Tombstone door querry
Bill Tindall, E. TN
>how does one cut the bevel on the curved part as well as the curved slot that it goes in? All I can think of is carving it and for me carving the shoulders in a figured wood is daunting enough.
Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Tombstone door querry
Bill Tindall, E. TN
>how does one cut the bevel on the curved part as well as the curved slot that it goes in? All I can think of is carving it and for me carving the shoulders in a figured wood is daunting enough.
Re: Tombstone door querry
William R. Duffield on the Cohansey
>Yes, you have to carve the details of the panel, even if you use a forked-tailed router or shaper to do most of the panel "raising". (That's why modern pseudo-tombstone door panels have a serpentine or oxbow shape.) You will find a bullnose rabbet plane and a wide paring chisel useful, and a card scraper comes in really handy for finishing the shaping of the inside corners.
As for the groove in the curved top rail, I usually use the aforementioned spinning fiend, with a bearing guided slot cutting bit for that purpose as well. I don't have a special purpose curved bottom plow plane that will cut a curved groove in the bottom of the panel, nor have I seen one used for this purpose. Unless someone else can suggest a better, more authentic way to cut the curved groove, I would suggest you try a mortise gauge and mortise chisel, using the technique described by Adam Cherubini. Note that the bottom of the groove doesn't have to be smooth, just deep enough to accept the panel. I suspect that a scratch beader or even a quirk router would do the job.
Gnawing out the panel
jim_reed@marietta
>Seems like this is something that needs some practice. I have one (two panels) coming up on my next project (corner cupboard). Looks like I need to make a few in poplar and figure it all out. Thanks for the pointers.