What I have been doing when I get a little time in the shop is more turning on the lathe.  As I have mentioned in the past, I’m a member of the Rochester Woodworkers Society.  I’m also a member of the Turning special interest group of the club.  This is a segment of RWS that is associated with the American Association of Woodturners.  For a couple of months now I have been working with a mentor from the Turning SIG in his shop.  My mentor Ralph has been turning for something like 30 years and teaching woodturning for a good portion of that time.

I started  the mentoring relationship because I wanted to learn more about turning hollow-forms.  However before we got started we thought it might be a good idea to work through some basic bowls in order to check and refine technique.   The thinking was that we could progress from an open bowl to a semi-closed form then to a hollow-form.  At this point we are working on a semi-closed form and I can definitely tell you that starting with the basics was the right way to go. I have learned as much about sanding as I have about refinements in tool technique!  Additionally, the process has taught me a lot about looking for the right form in a piece and the subtleties of why some forms look better than others.

I have said in the past that certain techniques seem to be well-suited to subtle hands-on illustration and correction.  Hand tool operations are one, and I think that woodturning is another.  There are certain things that are difficult to learn from a book or even videos. However, when a mentor reaches over and slightly adjusts the angle of your gouge as you turn a bowl, the message becomes clear very quickly!

In the pictures you can see a Chinese Elm semi-closed form that we are working on in Ralph’s shop (a couple of the pictures are of the bowl on my lathe as I complete the sanding sequence).  Also, you can see a Walnut bowl that I did in my shop after some mentoring by Ralph.  For the Walnut bowl I followed the sanding and finishing sequence that Ralph teaches to achieve a nearly flawless glossy finish.

If you don’t belong to a woodworking club, I’d urge you to join one – the commeraderie alone is a great benefit.  If you turn wood, finding a mentor is also a definite plus to help you progress at a much faster pace than you would if otherwise on your own.

• Turned Walnut Bowl
• Queen Anne Side Table: Turning and shaping the feet
• Queen Anne Side Table: Completed finish and hardware
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat
• Looking ahead: How about lutherie?

The morning was filled with  some lectures and demonstrations on dovetails and drawer making.  One of the assistants demonstrated the Rob Cosman method of laying out evenly spaced dovetails using a set of dividers.  Then, Jeff Headley showed how he and Steve cut dovetails for drawers.  Interestingly they gang the two side boards together back to back with a couple of brads.  Then they plow a groove on each side for the drawer bottom and lay out their dovetails on each end.  No special methods for layout here – just done by eye and using a shop made brass layout marker for the slope of the tails ( approximately a 1:5 angle).  They also scribe a baseline for the tails first.

Next, it was on to the band saw to cut out the tails.  Jeff demonstrated this by cutting to the line and nibbling out the waste in between tails leaving very little paring to be done afterward.  The remainder of the joint was done in the traditional way.  They did use a 1/4″ block set into the drawer bottom grooves in the front and side pieces when marking the pins.  This was done with the front board in the vise and the side board laying across it and on top of a plane laying on the bench.  The 1/4″ block kept things locked together while marking out the pins.  These are half-blind dovetails and the marking gage was set slightly wider than the side thickness when marking the baseline for the pins.  This causes the pins to be slightly proud after the joint is assembled – they can then be planed flush.  Also, when cutting the pins they make no issues of cutting well below the baseline in order to get as far into the pin as possible – this was very commonly done on period furniture.

We also discussed the fine-line inlay, cock-beading and escutcheon for the drawers. The escutcheon for the Hunt Board is the same as done in the embellishments class that I discussed in an earlier post – it’s put in after the fine-line is completed.  They do the fine line with a shop-made scraping tool after the dovetails are cut,  but before the drawer is assembled.  In this case the fine-line is only about 1/16″ wide.  An important thing here is that the fine line must be allowed to dry completely after gluing before scraping it flush otherwise, it may shrink below the surface when dry due to swelling while wet with glue.  In this piece there will also be some fine-line installed in the top.  The cock-beading is installed after the drawer is assembled.  The top and bottom pieces are installed to the full depth of the drawer front.  The side pieces are mitered to the top and bottom but are not as deep so that the dovetails on the sides of the drawers are not covered.

Most of the remaining time for me on Friday was spent fitting the drawer fronts very closely to their openings.  This took a bit of time, but I have them now fit precisely.  After the dovetailing and fine-line is installed I will plane them down to leave a very small reveal around the drawer.  Unfortunately this work will be done at home in my shop because the class had to come to an end.

After cleaning up the shop and packing my piece for the long ride home, I bid farewell to the school, the assistants and Jeff and Steve.  This was a great experience and I will definitely do it again.  There were no great revelations learned, but rather many, many little refinements in technique and process plus, the comeraderie was great.  I’m already searching for my next class!  I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures of the piece with the drawer fronts fitted before I packed it for the trip home.

• Queen Anne Side Table: Dovetailing the drawer
• Hunt Board Class: Day 1
• Queen Anne Side Table: Dovetailed top rail and scroll work
• Classes at the Marc Adams School
• Hunt Board Class: Days 3 and 4

I did not update you with a post yesterday because I was attending the traditional school dinner that is put on during each week long class. at the school.  After the dinner students are treated to a slide show and/or demonstration by each of the visiting instructors for that week.  This was a great event not only because of the camaraderie that it fosters between the students but also because it provides additional inspiration to the students by exposing them to other aspects of woodworking that they may not have considered.  Certainly it’s a great marketing tool for Marc Adams to promote the school.

