Design Thinking and Doing

A self-directed project to learn more about woodworking design

  • Completed on: November 2018
  • Skills: Solidworks | Woodworking
  • Team Members: Individual
  • Gallery: None

This was my very first design course and I was given the freedom to pursue absolutely anything design-related; I chose to build a stool. However, I thought that just building a stool would be too easy. To challenge myself, I decided to do everything from scratch – from sourcing for materials, to designing and building the stool. Having never built anything in a workshop prior to this, I thought that it would be easy.

I started by creating a CAD to visualise my design. My initial concept was to create dovetail joints, so that no nails or glue would be required to hold the stool together. I brought my initial concept down to the workshop and was instantly dismissed – the workshop was not equipped with the appropriate woodworking tools for making such accurate geometric cuts. I learnt my first lesson that day – no matter how aesthetic the design is, if it cannot be realised practically, it is worthless.

I went back to the drawing board and soon decided to go with a simple square joint instead. With professional advice from the workshop trainers, I sourced for appropriate materials for my wooden stool – cedar dimensional lumber for the legs and oak plywood for the top and the skirts. In order to prepare all 14 pieces required for the stool, I learnt how to operate the various power tools in the shop. In addition, due to the revised joints, I had to fall back on nail gun and wood glue to hold the pieces in place. I wrapped up the entire project by sanding the rough edges and applying varnish to the exposed surfaces.

The stool turned out to be so well-made that I used it in my room. Through this project, I learnt that design and manufacturing goes hand in hand, and it had been a humbling lesson on the importance of practicality.

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