On Saturday I leave for the San Francisco Bay area of California to teach a class with the Diablo Woodworkers. Since part of the class will be about furniture design, I'm offering you a bit of stay-at-home self study. The device shown gluing at left and completed below is to examine the world of manufactured or hand made things in search of the golden proportion. The golden proportion is commonly discussed as a means to design greater beauty (even perfection) in the making of objects. Hold the stick between the eye and the object being examined. By moving the stick until the edges of the window align with the edges of the object, you can see if the object was made consciously or unconsciously to the golden proportion. It has to be held and viewed dead-on to work. It should be a fun experiment. To make your own Golden Proportion Detector, cut spaces 1/2" x 1.618" in two pieces of equal length stock. Glue those together as shown in the photo above, then cut that into thin pieces as shown below. A single gluing will make enough Golden Proportion Detectors for you and 3 friends to join in the fun.