Yesterday was spent fitting tenons on the case.  Lot’s of mortises and tenons…did I mention how many mortises and tenons are in this thing?  In fact as of the close of the day yesterday, I was uncertain if we would even near completion.  We also chopped out the mortises on the back of the case and created the tenons on the back of the interior partitions.  Lots of chopping, planing, chiseling, paring and fitting later it was finally time to dry fit the entire case and move on the glue up.

The glue-up was a several step process.  We started with the center of the front of the case including the bridle-jointed top rail.  Steve Hamilton, Jeff Headley’s partner in business and the second instructor in the class demoed the process for this glue up.  In the pictures you can see that two cauls from the center scroll were saved in order to assist in the glue-up and to avoid over-stressing the scroll and possibly cracking it.

Next , the remainder of the front of the case was glued up.  We were very careful to not apply too much pressure with the clamp across the top because it could easily bow the assebmly.  I did not get a picture, but at the same time, the back and back legs were also glued up.  This was a fairly straight-forward glue up because the back is a solid 3/4″ thick and the tenons had been pre-fit.  If things were not so hectic I would have snapped a picture of the completed case glue-up.  However, this process was very complex and complicated…so much that for every one of these anyone who was available in the shop stopped and came to help gluing the process.  That process involved lot’s of glue, mortises and tenons, and was finished by driving wedged into the through tenons from the interior partitions into the case back!  Oh, and by the way…now I know why Jeff and Steve use Elmer’s White glue for everything.  It dries clear and it have a longer open time for complicated gluing tasks like this one.  The last thing that I glued up was the hunt board top – this was a glue-up with two pieces taken from the same board for a good color match.

While the case was drying I started on the drawer bearers. These are glued to the case sides and interior partitions and keep the drawers from skewing and tipping out as they are inserted and extended.  I also started sizing the drawer fronts.  These are initially sized for the exact size of the openings and will then be mildly embellished and will also have cock beading applied.  I’m hopeful that we will get at least one drawer completed on Friday.  In the picture you can see the result of the last two days work on my bench at the school.

The last two pictures show one of walls with little plaques of every woodworking Master’s recipient from the school.  These are awarded to each student who completes a curiculim of certain class requirements.  From there students can go on to a fellowship with an extended stay at the school and working with a specific instructor.  The last shot is another view of the machine room after the days work had been completed.

• Hunt Board Class: Day 2
• Hunt Board Class: Day 1
• Queen Anne Side Table: Glue Up and drawer runner assembly
• Hunt Board Class: Day 5
• Embellishments Class: Day 1

In the pictures you can see the notes on the blackboard with yesterdays mortising assignment.  Notice the that Einstein’s Theory was part of the assignment!  The second shot is a partial view of the machine room that we are using – Marc Adams School has a bunch of SawStop table saws.  So, my experience with and impression of them is very positive.

We spent today preparing our sides, backs and front rails.  This included tenoning the rails and the sides on the table saw.  The tenons were cut with a shop made jig that straddled the fence. Pieces were clamped to the jig and run through the blade.  There were two stops clamped to the fence raik so that both cheeks of the tenons could be cut by sliding the fence from one stop to the other.  This worked reasonable well however, with a fair amount of people using the same setup, there is a possibility for things to move out of adjustment.  This happened and a few of the early tenons that were cut ended up being a bit over-sized.  So, those had to be re-cut.  I guess it was a good thing to be off using the 12″ jointer to prepare the two boards for the top of my hunt board!  I thought I was in great shape being able to use the fresh new setup.  However, in the fray of redoing tenons,  someone before me did not lock the fence down and my first tenon was cut too narrow!  We corrected the set up an the rest of my tenons were fine.  As a result of this I had the extra step to glue on a shim to my tenons on one end of one case side…I’ll re-cut that last tenon tomorrow.

With the tenons cut it was time to start fitting pieces on the front so that the top rail measurement could be determined.  This was necessary because of the potential accumulated error across the three scrolled font rails.  This involved fitting all of the tenons across the front and dry assembling the pieces.  Speaking of scrolling, we also traced scrolls on the three front rails and cut them at the band saw.  Tomorrow there will be a bit of clean-up on those as well.  In addition, today did a bit of work on the back and interior partitions.  Tomorrow, those will be taken down to final dimension. In the second picture you can see some of the results of today’s activities as well as the state of disarray on my bench.

Tomorrow will be another busy day.  With any luck we will be at the point of dry assembling the entire case.  Stop by for an update!

• Hunt Board Class: Day 1
• Hunt Board Class: Days 3 and 4
• Queen Anne Side Table: Cutting tenons on the aprons
• Embellishments Class: Day 1
• Hunt Board Class: Day 5

The day started with a welcome talk from Marc Adams.  Marc spoke about all of the programs going on this week and introduced his support staff.  Following this talk we sat down to some discussion from Jeff and Steve regarding what we were going to attempt to accomplish on the Hunt Board project today.  Today was about sizing, tapering and mortising the six legs on the piece as well as preparing the sides and rails for tenons tomorrow.

Before any work was done in the shop, we received a talk about safety on each of the machines in the shop by one of Marc’s senior assistants.  Safety is taken very seriously at the school and the talk was very well done concerning safe operation of all of the shop equipment, jigs and accessories.  Even though a lot of what was discussed was review for most, I definitely picked up several things regarding technique that I can employ to stay even safer in the shop.  Marc’s assistants are all very knowledgeable and will always point out helpful suggestions one tool use in order to give you better and safer results.

