resource for 'standards in cabinet/furniture design'

[mr_skittle]

That is a really nice door surround. Let me ask how you get a job like that? Like you said, it's not something I'd expect a general contractor to do. Do you have relationships with some home builders, or did someone find you looking for a custom builder? I'd love to branch out into different kinds of work.

I do use Sketchup but I'm sure not to its full potential. While I do have some familiarity with concepts like column order, I don't have any design training so I'm feeling my way through the dark on a lot of my drawings. I'm always getting better with practice but I'm sure I'd benefit from a little training.

Here's a funny aside: The college I went to had pretty robust architecture and design programs so I took a class called "history of interiors". I figured it would be an easy class and a good way to meet some girls. I was wrong! Whle I did meet some girls, it certainly wasn't the panacea to the dating world that I imagined. On top of that, it was a really rigorious class. The name of the class was very inaccurate as it was more of an full intorduction to interior and exterior architechtual elements as well as a full dive into the historical periods of design and building. If I knew that I'd someday be making furniture, I may have paid better attention and kept some of my materials. But at least I remember enough that I'm not starting from scratch learning some of this stuff again.

[JGrout]

The standard is "Human Dimension & Interior Space: A Source Book of Design Reference Standards"

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/082307271...F8&qid=&sr=

The most helpful book I had during my custom WW tenure

[MstrCarpenter]

I have a ten or twelve volume book set of History of Early American Architecture. For furniture I grab an Ethan Allen Furniture catalog. The catalog provides overall measurements with some additional drawings with measurements on the back pages. With either of these, or actually any photo, drawing, or plan, I can quickly determine very accurate detail measurements with a digital vernier and a calculator. I just need one measurement to start, which in some cases is an educated guess. (Quick tip; go metric, save the multiplier to get inches to memory and use the memory recall key.)

It's easy but my brain isn't fully engaged tonight so here's an example:
Looking at a picture on my desk, the 36" wide front door measures 28.011mm on the photo. 36/28.011=1.2852. That's our multiplier (memory+) The height of the door is 62.247mm. So 62.247 x memory recall or 1.2852=79.99998 or 80". I'd agree with that so now I can measure the width of the casing and moldings along with their exact location and move on to the window and shutter sizes,

[Gary G™]

Also Bill Hylton’s Cabinetmaking book

[skeeterk]

I'll second Bill Hylton's Illustrated Cabinetmaking. It's pretty detailed and gets into the various joints and methods required for each piece of work. My local Rockler has it in stock so it should be available online somewhere.

[mr_skittle]

I really like Bill Hylton's book. I promptly purchased it after checking it out of the library.

I got the Benjamin Asher book from the library but I'm not finding it particularly insightful. It may be the case that my foundational understanding of the material is insufficient, but I actually suspect the book doesn't really offer any insight into how classical orders are translated to furniture design. It lays out lots of info on the plates but doesn't offer much insight into them. I felt a little defeated after looking through it a few times but then I came across a video lecture on FWW website of a guy explaining this exact topic. He lamented the same sentiment that designers often referred to using the classical orders, but none of them actually laid out in any detail of how to do it. The video makes an attempt to analyze some old furniture and apply some ideas of classical orders, but even this guy can't tell you how exactly to use the information in a practical way.

When it comes specifically to custom kitchen standards, I've found Robert Lang's book, The Complete Kitchen Cabinetmaker to be very useful. It does a good job of covering the standards and all the different ways to accomplish kitchen cabinets.