Need honest opinions!

[Tom Pritchard]

Here's a little project that I'm working on for my son. His apartment is very contemporary, and I'm making this weather station for him out of a piece of spalted maple. The board is 17" long, and the recommended length should be 12". The width is 5 1/4", and the recommended width should be 4 5/8". I'm planning a simple routed edge. I like the way the spalting looks, and I really don't want to cut any more of it out.

Since there is nothing cut out or done yet, I need honest opinions on:

1) Do the proportions look right?
2) How would you place the gages, evenly or in some other grouping?
3) Would you cut the board to make the proportions correct, or use a different board?

Sorry that the pictures are a litte reflective! Thanks for your help!:D

[Art Mulder]

Tom,

1- yes
2- see below
3- not sure what you mean here. What is wrong with the proportions?

I just made the blood rush to my head, as I tried looking at the board upside down. I couldn't quite get a good look. Then I got smart, and saved an image and used an editing tool to flip it.

So here's an idea. What if you flipped the board over. Now the white part kind of looks like a mountain. What if you then position the guages so that they stay to the right, on the "mountain", maybe even on a slight diagonal. I'm not sure, but I'd be interested to explore an asymetric spacing like that.

Otherwise, I think I'd just draw a line down the center and space them out evenly, and maybe round off the corners (trace a quarter to get a curve, or maybe the bottom of a can of Coke, or some other suitable canned beverage. )

[Dan Oliphant]

Tom, IMO the mechanicals are a little too small for a piece of maple that large. The arrangement looks fine as it is layed out. Rather than cut this piece down, loosing a lot of the character that makes it look so great, I would suggest using another piece of lumber.

[Richard Neel]

Tom,

If you can't decide on how to do this, send the maple to me! That is a gorgeous piece of wood. I love spalted maple.

[Vaughn McMillan]

Tom, here are a few quick and dirty (very dirty) Photoshop jobs showing roughly how things would look with a shorter board. For one of them I kept the board the same width as it is now, but the other two O made it more narrow.

Still don't know which version (yours or any of mine) I'd go with, but I figured a few pics might help.

HTH -

- Vaughn

[Matt Meiser]

To me, the dials are too far apart. What about putting the three dials closer together in the upper left corner, in the white area so that you can see more of the brown figure?

[Ernie Kuhn]

Tom,
I'm with Matt, dials grouped entirely in white area, but, mount the board horizontally with dark parts at the left and bottom. Becomes earth/mountains and sky?
Ernie

[Wes Bischel]

Tom,
Here's what I made for Christmas this year. Slightly tighter grouping and smaller box. I made three - two for presents, one for us.

Beautiful piece of wood. I'll be interested to see what you come up with!

Food for thought,
Wes

[Michael Ballent]

I think that the proportions look ok, unless you are looking to go with the golden rectangle concept, then there is all sorts of math involved ;) Are you planning on hanging it on the wall, I was a little unclear as to how you were planning on displaying it. If your son has a contemporary design in the house, typically be wary of the routing on the edge that you may want to do. Usually its a case of less is more so putting an ogee on the edge may make it "frumpy" . If you decide on routing the edges, typically its end grain first then route long grain.

[Jerry Olexa]

We'd better hire a Consultant....
Seriously, I like them better closer together..

[Rob Will]

Tom, IMO the mechanicals are a little too small for a piece of maple that large. The arrangement looks fine as it is layed out. Rather than cut this piece down, loosing a lot of the character that makes it look so great, I would suggest using another piece of lumber.

I agree with Dan. Looks great but perhaps a bit wide on the spacing.

Rob

[Mike Goetzke]

I also vote to hang the board horizontally and put the dials closer together in the white area and leave the contrasting dark streaks to the lower left (like your third photo).

[Mark Rios]

My opinion?..........

Ok, here it is.......I think that the situation in the Middle East is going to get worse before it gets better.









Oh wait......you meant on the board......looks fine......like the rounded corner idea. I had the same thought as soon as I saw it. Very nice of you to do this for your son.

[scott kinninger]

I think they look a little too small as well. The first thing that came to my mind was to make a wooden ring to go around each one of the dials, then mount that to your spalted maple board. If the dial is 3 inches in diameter, make a 3 1/2" diameter thin piece of walnut, or ebonized maple, or whatever you think would be complimentary to your spalted maple, fit this to your dial and mount this to your board. This would in effect make the dials more proportional.
Or maybe you don't want to cover up any more of the spalting than you have to and you can forget this idea. ?

[Steve Roxberg]

My first thought, and others have echoed it, flip the board from the view given.

Cool project.

[Ian Abraham]

I'm guessing the recomended size is the minimum.
If the spacing between the dials and the edge of the board are similar it should look right. Wider spacing between the dials on a narrow board will look wrong.

Lay them out and see what they look like, if they look 'wrong' trim the board, if they look "OK" then they are :D

Cheers

Ian

[scott spencer]

Hi Tom - I like Vaughn's 2nd pic....fwiw.

[lou sansone]

i think the proportions are fine. It seems that the partial spalting of the board is distracting. I would say to either get a board that had spalting all the way through or none at all

best wishes
lou

[Tom Pritchard]

Wow! I was amazed when I logged in this morning at the large number of excellent replies to my post! My sincere thanks to everyone for your time and honesty. What a great forum we have!!

Well, as I suspected there was not an overwhelming "leave it alone" response. I guess I knew that myself, which is why I was prompted to post the question. I liked ALL the feedback given, and took each one into account, and right now this is where I think I am:

1) I really liked Vaughn McMillan's picture #2. It seems to be the right proportion.
2) I think that I would group them horizontal instead of vertical as Mike and Ernie suggested.
3) I need to keep the corners square (son's request), and go very easy on the edge routing as Michael Ballent suggested, possibly a stopped cove, very shallow.

So I will give it my best effort! Thanks for all of the comments, and please don't feel bad that I can't adopt all of the advise that was given:) ! The other interesting part of the project is that I will have to put those little felt pads on the corners so that it stands away from the wall a bit to allow air circulation to the backs of the gauges. I'll also have to tell my son to keep it off the outside walls so it will be accurate.

Thanks again for all the advise, I will post pics of the finished project!