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A nice benefit of the Web for DIY people and
woodworkers is the option to download complete
woodworking project plans in a matter of minutes.
Of course, you won't get full-size shop drawings
that a lot of woodworkers prefer, but nearly
everything else needed in a plan fits rather
neatly on the letter-sized paper loaded in
your home printer.
Most downloadable woodworking plans on the Web are PDF (Portable Document Format) files - documents you can view, navigate, print, or forward to someone else. When you open a PDF file, your computer will launch the Acrobat Reader program - a program that is installed on most computers before they leave the factory. Other plans on the Web (particularly free woodworking plans), combine images and text on a Web page for you to view and possibly print.
The first thing you'll see when searching for woodworking plans on the Web are lots of web sites that advertise free plans. With some careful digging around, it might be possible to find something useful for your particular project, or at the very least, a rough idea of how others build stuff. For the most part, though, I think you'll be disappointed with what's being served up for free. Most of these web sites are designed to generate revenue from ads, so not much attention is really put on the quality of what they're using to get your attention. After clicking through four or five different links on these sites (and consequently generating income for the site owner), you'll probably end up somewhere with plans for sale.
So if we eliminate 99 percent of the free woodworking plan we sites on the Web - that aren't really worth the time to visit anyway - what we're left with is a small (very small) handful of legitimate sites that offer legitimate woodworking plans - for a price. Most are less than $10, though, and the convenience of downloading a file immediately after you make the purchase makes this price reasonable for what you're getting.
Looking closer at the pay-for-plan web sites, you'll still find some huge differences in quality. At the lower end of the spectrum, you'll see plans that are simple reproductions of blueprint-like shop drawings followed by several pages listing all the materials used. If you're only looking for dimensions, these might work fine for you, but they don't offer much assistance in trying to figure out how to build the project
Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum are the woodworking magazine web sites that sell project plans from past issues. In general, these are fairly good plans - they tend to be more conversational, walking through different phases of a project and offering shop tips along the way. The main drawback with this model is that the editorial style of a magazine article can curiously get in the way of providing simple instructions for people who really want to build something. Also, magazine editors have extremely tight layout restrictions, which means they are constantly paring down instructions to fit into fewer and fewer pages. That usually means smaller photos, smaller diagrams, and smaller fonts. Often what you'll end up with in the downloadable PDF are instructions and dimensions that are difficult to read - without a magnifying glass.
At the top of the list for good-quality downloadable plans - only a couple, really. I give Wood magazine lots of credit for giving us nice, large plan drawings on individual pages. These alone provide most the of information needed to complete a project. Otherwise, you can follow along with the author (in the text sidebars) and go through each step of the project. The photos are a little fuzzy, but the crystal-clear illustrations more than make up for that small detail.
Riding a close second to the Wood magazine is PlansNOW, a similar site that offers woodworking plans from past issues of Woodsmith, ShopNotes, and Workbench magazines. Unlike Wood, the plans available at PlansNOW are direct pickups from the magazines I just mentioned. And while these plans are miles ahead in quality compared to the bulk of free woodworking plans you'll find on the Web, they suffer a little because of the direct pickup from the magazine pages. That means the small fonts can be difficult to read for some, especially in the construction-view images that were squeezed down to fit the original magazine page layout.
The big advantage at PlansNOW is selection. With more than 200 plans in their inventory, you can find a woodworking plan for just about any type of project you can imagine. |