One thing I had wondered about in coming to a class like this was how things would be managed to keep everyone on pace and with somewhat predictable results.  The answer is that things were batched and several like machines were set up by Jeff ans Steve to do certain operations.  Then, groups of students would migrate through the each setup to complete the operations.  Of course we were also able to do other things in the shop but by batching things like this and assuring that pieces were machined usin common setups, a lot of the variability is minimized.

So, today I started with a pile of stock that I pre-milled at home (I also did some glue-ups as necessary at home).  The focus for today was tapering the six legs.  Most of these cuts were done on the table saw with a slde that clamped the leg via toggle-clamps at an angle as it was fed through the saw.  However, the two center legs required tapers on three sides.  So, two of the three tapers for those were done on the band saw.  All of the tapered faces were cleaned up with a smoothing plane.

Next up were the mortises – and let me tell you, that there were a lot of them to cut!  After some careful note taking and time laying out the joints on adjacent faces of the legs we moved to the mortisers.  I don’t own a mortiser so, I typically cut my mortises with a router.  The mortisers at the worked well but they do leave a bit of a rough surface that required a little paring with a sharp chisel.

We also spent some time cutting our sides and front rails to size to be ready for creating tenons tomorrow.  I have some nice curly Cherry stock for the drawer fronts and front rails so, I also took some extra time to orient these pieces for the best composition – painting with the grain if you will.  Hopefully, the extra time that I spent here will pay off in the finished piece.

In the picture you can see the sign posted over one of the doorways from the machine room going into our bench room.  The second shot is the laser engrave plaque that each student gets when the take a week long class at the school.  These are displayed on the front of your bench while at the class and are a nice memento of the week to bring home.

More to come tomorrow.  While I have a lot to do to build the piece, I’ll do my best to get some more detailed pictures of  things as I go.

• Classes at the Marc Adams School
• Hunt Board Class: Day 2
• Hunt Board Class: Day 5
• Embellishments Class: Day 1
• Hunt Board Class: Days 3 and 4

I started out by applying more cross-band veneer to my piece.  These were strips in between the semi-circular corner elements.  This process differed a bit from day 1 in that we were fitting pieces of veneer to a specific opening rather than scribing for the opening from an existing piece of veneer.  I did a thorough job of getting my dry joints nice and tight only to find out that veneer really stretches when it comes into contact with water-based glue!  This was not an issue, just another part of the process as I learned the technique for slicing the pieces of veneer to create an invisible joint.  The interesting part here is that it is actually best to do this in the middle of the srtip rather than at the ends.  This way you can overlay the long pieces and get a perfect scarf joint.

After this was completed and while the glue was drying, I moved on to creating a lock escutcheon.  This was done with a cardboard template much like the semi-circular corners were done.  Thin white cardboard makes a cheap and easily tooled template materials for these kinds of tasks.  I layed out the pattern on some thin stock and then drilled two holes and drew in the outline of the remainder of the escutcheon.  The escutcheon was cut out on a scroll saw and the bottom edges were undercut with a gouge and hand plane to provide a tight fit when inlayed into the piece.  The recess for the escutcheon was done with a small hand held router and a 1/16″ bit.  It will be installed slightly proud of the surface and scraped flush.

When the glue on the cross-banding was dry we moved on to edge banding.  The rebates for this were done with a sacrificial fenceon the table saw with part of the blade buried in the fence.  The top surface was first scribed with a marking guage and then the rebate was created on the table saw.  The scribe step eliminated and tear out as long as the cross-band venweer was glued to the surface well.  Mine worked out fine.  The edge banding was mitered at all four corners.  This was done one piece at a time mitering the dry banding with a chisel.  Of course the last corner took some additional fitting to obtain a tight joint.

Throughout the day we broke for short lectures on various topics including: bell flower and fan inlay, escutcheon inlay, edge banding and even a couple of unexpected things like door assembly with coped inside corner molds, scratch-stock jigs for cutting flutes/reeds on columns…there was even a quick discussion about doing flared federal-style feet on case pieces.

The weekend went quick but I learned a lot. I’m really looking forward to starting on the Huntboard tomorrow.

• Embellishments Class: Day 1
• Hunt Board Class: Day 5
• Modern Shaker Table: String Inlay and Glue Up
• Dreadnought Guitar: Assembling the sides and kerfed linings
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Coopered Headrest and Ripping Thin Rocker Strips

This class is an exploratory of different kinds of mainly Federal-style embellishments.  We are creating a mock-.up that ultimately might be a drawer front on a piece. However,  we are doing some other things with it that would also be appropriate for a table leg or top.  This is all in the spirit of learning and trying different techniques to be used later on our own pieces rather than creating a functional piece during class.

The base material for our piece is a poplar board.  Today we veneered one entire face with a light colored Mahogany.  Jeff and Steve use Elmers White glue for their veneering work due to the fact that it dries clear and is reversible with water and heat.  In fact, that reversibility enters into their technique for adding other features to the piece after the face veneer is applied.

In the pictures (sorry for the blurry one) you can see a bit of what we did today. After the face veneer was clamped for about an hour we cleaned up the bleed-through of glue with a card scraper and scored around the edges in preparation for cross band veneers of a different species.  Then the scored areas were coated with water and covered with a wet cloth and a hot iron was used to loosen the veneer.  With a sharp chisel we lifted those areas and then re-clamped the piece to dry.  You also can see the rounded corners made from a darker Mahogony veneer.  These cross banded corners were made from two pieces cut at 45 degrees to keep the grain in a cross-wise orientation as you go around the corner.  More cross banding will be put in between the corners all around the piece.

