If you are like me, I\’m constantly finding things to build in my wood shop. Wood working is by far one of the most rewarding hobbies I know of and I can release a weeks worth of stress in one evening in the shop. Heck, just tinkering with tools and seeing a raw stick or two of wood become a new piece of furniture is more rewarding than sitting on a creek bank fishing in my opinion. Not that there is anything wrong with fishing. I love that too. There aren\’t very many that would argue that having a good pastime can make a hectic life more tolerable.

And searching the internet you will find a great wealth of project plans for free to whoever wants to download them. The best container most commonly used for these drawings is PDF files because most everyone with a computer can read PDF\’s. But sometimes there are projects I\’m wanting to build that can\’t be found over the net. Oh, mos times I was able to find information on whatever it was I wanted to build, but never found a step by step set of drawings to go by. My solution was to create my own plans from whatever research I had gleaned from all the web site I had visited. One of my professions is that of a drafter. A drafter (used to be called draftsman) is someone who draws mechanical, machine, and architectural plans professionally to exact measurements, so at least I\’m qualified to do the task.

So one of the things I wasn\’t able to find plans for was a functional utility water wheel. I own a farm and wanted to pump water from my spring to the barn without installing an electric pump. So I researched online to get all the facts, decided what size wheel would work in my spring, and started making the prototype drawing. After a few days of drawing and calculating was able to come up with not only the water wheel, but the drawing for the braces and stand and also the pump frame to mount on the bottom of the stream.

From these drawings I was able to also build cut sheets for each part of the wheel and then start fabricating. Within a day or two I had a functional water wheel. After you put together a concept drawing, you can dissect the drawing to come up with all the parts and their dimensions. By dissect, I mean that in a CAD program, you are drawing in real life dimensions. You can actually take parts of a drawing, separate them from the main body of the drawing and you then have instant views of the single part that can be detailed and dimensioned for clarity in the shop. You can then take these parts you have drawing from the main drawing and build a sheet with nothing but the parts and their measurements. That\’s by far better than using the old trial and error method many attempt in the shop. And the wheel works fantastic by the way.

Tim Davis has created a very complete course on learning to draw mechanical
drawings in a CAD program at http://draftingservice.us/m101/

Tim Davis has created a very complete course on learning to draw mechanical drawings in a CAD program at http://draftingservice.us/m101/

Author Bio: Tim Davis has created a very complete course on learning to draw mechanical
drawings in a CAD program at http://draftingservice.us/m101/

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