How would you ..?

Re: How would you ..?

Darrell in Oakville

>Alan,

Interesting. When I made a couple of arch top chests I didn't use any sort of gauge like you did. It was simply a matter of look & feel. I used a smooth plane for the outside surface. Once it was close to what I considered "done" I switched to a card scraper. The inside of the chest lids were done with a 1 inch bench gouge across the grain. This left a distinct rippled surface which was very easy to achieve and quite striking in appearance. Not something I would do with fine furniture (the chests were toy boxes!).

The sleighbed I made had lots of this kind of work. The convex surfaces were treated the same as for the chest lids: smooth plane followed by scrapers. The concave surfaces were done solely with scrapers. LOTS of scraping.

The curved scrapers Lee Valley sells work well (see picture above). You can make your own by taking a file to a standard card scraper and reshaping it.

Darrell

Wood Hoarder, Blade Sharpener, and Occasional Tool User

Re: How would you ..?

John Pappas

>Alan, Looking good, so far. You can also spot high spots by rocking a short stick across the curve. Any high spots causes the stick to bump. I've used this method to refine the edge of an oval tabletop. John

Thanks guys

Alan Bierbaum, near Denver, CO

>Thanks for the comments. What I did; actually worked well, I just wondered if there was an easier way to do it. I will use scrapers and electrons to do the inside surface and raise the panel.