Scale

Lately I’ve been contemplating the concept of “scale” in great part because I am now incorporating the making of smallish things for smallish people (for 2, soon to be 3 grandsons) into my shop time, building my huge tool cabinet, and touring the largest timber frame structure in the world.

When we visited Li’l T and his family for Thanksgiving I had in-hand a small step stool I’d made specifically for him.  I made nearly identical versions for his mom and her sister when they were little girls, and these little step stools not only served them well at the time but are still in regular service 35 years later.  I expect the same results for Li’l T’s step stool and the one I make for his brother MightyM next year and his new cousin in a couple years after that.  This one was made to fit exactly inside a 12″ x 12″ x 12″ cardboard shipping box in case I had to ship it to him.

On our way home from Thanksgiving we made a couple of memorable stops in Kentucky, again emphasizing scale.  First stop was Mammoth Cave, of which we got to see about 1%, but what we saw was still monumental.  Then on to The Ark Encounter outside of Cincinnati, where an interpretation of Noah’s Ark was presented at full scale.  “Big” does not begin to describe the structure, and if you have any interest in monumental timber framing it is worth the visit.

It is over 500 feet from end to end, and although it has a modern steel frame skeleton the interior structures are built almost entirely of timbers including whole tree trunks.  I believe they employed Amish barn framers for the work.  I spent hours just looking at the structure itself.

Back home I have resumed work on the parquetry for the tool cabinet, probably the largest piece of furniture I will ever make.  Ironically the presentation surface will be a parquetry surface assembled by combining hundreds of small triangles approximately 1″ x 2″ into scores of parallelograms roughly 2″ x 4″, further enhanced in the final composition with hundreds of mother-of-pearl dots and ivory diamonds.  There will be much blogging about this as the project resumes more fully.

This is a pattern for a half-scale version, I decided this was too small.

In addition I am delving once again into the world of Gragg, where I am still working out the details of a 3/4-scale elastic chair for Li’l T’s upcoming birthday (hope I get it made in time).  Again, at least two additional iterations will be manifest in the coming couple of years.

One of the issues with “scale” is the question, “Can something be scaled-up (enlarged) or scaled-down (miniaturized) and still be successful?”

I think I am about to find out.

PS – Warmer and sunny with an inch of rain tomorrow, so the snow should be all gone.