Tomorrow, we”ll be inlaying a small fan and some bell flowers as well as the remainder of the cross-banding and also applying a another stringing/banding all around the edge of the piece.  In the interests of time, the fan and bell-flowers were pre-made at a veneer factory.  Today we cut them out of larger sheets with a knife.  An interesting fact that Jeff mentioned to us was that in the days when this kind of period furniture was being made, there were people who specialized in things like inlay, carving and turning, etc.  Furniture makers would often buy their banding, fans, bell-flowers and things like that from those makers for incorporation into their furniture pieces.

I’m having a great time so far and looking forward to more tomorrow.  The Marc Adams School is a great place with alot of talented and creative individuals and it certainly gets my woodworking juices flowing!  Oh, and did I mention the free ice cream machine in the cafeteria…

• Embellishments Class: Day 2
• Classes at the Marc Adams School
• Hunt Board Class: Day 1
• Hunt Board Class: Day 5
• Hunt Board Class: Day 2

With my pending trip to the Marc Adams School of Woodworking, I thought that this year to do my part for Woodworkers Safety Week 2009 I would share a couple of basic safety principles that Marc Adams espouses and that I have followed in my shop for many years.

The 12″ and 3″ Rules

These rules are extremely simple in concept but following them in practice will do a tremendous amount to keep you safe in the shop.  Simply stated these rules are as follows:

• The 12″ rule says that you should avoid machining any piece of stock that is that 12″ or less in length.
• The 3″ rule says that you should always keep your hands at least 3″ from any guard on a piece of machinery when using it.

To me any piece that is 12″ or less in length is a potential accident waiting to happen.  Whether you want to joint, plane or rip it, if it’s that small you would be well served to find a non-powered way to do so. Here’s why:

• On a jointer, a 12″ piece either on edge or on its face could easily tip into the cutting head and be kicked back.  If the piece is kicked back your hands can easily be directed into the cutters with disastrous results.
• On a planer, kickback is rare.  However, depending on your planer type, the distance between the pinch rollers on the machine is about 12″.  As a result, problems can occur if a piece that is too short is fed into a planer and is in contact with the knives but not restrained by the rollers.  Unless you back up the shorter piece with a longer one of equal thickness, it’s best to bring it to desired thickness using another method.
• On the table saw, a 12″ piece can be hard to control when ripping.  Because of its size, it may have the tendency to move away from the fence and into the rear of the spinning blade causing a significant potential for kickback.
• Similarly, when crosscutting using the miter saw or table saw, a piece this small is very difficult to control (unless you are just trimming an end) and can put your hands too close to the spinning blade to be safe.

The best way to avoid contact with the blades and cutters on our machinery is to keep our hands at a safe distance.  Following the 3″ rule is actually very simple in practice.

• On the jointer always use push blocks between your hands and the stock. Avoid placing your hands directly on the wood so that they will pass over the blades when using the machine.  When edge jointing, ride the rear (pushing) hand on top of the wood and along the top of the fence.  Move the other (clamping) hand around the blade guard to the outfeed side to maintain clamping pressure against the fence.
• On the planer keep your hands more than 3″ away from the infeed and outfeed sides of the machine.
• On the table saw always use a push stick to rip stock that would cause you to come closer than 3″ from the guard.  Similarly, when cross cutting never crosscut short stock that would cause you to violate this rule unless it is safely clamped to the miter guage or cross cut sled.
• On the router table use push sticks or blocks to operate on narrow stock.  Feather boards and or auxiliary fences and guards are also helpful to keep your hands away from the spinning cutter.

While there may be rare exceptions when a 12″ piece of stock could be cut without issue (for example on the bandsaw) I rarely find the need to.   I can almost always plan my work so that I am working with larger stock.

Obeying these simple rules in the shop has kept me fairly safe and trouble free over many years.  So, when that voice in your head tells you that something you’re about to do isn’t safe, don’t do it because it probably ins’t…if you analyze the operation you’ll most likely find that it is probably violating one of these rules!

• Woodworker’s Safety Week 2008: Close calls in the workshop
• Hunt Board Class: Day 1
• Using the Band Saw and Jigsaw for Rough Stock Prep
• Dreadnaught Guitar: Notching the sides for the top braces
• SmartFlix Woodworking Project Contest

I had been thinking about the possibility of taking a class or two in some facet of woodworking.  For years, I’ve procrastinated and never acted on those thoughts.  Finally, this year I decided to take the plunge and sign up for a class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. I’m going to be there for a weekend class (May 9-10) on Embellishments including stringing, cross-band veneering and other inlaid features.  Following that I will be staying on during the following week (May 11-15) for a class building a Virginia/Carolina Sideboard.  These  classes will be with Jeff Headley and Steve Hamilton.  Jeff is a forth-generation cabinetmaker and has written for Fine Woodworking and Steve works with Jeff in his woodworking business building period reproduction furniture.  The picture shows Jeff’s version of the Huntboard that I’ll be building.  I’m really looking forward to this class for the opportunity to learn some new techniques and to improve my skills – especially in the hand tool area.

As evidenced by my lack of posts on the Sculpted Rocking Chair recently, I’ve been gathering and prepping materials for the Huntboard.  So, my progress on the rocking chair will be on hold for a bit while I go off to school. I’ll be back at that project as soon as I get home.  Also,  I plan on blogging about my time at the Marc Adams School as well as progress during the classes so, keep an eye out here for updates.

• Embellishments Class: Day 1
• The Benefits of a Mentor
• Hunt Board Class: Day 1
• Hunt Board Class: Days 3 and 4
• Hunt Board Class: Day 5

Well, maybe after a quick commercial interruption…you’ll recall that in the last post I had glued the two perfectly good front legs together with a piece of two inch stock in between them.  Well, of course they were not going to stay that way.  So, I traced a curve onto the adder piece between the legs and then cut them apart on the band saw.  The front legs will be cut and sculpted further at a later stage.  Now that that was out of the way, I could turn my attention to the first efforts of sculpting on the chair – shaping the seat.

