Tenon shoulders, more advanced...

[johnnyb]

full size drawings( even just the relevant dimensions represented as lines measured from the end) are the way I figure stuff that's a bit confusing in your brain. say you need to make t and g to fit into a door with 5 exactly subdivided planks. ( including some slack.)

 

[johnnyb]

not forgetting a slightly shorter tongue than groove. that's a lot of things going on. so draw it out full size and then simply measure one.

 

[Jacob]

That’s a very good point. I rarely see any marking up and producing detailed drawings from a rod.

The rod is the very last drawing. When all the design process is finished and the making begins its the working drawing from which measurements will be taken, usually directly, by laying the workpieces on and taking marks with no measurements needed

Come to think of it, having visited a fair few workshops over the past few years I don’t remember seeing a trammel or other instruments often used to mark up from a rod. A lot of workshops seem to not bother. Having been bitten part way through one project a few years back, where a job didn’t come together as expected I now keep a large roll of paper which covers my main assembly bench for new designs for this purpose. I find it essential so nothing’s missed and produce my cutting lists from sketches made based on a full scale rod then A3 sized scale drawings. I wonder if the advent of CAD has something to do with this as you can view designs in 3D on packages like Solidworks. I don’t use CAD for my own drawings but guess it could be why we rarely see setting out from a rod these days?

Whatever the process you still have to put marks on the workpieces somehow, so you need the full size drawing and to take the marks off directly without measuring. Not sure how you get from CAD to marking up, without a rod.

 

[rogxwhit]

and bias the glue toward the top side of the mortise to favor wood movement

An important point that many miss. Equally, if wedging a tenon, try & gauge things so that the wedge grips tightest near the tenon's root.

 

[rogxwhit]

The rod is the very last drawing.

Granted. However it's not always necessary. Perhaps more applicable to joinery than furniture. I always produce a rod for a double-hung sash (DHS). A chair that will be repeated will have the rod's bigger cousin, a full-size elevation, drawn on board with annotations and kept for reference along with any production patterns. A table won't have a rod at all. A scale drawing at most. Some things might be built 'live' with maybe just a sketch. Let's not be rigid about any of it and just seek what's appropriate, and works.

On many occasions, the effective rod isn't a separate item but is just the first of a number of identical parts to be marked out, its clones being marked off it. Or, of course, for repeat machining, not marked at all, because the first 'rod' piece may be used to set the machines and the others don't have to be marked at all (thus saving a great amount of time).

All rather off the thread focus ...

 

[Jacob]

Granted. However it's not always necessary. Perhaps more applicable to joinery than furniture. I always produce a rod for a double-hung sash (DHS). A chair that will be repeated will have the rod's bigger cousin, a full-size elevation, drawn on board with annotations and kept for reference along with any production patterns. A table won't have a rod at all. A scale drawing at most.

Yes. I've done a few tables and depending on the design a rod can help - perhaps just the front apron and the drawers if any, but basically a lot simpler than a sash window and a scale drawing is enough.

Some things might be built 'live' with maybe just a sketch. Let's not be rigid about any of it and just seek what's appropriate, and works.

Agree

On many occasions, the effective rod isn't a separate item but is just the first of a number of identical parts to be marked out, its clones being marked off it. Or, of course, for repeat machining, not marked at all, because the first 'rod' piece may be used to set the machines and the others don't have to be marked at all (thus saving a great amount of time).

Still good to have marks so you can see you aren't deviating from plan A!

All rather off the thread focus ...

er, what was it?

 

[rogxwhit]

It was tenon shoulders.

For marking those I use an HB pencil or a knife, according to my mood or sense of purpose at the time. A double-bevel knife is ok, you just tilt it accordingly. It's handy that it's double-handed (suits either direction). A selection of knives is handy too! If it was a green oak roof truss it might be a 2b pencil.

For machine work, though, the first set of marked lines are those you set to. For hand work, I always aim to saw kissing the waste side of the line. You suit the saw to the size of the work, but for the whole middle ground the answer could be a 12" tenon saw or thereabouts.

Handsawing smaller work, I expect things to fit off the saw, shoulder-wise. Bigger stuff (door & windowframes) might need some modest paring.

Just to expand on that last point slightly, if frames are non-rectlinear, it might be quicker to scribe a given joint and cut the shoulders by hand than to set up machinery to do the same.

 

[Jameshow]

Found a simple 4" length hard wood with a Stanley knife blade bolted into it handy for making out!

What's a rod btw. A stick with all the essential lengths of the cutting list??

 

[Just4Fun]

Perhaps someone familiar with rods (i.e. not me) should write a "how to" article to explain their use. I for one would appreciate the education.

 

[Jacob]

Found a simple 4" length hard wood with a Stanley knife blade bolted into it handy for making out!

What's a rod btw. A stick with all the essential lengths of the cutting list??

