Adding textures to your SketchUp models can help to give you a better idea of how the finished project might look. In a recent online lesson my student asked for some hints about handling a couple of different texturing techniques.

In the first case he wanted to show multiple components as if they were made of one piece of wood. The front apron with the inset drawer front on this table is a good example of that sort of thing. In the shop the apron blank would be ripped into three peices and then the drawer front cross cut out. Then the apron pieces would be glued back together.

In the second case the idea is to make a single component look as if it’s been glued up from several pieces of wood. I did that with the top on this table. The video shows how I did both of these.

One thing that helps to make this work is proper long wood grain textures. I’ve shown how I make textures from images of long boards. Take a look at this blog post.

For this video I’m using a slightly modified version of Greg Areceneaux’s Louisiana Creole Table from FWW 238.

–Dave