Using Wood Working Plans

Wood work requires talent and patience. It also takes attention to detail. Measurements have to be got right and things have to fit. Parts must be symmetrical. Angles must be perfect. On top of all this, an object has to be robust and good-looking. That is a very tall order and so the furniture maker, cabinet maker or carpenter needs all the help he or she can get. One of the best forms of help is to follow a set of wood working plans.
A good set of woodworking plans should show an exploded diagram of the object in question, say, a garden bench for the patio. The plans for such a bench could include recommendations for the wood to be used, for example, hardwood because it will be exposed to the elements, a range of appropriate sizes, say minimum one metre and maximum three metres and how long the project should take to complete, say, 24 man hours. The plans might also give a complexity rating: novice, intermediary or skilled.
Wood working plans are not there for dumbing down the creation of an item, although their function is to make creating it easier. The plans will give you measurements so that you do not have to work them out for yourself, although you may decide to make the object 10% bigger,for instance.
You could for example that the plans are there so that you do not have to keep reinventing the wheel. They take some of the drudgery out of creating something and permit the carpenter more time to get on with the actual production process.
In spite of the fact that people use wood working plans, it does not mean that everybody who uses the same plans will produce identical objects, say, furniture. Two people might use the same plans for a garden bench, but come to a decision to finish their bench with different edge patterns, a different back or different legs.
The plans will give sizes and suggestions, but for the craftsman, they can be just pointers, sizes, the real ingenuity goes on in the mind. A little twirl here, an extra flourish there - the true craftsman will use his wood working plans only as a reference for the tedious, but critically necessary measurements, the detail will come from his head.
There are a few places that you can find wood working plans. Traditionally, craftsmen or hobbyists would go to craft shops, home improvement stores or even the library, but these days, it is simpler to find precisely what you want on the Internet. Not only that, but the plans you find in books are necessarily small and the centre crease in a book can mean that a photocopy will become distorted, whereas a download from the Internet can be printed out neatly and enlarged very easily.
If you decide to use the Internet for your wood working plans, try to find a site that specializes in this sort of plans, because there are a lot of plans about that are just a bit too vague to be of any use to anyone but the expert, whereas a good set of wood working plans will enable even a complete novice to make a very decent object of furniture.

Read More..