Varies enormously depending on what you are making.
For a complicated item like a sash window I'd do what amounts to a full size vertical and horizontal sectional pencil drawing on a board.
A bit of MFC shelving is ideal, and re-usable.
Wouldn't need all the details and might be barely recognisable except to me, but would contain all the details necessary so that you could lay your workpieces on it (cut, planed to size), stacked up if they duplicate, and take marks off with a set square and a pencil. I'd then take each piece individually and carry the marks around the other three sides with a square.
It's a very common and ancient technique used all over the place. Dress makers patterns, sail makers lofts, structural engineers with chalk lines on the floor, boat builders, stone masons arches drawn or scratched on a floor, etc . Everybody's doing it! Or did it.
With hindsight my very first experience was with making Keil Kraft model aeroplanes - balsa wood and tissue paper, which you mark/cut after laying on the printed drawing, then pin and glue them together, on the drawing itself.
It amounts to the final production drawing and last chance to make any design changes to make things fit. Once done you don't need to measure anything you do it all from the rod. All decisions made. Throw away your tape measure (after you have taken off your cutting list). No more long calculations and notes on the back of an envelope. No offering up of one piece to another and transferring marks.
If you do it from the rod they'll all fit - no mistakes!
PS for a door or window the very first marks on the rod would be the basic masonry details of the hole in which you hope to fit the thing.
Also you have to be thorough with face and edge marks and stack opposite pieces with the marks opposite so you don't end up with ten left hand sides and no right handers etc.

 

[Adam W.]

And timber framers. 12'-16' or longer rods marked out on all four sides have been found in the trusses of historic buildings on numerous occasions. They also use a 2 foot by 1" rule made from a piece of batten.

 

[Reffc]

They don't just have to be in drawing form as I often make templates for my speaker jobs whereby full size drawings are made with any alterations done and transferred to a template which is then cut and stacked for future use. The cutting lists are also pre-done from the drawings and filed. When I come to make a new one of whatever design I have, I simply use the templates to transfer marks onto new workpieces and manufacture them, so a rod can be an actual size drawing or it can be a template piece or pieces. It used to be commonplace to see these in furniture and joinery workshops years ago. Instead of a ruler you might transfer markings from a rod to a workpiece using trammels set to the exact dimensions off the rod. There are all sorts of variations but it's not worth getting hung up over it as what works for you most efficiently is right for you. Personally I tend to use a mix of templates, full size and scale drawings as well as cutting lists. The cutting list is used first, then individual pieces marked up from templates or the rod, or from scale drawings then I set my machines to batch cut each similar piece in turn before adjusting for the next pieces so I end up with a stack of timber ready for jointing and final assembly. Others will do things differently to suit them.

 

[Jacob]

Lots of variations - I had a shop fitter mate who said that the team would turn up at the shop with rolled up rods on brown paper, which they'd lay out on the floor in situ and use to fit all the bits n bobs and take marks etc etc.

 

[Just4Fun]

I am currently making a table with curved legs. My process to make the legs was:

• Design in sketchUp
• Print actual size profiles for the legs
• Glue the printout to a piece of hardboard
• Cut the hardboard to match the profile
• Use the hardboard as a template to cut the first leg
• Decide I didn't like the shape of the leg
• Sculpt the leg to a more pleasing shape
• Use the first leg as a template to cut the other 3

Does any of this count as using a rod?
If so, is there a difference between a rod and a template?

 

[Jacob]

I am currently making a table with curved legs. My process to make the legs was:

• Design in sketchUp
• Print actual size profiles for the legs
• Glue the printout to a piece of hardboard
• Cut the hardboard to match the profile
• Use the hardboard as a template to cut the first leg
• Decide I didn't like the shape of the leg
• Sculpt the leg to a more pleasing shape
• Use the first leg as a template to cut the other 3

Does any of this count as using a rod?
If so, is there a difference between a rod and a template?

well, er , yes and no!
I guess a template is a variation of the general idea.

 

[D_W]

what you guys are describing (at least of straight measurements) is a story stick in the US. At least that's what it's referred to on the forums.

I don't keep story sticks, but try not to ever measure something that is measured off of something else in any piece. Anything not well described by the rod, the first example becomes the pattern if it's good enough.

If this isn't regular practice for everyone I don't know why it wouldn't be. It's far less tiring than constantly making sure you're in the correct side of the 16th or 64th or whatever it may be and you don't get stuck having to batch everything together only to find out maybe the entire batch is marked wrong.

Since going to hand work and using a marked stick, I've ruined two pieces of stock. One door stick and one bed rail. Even the bed rail was painted in the end and not the structural rail, so that was saved by T&G-ing another bit of length on. That wasn't a marking fault, but rather storing two pairs of stock almost the same length - one to be cut, the other not, and cutting the wrong one.

 

[Jacob]

what you guys are describing (at least of straight measurements) is a story stick in the US. At least that's what it's referred to on the forums.

Not really.
You get the idea if you google - with lots of variations and some confusing explanations.



a joiner's rod - Google Search

 

[rogxwhit]

is there a difference between a rod and a template?

A rod records dimensions. A template records a shape.

 

[Adam W.]

Where I come from it's called a templet.

 

[Jacob]

A rod records dimensions. A template records a shape.

But either way you draw directly from the rod or template, without measuring anything - it's already been done for you.
Getting measurements wrong is a common mistake which the rod eliminates.
Though you might quickly measure for your cutting list, and a few other purposes