To start this process, I first layed out the outline of the seat area from my templates.  Next, I carefully layed out the locations for some depth holes.  I drilled these holes into the seat to help me judge when the sculpting had reached the desired depth.  The rear holes were drilled at 3/4″, the center holes at 5/8″ and the two sets of front holes at 1/2″.

To do the rough shaping I used a coarse Kutzall donut-shaped disk in an angle grinder.  This disk removed material very quickly and produced copious amounts of dust!  However, if careful I was capable of fairly fine work with it.   The key was to use slow, steady movements of the grinder in the direction against its rotation.  I started the shaping at the rear of the seat, staying about 1/4″ away from my layout lines and gradually working toward the finished depth.  When I was about 1/8″ away from the finished depth I moved to the front to work it to a similar level.  The center keel of the seat had to be shaped manually as I went along.  After I got the entire seat to within about 1/16″ of finished depth, I carefully used the grinder to shape up to my layout lines.  The sequence of pictures below shows the process from start to finish.

The next step was to move on to sanding with the random orbit sander.  I started this with 60 grit to even out the coarse surface left by the grinder and then moved on to 120 grit.  I also used folded sandpaper and my thumb to ride the curved surface along the edge of the shaped seat leaving a crisp line along the top.  In the picture, you can see how rough the surface was prior to sanding. A little more layout on the front of the seat, some filing and some sanding and I had contoured the front of the seat to allow the user’s legs  to wrap nicely over the front edge of the seat.

In the final pictures you can see the final shaped seat ready to be joined with the legs.

Next up: Shaping the rear legs and arm rests

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Seat Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Stock Prep, Layout and Rear Legs
• Queen Anne Side Table: Leg mortises, knee blocks and posts
• Queen Anne Side Table: More leg shaping

As you will recall, in my last post I created the joints in the seat that will receive the legs.  These joints essentially have a tongue that must mate with a corresponding grove in the legs. There’s a bit more too it, as you will see, but that’s the basic premise.

Before I could create this joinery on the legs, I needed to do two things: for the rear legs, I needed to create profile on the inside faces and visible from the front and on both the front and rear legs I needed to add some material to make parts of the legs wider.

In the pictures you can (barely) see the outlined profile toward inside of the rear legs which was to be cut on the band saw.  Because the legs had already been contoured, these cuts were a bit tricky.  I was careful to be sure that there were always two points of the leg in contact with the saw table – sometimes one of those points was at the edge of the table as the leg was either entering the table or leaving the table. This allowed the cut to be completed safely even though it was sometimes happening at a point elevated above the table. In the second picture you can see the profiles cut on the inside of the rear legs.

After profiling the rear legs I milled adder pieces for both the front and rear legs.  The front adder piece runs the length of the legs. The rear adder piece runs just between the sections that will eventually contact the seat.  For the front legs, the adder piece will be profiled to become the outside of the legs. For the rear legs the adder piece was ripped at the band saw after gluing in preparation for more detailed operations to follow.

The rear legs of the chair need to cant outward at the top at an angle of six degrees.  In order to accomplish this, the adder pieces on each rear leg must be ripped at six degrees from the outside faces of the legs.  In order to accomplish this, I created a jig to use at the table saw.  The jig is designed to ride against the fence on the saw and it has a fence of it’s own that is fixed at six degrees to the table saw blade.  With a leg clamped to the jig the piece was pushed through the blade cutting off a six degree wedge. For the other leg, the jig was rotated 180 degrees and the other leg was cut in a similar fashion.

I took this opportunity to clamp the legs together in the vise using the angled offcuts from the previous operation so that I could smooth the seat joint area and square it to the angled faces which were previously cut on the table saw. After achieving smooth and square faces, I laid out for the joinery that will join the legs to the seat.

The notches to accept the seat joinery were cut on two faces of the rear legs using a sled on the table saw.  Because each leg had only a small bearing surface resting on the sled, I clamped a block to the outboard side of the legs to prop them up at the correct angle.  One leg was cut in the orientation as shown in the picture and the other leg was done at 180 degrees from this orientation. The notches were nibbled away with repeated passes of the leg over the table saw blade until the joint would just fit the seat. Once the rough notches were cut, I cleaned up the saw marks with a shoulder plane.  The last step for this joint was to round over the inside corner of this joint to match the corresponding rebate that was cut into the seat.  I did this with a ¾” round over bit in the plunge router.  Because of the small size of the area where I could rest the router, this did not give optimal results. So, I subsequently repeated this step with the same bit in the router table.  In the picture, you can see the general fit of the rear leg into the seat.

The front leg joinery was done in a similar manner to the rear legs.  However, the notches were made on three faces of the legs. Also, this joinery was done prior to gluing the adder piece to the two front legs.  In the pictures you can see the competed front leg joinery and the adder piece being glued between the outside surfaces of the two front legs after the joinery was completed.

Next up: Sculpting the seat

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Seat Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Stock Prep, Layout and Rear Legs
• Queen Anne Side Table: Leg mortises, knee blocks and posts
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Coopered Headrest and Ripping Thin Rocker Strips

The joinery starts on the seat blank.  So, I first used a sled on the table saw to trim the seat to finished length and width. The rear legs will be joined to the seat via a 3 inch by 3 inch cutout that is rabetted top and bottom on each back corner.  The front legs have a  similar configuration except they are set back from the front corners into a 2 inch wide notch in the seat.