Content Layering Using Site Architecture To Improve SEO

Many times, a site gets very large and its ability to rank well in competitive markets decreases in part because of the size of the site. While we in the business know that content is king, more often than not it is a combination of content and effective site structure which will ultimately help your pages rank.
In this article I look at how to most effectively structure your site to take advantage of this.
I read this great article on layering on the SEOmoz Blog http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=789 and while it does a good job of explaining what content layering is, I feel it could be improved just a little bit.
Im not saying it is wrong in any choice. In fact the tactic outlined will be very effective for a small to medium sized site, however I have also found another choice to organize your site which can be more effective if done properly.
In the article, it explains how you use layers to organize your site. Now were not talking about CSS layering or anything like that. Its more of a site structure issue than anything.
According to the article, one can layer their site through the use of sub-folders. By creating layers of sub-folders and then placing all related content within that sub-folder you can layer your site to help specific sections of it rank higher.
This is a great choice to organize a smaller site because it allows you to place topical pages together, and promote links within the pages to help improve overall positioning of these sections.
Further, it helps reduce the dilution factor often felt by sites that attempt to cover multiple topics in a flat file structure.
For example, if you sell widgets you could organize the sections by some common element, such as color. That choice your site could be: http://widgetts.com/blue/page1.html and all blue widget pages would go into this sub-folder. Youd then organize all other sub-folders in a similar style.
Like I said, I think this is a very effective strategy for a smaller or medium site. There would be a much greater chance of blue widgets ranking highly in a structure like this.
However, I feel that for larger sites theres an even more effective choice to organize your content.
Through the use of sub-domains one could further organize this content. This would make it even more relevant to search queries and more likely to rank. If one sold a larger variety of widgets yet still wanted to organize them by color then the structure of the site would be: http://blue.widgetts.com and all site content relating to blue widgets would appear within this sub-domain.
The reason I say sub-domains would be more effective is because search engines tend to treat a sub-domain as its own site. In other words, a search engine sees http://blue.widgetts.com and http://widgetts.com as essentially 2 different sites.
Keep in mind that such a strategy is of the most benefit to larger sites. If you dont have a large site, or dont foresee your site growing to become a large site then I wouldnt recommend the sub-domain layering tactic.
This is because, as Ive said, the search engines will treat your sub-domain as a unique site. So if youve only got 10 or 15 or even 50 pages in your sub-domain, chances are it wont rank as competitively as it would have as a sub-folder of a larger site.
Now, to make your content even more competitive, why not combine these two strategies – use a sub-domain and sub-folders to provide you even more control in site organization as well as an even greater chance of ranking.
This is because the broader sub-domain can rank competitively for the broader terms while the sub-folder content can rank competitively for the less broad, more specific terms.
What you are doing by combining the two strategies is getting more bang for your buck. This is because you are covering more area on the web, allowing your site to rank for both broad and specific terms.
Then, with some good strategic interlinking you will be able to even further promote the broad areas of your site by linking all your internal pages to the pages above it.
While Im not entirely dismissing the layered content theory presented above, I am saying consider your situation. If your site is a smaller site, by all means use the layered content approach. If its larger then use the sub-domain approach.
Also remember that there could be multiple choices to organize the same content.
For example, in addition to organizing your sub-domains or sub-folders by color in the widget example, also consider organizing them by features. This choice, a chosen widget could be linked to from multiple related categories.
Not only that but youve now bulked up your site with a bunch of additional pages. These new pages are required to help create the sub-domains and navigation required to drive visitors to the individual widget pages.
This type of multi-category linking is common among many large sites. One good example is Ebay. It organizes its top auctions into sub-domains like antiques, art, autos and clothing. Then, within the categories the sub-folder structure is used to further segment the site.
In conclusion, if youve been looking for a choice to most effectively organize your site while helping to improve rankings, consider these options. Through the use of sub-folders, sub-domains or a combination of both you can effectively organize your site, segment your products and target searchers more effectively.

Read More..

Chicken Coop Plans Using Chicken Wire

The least talked about aspect of chicken coop plans is chicken wire. I most chicken coop plans you will see directions to put up chicken wire, tie it off, bury it, cut, it, etc. but nobody talks about what it is or how to really use it, For some reason, authors of chicken coop plans assume you know everything there is to know about the stuff and how to properly use it. I dont know about you, but when I first started building coop I couldnt tell the different between chicken wire and barbed wire (thats a little bit of an exaggeration, but you get my point). So here, Im going to give you a few pointers about using chicken wire.
There is nothing overly special about chicken wire; all it is is just pliable metal twist together. It is made of galvanized wire, usually tin or aluminum. It is very flexible and can form to whatever shape you are building. But be careful because as you work with heavier gauge wire it will be more difficult to cut and work with. The reason so many chicken coop plans call for using chicken wire, it that it holds up well to the elements, dirt, and time. Also, it is very easy to work with. In fact, you could put up a fence in a few hours.
But chicken wire is not just used for holding in chickens, anymore. For instance, it can be used as makeshift rebar for concrete. This is especially useful when building chicken coops. For the average builder, concrete does not even come up in the discussion for a coop. However, when you are looking to build a permanent coop and foresee no reason why you would move the coop, then pouring a concrete foundation is a nice touch for your coop. When your concrete is poured, and before it dry, thats when you can add you chicken wire as part of the foundation and build it up into the fence. The hexagonal gaps in chicken wire will stay grounded in the concrete and no matter if predators dig and the base or try to tear the wire out, it will stay secured in the concrete, keeping your chickens safe.
The last part of this article is about how to attach the chicken wire. There are two scenarios that come up: when you are attaching it to a stake and when you are attaching it to another piece of wire. When tying it to a stake, wrap the it around the stake once then, using a staple gun, connect the it at the top, middle, and bottom of the stake to secure it. When attaching it to another piece of wire, cut a piece of the wire and overlap it with the piece you wan to connect it to. Next take a piece of bailing wire and tie the two pieces together at the top, middle, and bottom to secure them. Like I mentioned before, most chicken coop plans will not tell you how to work with chicken wire, but with these tips you are good to go.

Read More..