Since starting this site, I’ve received a few requests for plans for the projects I’m presenting (and even for ones that are not detailed here (yet), but are visible in the background of some photos). I guess that most readers assume that plans already exist for these builds – otherwise, how am I making them?

The truth is that the plans I generally work with are very primitive – not fully developed and certainly lacking is many of the finer details. A plan, for me, is an idea that becomes a sketch that I’ll further develop in the shop on the way to a finished project. After I reach the shop, the actual planning has ended and rarely is anything else committed to paper.

So, I’ve started to work on my first (real) set of plans, and I have to say that it’s hard to do! With the project finished, you would think it would be easy to reference it to produce the plans. Not so, due mainly to the fact that I’ve solved all of the challenges of that project, and it is this that I get the most enjoyment from and the motivation to continue. It’s a little tedious, almost boring, unfortunately. My attention drifts to the latest project, the one I’m working on now, that seems so much more interesting than drawing plans…

It’s also time consuming. I don’t have much in the way of experience, as far as making construction-ready plans goes and I just recently learned how to use SketchUp (the primary tool for producing these plans) and I’m far from adept in it’s use yet. Add to that the time spent looking at other plans to determine what is required for a good, complete set. I want the instructions to be thorough, and hopefully that will make it easier to build and prevent a lot of after-sale support emails.

When asked for plans, I want to be optimistic and give a completion date that’s not some far distant time in the future. Unfortunately, given the time it takes to produce and my limited free time, this may not be possible. To those who have enquired, all I can say is bear with me. “All good things come to those that wait” is the expression and I want to make plans worth waiting for – in the end, we’ll both be more satisfied.