These joints need to be very precise and with the thickness and size of the seat blank, that’s a challenge. In order to create the notches to exact size, I first laid out the joints with a pencil and then rough cut them at the band saw.  This allowed me to get very close to the lines without worrying about the precision of the joints. The rear leg notches were cut out as single blocks.  However, because the front legs are attached set back from the front corner, I used the band saw to create a series of kerfs to rough out the notches for them.

I created a couple of jigs to help with the process of precisely finishing these notches.  In the picture you can see the front and rear leg jigs that I made to use with the router with a top bearing pattern bit.  The openings on the jigs are exactly the size of the notches to be cut and the bearing on the bit rides along the edges of the jig to trim away excess material from the joint leaving a perfect notch.  Because of the thickness of the seat, my pattern bit would not cut the entire rear leg joint in one pass. So, I first used the rear leg jig from the top and then again from the bottom to finish the joint.  After routing the rear notches, I used a sharp chisel to remove the radius left by the router bit and to square up the inside corners of the notches.

The second operation for this joint was to create a rebate along both the top and bottom of each notch.  This effectively leaves a tongue in the center of each notch that will later mate with a corresoponding groove in the legs. This was done with a series of shallow passes with a 1 1/2″ by 1/2″ rabetting bit.  In the pictures you can see that I used a scrap block clamped to the outside of the seat to eliminate any tearout. The resulting rebate leaves a 3/4″ radius on the inside corners of each notch.  Later the corners of the legs will be rounded over with a corresponding 3/4″ rounding over bit to create complementary profile on the legs.

With the joints for the front and rear legs completed I setup another jig to rout holes for the back braces where they enter the seat.  These were done with a template that I got from Hal Taylor.   The holes were routed with a 1/4″ straight bit and a 5/8″ OD collar on the router.  These holes are actually slightly oval in order to allow the back braces to flex slightly as you sit in the chair.

Next up: Leg Joinery

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Stock Prep, Layout and Rear Legs
• Embellishments Class: Day 2
• Queen Anne Side Table: Dovetailed top rail and scroll work

There are a bunch of potential ways to do laminations of this type – everything from a using a vacuum bag to building a form and using veneer screws to create a press. I don’t have any vacuum press equipment or veneer screws so I elected to make a couple of forms to be used with clamps for this process.

The forms were built out of construction lumber that I laminated together to double thickness and squared up with the jointer and planer. I then band sawed the curves into each form and carefully smoothed the curves to eliminate any flat spots  This is especially important for the rocker form because a flat spot on a rocker will be easily felt when rocking in the chair.  Next, I drilled a series of holes in each form to accept the heads of C-clamps. Along one edge of each form are metal stops (I used some scrap aluminum angle and steel straps that I had lying around). These stops allow the parts to be aligned evenly along one edge while they are being laminated.

As a first step, I laminated a backer strip on each form with the extra strips that I had previously cut.  This allowed be to get acquainted with the clamping process and to determine how much glue to use and open time I would have.  After the backers were dried I cleaned up the glue squeeze-out and trimmed them to be slightly narrower than the finished parts will be.

The moment of truth arrived and it was time to laminate the first rocker. I went about the process of spreading the glue as quickly as I could. I am using Titebond III for the gluing and it does not allow a lot of extra open time – the rockers have 9 strips so I had to move fast.  With the wet stack on the form I went to work clamping – progressing from front to back on the rocker with the stack lightly clamped to the metal alignment strips.  In the end it worked out OK, but let’s just say I had no time to spare when tightening that last clamp and let me tell you, there was a lot of glue squeeze-out! I left the rocker to dry in the form for 24 hours.  Laminating the second rocker went a bit smoother as I was more prepared and familiar with the sequence of operations.

In the picture you can see the stacks of strips for the back braces.  I am using Ash for the two inner strips for flexibility (I am also using original Titebond for this to avoid the dark glue lines that Titebond III would give).  The Walnut strips on the front and back of the stacks were cut in sequence from the same piece of stock to give a visual repetition to the braces when viewed from the front and back of the chair.

The process for laminating the back braces is similar to the rockers except that they are done two at a time – one on top of the other. This process does alter the curves of the top brace somewhat when compared to the bottom brace. However, they are laminated in an order such that the bottom braces (with the greatest curves) are placed toward the outside of the chair and the top braces are placed toward the inside.  This results in a change in the curves that is consistent across the back of the chair. With seven back braces, this arrangement requires four gluing operations with a 24 hour drying period in between each.  While that’s going on, I can move on to some joinery for the chair.

Next up: Joinery for the seat and legs

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Coopered Headrest and Ripping Thin Rocker Strips
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Stock Prep, Layout and Rear Legs
• The Benefits of a Mentor
• Dreadnought Guitar: Assembling the sides and kerfed linings
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat

The headrest (as well as the back braces of the chair) curves substantially to provide a more comfortable position while sitting. To obtain the necessary curve for the headrest you either need a very thick piece of stock (with a lot of resulting waste) or the pieces must be put together using a process known as coopering. For this headrest I am coopering individual pieces of stock with the grain oriented vertically.

The coopering process is much like the process that would be used to build a wooden barrel. The individual pieces are beveled on along their edges so that when glued together they form a segmented curve. The bevel angle on each edge can vary depending on how much of an overall angle or curve is desired and also how many pieces are being assembled. In my case, I needed an overall width of about 26″ for the headstock with an overall included angle of 40 degrees. I started with six pieces at 8″ high by about 4 to 5 inches wide.  The six pieces provided 5 interior glue joints (the ends of the headstock are not beveled). Each of these joints has two edges to bevel.  Put that all together and you have 10 bevels to provide a total of 40 degrees which equates to 4 degrees per bevel.

