Back to the Build Log

Draw your own, properly.

This is our drawing sheet with everything taken off it. The frame is the frame, the boxes are the boxes, and a shop looking at your page would look for exactly the same things it looks for on ours. Draw anything. A spoon, a chair, a spaceship. Then put a number on every edge of it.

Two boxes matter more than the rest. APPROVED has to be signed by somebody who is not you, because nobody checks their own work well. And REV moves one letter every time you change something, so nobody ever builds from an old page. That second one is the exact thing the airplane is waiting on right now.

Prints sideways. At 100 percent the squares are 10 mm, so you can measure your own drawing.
ABCDEF
1234
Drawing title 
Drawn by 
Date 
Drawing number 
Rev 
Sheet1 / 1
Approved by (not you) 
Material 
Scale 
UnitsMILLIMETRES
Status 
Unless notedLinear ± ______ mm · Angles ± ______ ° · Do not scale · A drawing nobody has signed is PRELIMINARY. Once somebody signs it, write RELEASED.
Notes
  1. Every edge gets a number, and every number is millimetres.
  2. Draw it flat. If one view cannot say it, draw the front, the side and the top.
  3. Do not scale. If a number is missing, the builder has to ring you up, and that is your fault and not theirs.
  4. Fill in the box. Your name goes in DRAWN. Somebody who is not you goes in APPROVED.
  5. Change anything and the letter in REV moves along, and you write down what changed.
  6. If a stranger could build it from this page without asking you a single question, it is finished.

The Lumber Outlet Group · Greenbush, Wisconsin · Est. 2018

When you have drawn it, take the measuring sheet and check whether the thing you built matches the numbers you wrote. That is the whole job, and it is the same two pieces of paper either way round.

That is the end of this one

The word for what you just did is revision control.

Every time a drawing changes, the letter in REV moves along and somebody writes down what changed. That letter is how a workshop knows it is holding the newest page and not last month's one. It is the exact thing the airplane sat waiting on.