DISCIPLINE
Design & Planning
The work that happens before wood gets cut, deciding whether the piece looks intentional or accidental. Drawing, proportions, style, wood movement.
2 guides · 5 subtopics
Design is the bridge between "I can build things" and "I can build things I designed." Most woodworkers follow plans for years before designing their own pieces, and the transition is harder than it looks — following a plan never forces you to think about why a chair seat sits 17 inches off the floor or why a Shaker dresser uses a 1:1.618 height-to-width ratio. The design stage is where proportion, style, joinery sequence, and wood-movement allowance get decided, before any wood gets cut.
The two design errors that show up most in hobby work are wrong proportions (a bookcase that looks squat) and ignored wood movement (tabletops that crack in their first winter, drawer fronts that break loose after two summers). Both are preventable with the same tools the 18th-century cabinetmakers used: the rule of thirds, the golden ratio, the species-by-species movement math, and a five-minute cut list before milling. CAD software helps when projects get complex enough that you can't hold the geometry in your head; for a simple bookcase, a sketch suffices.
The guides below cover proportion and historical style periods, the cut-list and shop-drawing process, beginner-friendly CAD, and the wood-movement calculations that decide whether a panel survives its first humidity cycle.