To create the bevels I elected to make multiple passes over my jointer with the fence set at 4 degrees from vertical. With a setup for a very light cut (less than 1/32″ per pass) this operation was much safer than using the table saw with the relatively small size of these pieces. After the beveling was done on the jointer I elected to take a few swipes with a hand plane over each edge to eliminate the mill marks and to assure a pristine glue surface.  In the picture you can see the pieces dry fit after beveling the edges.

Because of the bevels on these pieces, the glue up operation was very tricky.  The glue up of the six pieces was initially done in three pairs. Next, two pairs were glued to each another with the use of angled blocks faced with sandpaper adhered to the clamps. Because the headrest now exceeded the depth of the heads on my clamps, the final glue up required the addition of some temporary blocks glued to the headrest to act as clamping points. At a later stage, these glue blocks will be cut off and the curve will cut into the headstock at the band saw.  In the pictures you can see the sequence of this series of gluing operations.

Setting the glued up headstock aside, I moved on to cutting the thin strips for the laminated rockers and back slats. This was a repetitive operation that required precision and safety.  So, I created a simple jig to allow me to rip thin strips at the table saw to a very tight dimensional tolerance. The jig also allows the strips to be ripped on the waste side of the blade so that strips can be ripped from a larger piece of stock and avoiding the dangers of trying to do this between the blade and the fence.

Each rocker requires 9 strips at 1/8″ thickness and each back slat requires four strips at 90 thousandths of an inch thickness. For the rockers, I made additional strips because some will be needed to create stacks under each leg where they join the rockers.  I also made some extra strips to create a curved backer for use when these strips are later laminated with a clamping form. There are seven back slats required but I made an extra for safety as well as some additional strips to create a backer. for their glue up as well.  In the picture you can see the resulting strips for the rockers.

Next up: Bent lamination and creating the leg joints in the seat

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Laminating the Rockers and Back Braces
• Dreadnought Guitar: Assembling the sides and kerfed linings
• Modern Shaker Table: String Inlay and Glue Up
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Stock Prep, Layout and Rear Legs
• Modern Shaker Table: Making the Aprons

I especially admire Maloof’s rocking chairs. These are the pieces that he is arguably most well known for. The flowing hard and soft lines of his design work together in a truly elegant form to create a work of art in wood. For many years I have wanted to make the time to create a chair patterned after the Sam Maloof designs.

There are several current rocking chair makers that have patterned their work after Maloof.  One, in particular, seems to taken his queues from Sam but also added some unique design and functional elements as well. Hal Taylor was originally inspired by Sam Maloof and has developed a chair design that goes beyond Maloof in both aeastetics and function. Hal has been building his chairs in Virginia and refining his design for many years.  He has also taught many people to build his chairs in classes at his shop. While I don’t have the ability to do a class with Hal right now, I contacted him and I will be building a chair based (at least initially) on plans of his design.

This chair calls for about 35 board feet of 8/4 stock. I will be making mine from Walnut and I purchased about 45 board feet to cover any waste generated during the build process. Most all of the chair components need to be milled close to a full 2 inches thick before any joinery is done on them.

The first step in this effort was to create hardboard templates for most of the chair components. Once I had the templates cut out and their curves smoothed, I took some time to read the stock and to identify where each of the chair parts would come from.  The most important parts here were the layout of the rear legs and the seat. I was lucky enough to have obtained some fairly wide stock so I could get the rear legs and seat components from the same board. This allowed for consistent color and grain characteristics for these parts.

At this stage I just marked the parts on the rough planed stock and cut to rough dimensions.  I wanted to be sure that I had enough stock for all of the components before starting to cut to critical dimension. In the first picture, you can see the rear legs marked and their orientation for best grain match. The next picture shows all of the major pieces rough cut and ready for further work.

I cross-cut the seat on the table saw using my shop-made cross-cut sled. My stock was wide enough for me to make a symmetrical 2-board layout for the 21 1/2 inch wide seat.  However a three, four or even five board seat would also be attractive with the proper layout for grain. You can see the glue-up of the two seat boards in the next picture – the orientation of these boards is with the growth rings arching upward when viewed from the front of the seat. This will yield the most lines of grain to be cut through when sculpting the seat out at a later stage which should produce a very attractive seat.

Satisfied that my layout of the remaining parts would work, I set out to cut the back legs next.  I traced the outline onto the Walnut following the template using a white pencil and went to work at the band saw. I used a 3/8″, 3TPI blade for this task. It could handle most of the curves, but to avoid any binding I chose to make relief cuts into a few of the curved areas before following my lines to free the pieces. I stayed about 1/16″ away from my lines for the most part.  The result was two legs that are very close in shape.

Next up: The coopered headrest and cutting thin strips for the rockers and back-slats

• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Seat Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Shaping the Seat
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Leg Joinery
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Coopered Headrest and Ripping Thin Rocker Strips
• Sam Maloof on design

I’m not sure how I liked working with the Hard Maple on this project. Even with careful reading of the grain of each board, the wood was very prone to tear-out with the planer and jointer. This was with wood of only relatively moderate figure. Because of this, the stock required a lot of work with my smoothing plane and a card scraper in order to smooth the areas that showed torn out grain. I usually smooth the surfaces of project parts to eliminate mill marks but this wood required more that that.

Of course, I did all of this smoothing work as I went along creating the various parts for the table so all that was left after assembly was sanding. I always hand sand my projects using a cork-faced sanding block and this was no exception. The wood was generally smooth from the planning and scraping. So, all that was necessary was a bit of blending of the planed and scraped areas – I did this with 180-grit paper.

