Building a Wishing Well question

Sam Smith

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I have the plans to build a wishing well, it came out of the Handyman Magazine.....this wishing well is really large and I want to build a smaller one so I was wondering.....if I want it to be half as large do I just reduce everything by 1/2......are there certain rules one must follow when reducing the sizing??
 
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sam i think my dad made one of those a while back,, not sure which one your refering to but in answering your question the half size would be fine in most respects, but lets say the slats are 3/4 wide and you need 24 of them for the base,, i wouldnt think you would want to make them 3/8 wide and use 12pieces. might a place where you would have to do some math to get things right. as far as length or hieght i think you would be ok the circles are another things.. i am sure others maybe more expeienced in this down sizing a plan theroy..
 
I would say it isn't a simple math problem, for example:
I've used a table top as an example, with one being 1/2 the size of the other.
 

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Is there a program that will allow you to build the wishing well using the original data, and then let you change it and then be able to view the revised wishing well......
 
As Frank showed, if you divide both the length and the width of an area by 2 you will reduce the square footage to 1/4 of the original.

If you want exactly 1/2 of the square footage, you need to divide both the length and width by the square root of 2, which from memory is approximately 1.414.

For your sanity you could divide by 1.5 instead (or multiply by 2/3). That would make the square footage 44% of the original.

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Unfortunately, this doesn't account for the height of the project. If you want to cut the entire volume in half, you need to divide all dimensions by the cube root of 2, which is very close to 1.25. (Or multiply by 4/5.)

Yucky, huh?

You should certainly be able to "build" the project in software (SketchUp or any CAD program) and then reduce it "with a single keystroke" after-the-fact. But that would result in odd dimensions for every board. :doh:
 
Thanks guys, I really appreciate your input.....you guys are also mathematicans, I didn't get that far in school unfortunately....

You also say
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If you want to cut the entire volume in half, you need to divide all dimensions by the cube root of 2, which is very close to 1.25. (Or multiply by 4/5.)
.....In the original plans they are using 2x4 blocks for the sides of the wishing well, so does that mean I would cut the blocks down to 1 9/16 x 3 3/16 for blocks????
 
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