by designers and builders to get real world feedback on a design or space. Yes there are drawings, but those don’t give the full-scale walk through the space experience. And in reality most people can’t visualize from a 1/2 inch to the foot scale drawing. In a yacht interior, often we are balancing taking an inch here and giving an inch there just to make everything work. Sometimes this is due to a constraint such as, the size of an appliance or equipment access and sometimes it is more related to what works for the specific customer. Is there room to walk through reasonably? Does that cabinet block my view? Will I hit my head going down the stairs? It really is much better to discover any problems before the actual building begins. Generally they are not that hard to fix, in fact you can work them out in the mockup quickly, then make sure that the changes are documented. This information does need to be incorporated into the build drawings and notes or it will do no good. This pdf, Mock-up notes , is from the documentation of a Northwest Trawlers 50.
Read MoreMaple with a Few Variations
I thought that it might be interesting to look at a very common north American wood, Maple. Now there are actually quite a few different species that grow in North America but for most purposes they are broken down to Hard Maple and Soft Maple
Hard Maple, includes sugar maple and black maple. It is a hard,dense, tough wood. The weight ranges from 40 to 45 pounds per cubic foot. The working properties are generally good. Being denser it tends to hold up to high wear areas better, you can damage it but not that easily. It is generally considered a very good cabinet wood. This wood tends to lean towards the lighter tones to almost white.
Read MoreIt’s Just Wood, How Many Decisions Can There Be?
Actually this may seem simple at first, but it is commonly a challenge to come up with the final choices. There are many factors to consider. Availability, color tones, grain patterns, density and workability are some of the decisions. Once you have picked the general species, you still have to determine the actual look, within reason, that you would like. Some of this will be solid lumber and much will be veneer. These do not have to be the same wood, often I like to use something simple for the background (cabin sides and bulkheads) and something a bit more interesting for the cabinets and door panels. This becomes more important when the majority of the interior is wood, less so when there is some fabric or wallpaper to break it up.
Read MoreCustom Yacht Tables, by Shipwright Style
Tables from Shipwright Style
The flier above is for my custom and semi-custom yacht tables. I enjoy building these and would like to expand more into this area. Part of what make these so enjoyable to design and build is that the variations are nearly endless.
The small table at the top is intended to be semi-custom, the length can be adjusted but the width is fixed at 14″, 16″ and 18″. This helps keep costs down as there does not need to be new patterns made for each table. The solid wood, veneers and profiles can be tailored to mach your individual needs and preferences.
Read MoreA Table for the Salish Sea
This table was designed and built for the Salish Sea, the first of the Salish Sea Yachts IS48′s. We discussed many ideas during the construction of the vessel, folding, high/low, hinge up/down and various combinations of the previous ideas. None of the “normal” configurations really worked that well in the space. So how did we end up with this design? Read on.
Table Leaves and Hardware
Visualizing the Build: Passage Door Jamb and Casing Details
Door Jamb & Casing
I‘d like to go a little deeper into drawings and documentation in this post. What we will look at, is part of the drawing package for a door jamb and casings on a yacht. The total drawing package is not the minimum to get a the parts made, instead, it is what is needed so that everybody involved will have a clear understanding of the process. We want to insure our outcome of getting consistent, built as intended parts in the end. So what factors do we have to consider when designing this set of drawings?
Orthographic Door Jamb & Casing
Well, first most people are not very good at visualizing an object from looking at standard orthographic drawings.These are the flat, no perspective, front , top and side view drawings that are typical. See the drawing to the left. The drawing is, for most, is hard to grasp, and this is a simple piece! The next drawing, a perspective view, is much easier for most people to understand. I guess thats because the piece shown, looks like a sample of the actual part. That is easier to understand than mentally trying to assemble multiple abstract views together into a clear picture.
Perspective of Door Jamb & Casing
You might be thinking that this could be true for most people, but the crew actually building the pieces must be skilled at reading and understanding construction drawings. I wish this was true, but many of the skilled joiners I have worked with have done a great job of honing their woodworking skills, but often not their visualization or drafting. Many of the people that have graduated in the last ten or fifteen years have never even taken a drafting or blueprint reading class, let alone several years of them. The more motivated, that would be the ones have a career not a job, are likely to have learned how on there own, but thats not the norm. The more complicated the part or assembly of parts becomes, the harder this gets.
So what do we do to work around this problem?
Header and Overhead Details
I have been building yachts and yacht interiors for over twenty five years and over that time I have learned a lot about communicating ideas and concepts. With customers, I really want them to know what to expect and clear easy to understand drawings are key to this. I don’t want a customer to walk into a stateroom on a project, blank look on their face and say ” uh– this isn’t what I thought it would look like” , unless it was suppose to be a surprise. Accurate easy to understand drawings are critical in this, along with good verbal skills.( In other posts I will discuss sample cabinets and full mockups, which are next steps in this process.) See the Header and Overhead Details drawing. This shows clearly how the jamb,casing and header come together and how the header engages the overhead fabric. In this case it is fabric in WhisperWalls track with a bead around the perimeter.
Door Casing Work Order
Just as important is the how the info is presented to the builders. It won’t do any good to have customers that have a clear, vision if that vision is not properly carried out. The information that was shown to the customers needs to be turned into working drawings and broken down into manageable steps and processes. The Millwork Work Order to the right is a good example of one step. This has all of the information that a reasonably skilled joiner needs to go forward and efficiently build these parts. This is all of these parts needed for this project, we only want to set up and do these once. There would be a similar drawing for each part for the door jamb package. The drawing at the top of this page shows view of the assembly “exploded” indicating how the piece goes together. There would also be a drawing and table giving dimensions of each of the door jambs. Once all of the parts are milled these would be assembled on a workbench, then installed.
So are all those drawings necessary? Couldn’t somebody knock out a “napkin sketch” and build them without all of the fuss. Sure, it’s done all together to often. Unfortunately consistency and efficiency tend to suffer. Coming up with details like this you have many factors to consider such as, bulkhead thickness , surface treatments on the bulkheads, door thickness, door hardware and how they will be installed.
I hope this helps. In another post I will go over a cabinet and show how a package is developed along with the related information and drawings.
Dan
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