The finish on the table is a simple one. I did not want to add too much color to the Maple but, I did want to warm it up a bit. I made a test board surfaced with the same processes as the table and tried applying Boiled Linseed Oil, blonde Shellac, and General Finishes Arm-R-Seal in various combinations. In the end, I chose straight Arm-R-Seal. For the first coat, I scrubbed it into the surface with 400 wet/dry paper. After that coat dried over night, I scuff sanded the finish with the same grit paper, wiped the sanding dust with Naptha coated cloth and applied second a third coats of the finish.  After letting the finish cure for a week, I applied paste wax with 0000 steel wool and buffed the surface.

In the pictures, you can see the finished result. Sorry for the quality of the pictures, they were taken in a hurry just before the table was packed up and sent off to its new home in South Carolina with my in laws.

In the end, I think that the arched aprons and top, the inlay and the splayed legs on this table helped to modernize the basic shaker-inspired design. After it arrived in its new home I received a report that it looked great and that the Maple/Cherry combination worked perfectly with the dark wood floors of the house. I’m hoping for a picture of it in place to see for myself.

• Queen Anne Side Table: Completed finish and hardware
• Queen Anne Side Table: Contemplating the finish
• Twin boxes in Cherry, Maple and Walnut
• Exposing the Jointer
• Modern Shaker Table: String Inlay and Glue Up

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this table is going into a house with very dark wood floors. Because of this, I chose Hard Maple for the main wood to provide contrast with the floors. However, the Maple alone was too bland for my liking and I wanted to give this table a bit of a contemporary flair. So, I decided to add some Cherry string inlay along the arched aprons as well as bordering the entire top. I felt that this would provide some visual interest along with a more modern look while not being too overbearing.  Just a subtle design element.

The first task was to lay out the inlay lines on the parts to be embellished. On the aprons this was just a simple arch parallel with the bottom of each apron. On the top things were a bit more complex. I wanted the inlay to border the top at a fixed distance from the edges. To mark this, I layed out and marked the intersecting points at the corners.  Then I connected the points with a straight edge and compass set at the desired offset distance for the inlay.   The compass was used on the curved sections running the point along the curve while tracing out a line with the pencil side.

The trick to routing the channel for the inlay was to keep the router bit running parallel with all of the edges of the parts – this included running along the straight sides of the top, the concave edges of the aprons and also along the convex edges of the ends of the top.  To do this I used my Bosch Colt router with an edge guide. I milled two small arched blocks.  One block had a convex curve and the other a concave curve – these curves were made slightly sharper than those of the table to allow me to maneuver the router to track the inlay lines .  I (separately) double-stick taped these blocks to the edge guide.  The convex block was used on the aprons and the concave block was used on the ends of the top – as I routed, I concentrated on keeping the center of the guide block against the edge of the part while tracking my lines.  At the intersection points on the top I stopped short of each intersection with the router and finished the corner with a small chisel.

The next task was to rip some Cherry stringing at about 3/16″ wide by an 1/8″ high. I did this by ripping a few 1/8″ pieces from a 3/4″ Cherry board. I then placed these pieces flat on their wide sides and set up the band saw to rip strips slightly wider than 3/16″ – leaving room to clean them up with a hand plane.  I used double-stick tape to hold the pieces of stringing to my bench and dressed the edges with my plane until they just fit into the routed channels.

For the aprons, fitting and gluing the stringing was straight forward. I applied a bit of glue into each channel and pressed the inlay into position leaving the ends a bit long for trimming later. With a bit of waxed paper in between the pieces, I butted the aprons face to face and clamped them together to dry. The top was a bit more challenging because four pieces of stringing had to be cut to fit.  I contemplated mitering the corners but finally opted on a slightly different technique.  I first cut and fit the shorter arched end pieces. With these pieces temporarily and lightly in place, I marked one end of each long piece to match the angle where they met the end pieces.  I made those cuts with a sharp chisel. With those ends temporarily set in place, I then marked the opposite ends where they met the arched pieces on the opposite ends of the top. Again, I cut the pieces with a chisel, however, I initially stayed away from my line and gradually trimmed away the ends until I had a good fit. With these pieces fit, I again put glue into the channels and set the stringing in place.  I clamped on waxed paper and cauls over the stringing and left it to dry. Once the glued stringing had dried I leveled it all with the surface of the parts using a block plane and card scraper.

With all of the stringing glued in place and leveled I did a some sanding on all of the parts and then moved on to the the glue up of the table.  In the pictures you can see the table being clamped during the glue up as well as after a final hand sanding and ready for finish.  In the next post I’ll cover the finishing process and show the completed table.

• Modern Shaker Table: Making the Aprons
• Modern Shaker Table: Completion
• Dreadnaught Guitar: Notching the sides for the top braces
• Modern Shaker Table: Making the Top
• Embellishments Class: Day 1

I was working with some pieces of Walnut today and nearby there was some white chalk on the bench that I was using for marking out parts on the dark wood.  The pieces I was working with were about 2 inches thick and 8 inches long and I needed to edge glue them. As is the norm, I held two of the pieces together edge to edge and inspected the joint it offered after a pass over the jointer knives – it looked OK, but not perfect.

I spotted the chalk again and thought maybe I should see just how good that jointed surface was. In the pictures you can see the surface of one of the boards after rubbing the edge lightly with the white chalk (the second one is a close-up of the same board). You can clearly see the uneven surface left by the jointer.  As you can see, the rotating knives of this tool leave little scallops on the wood surface – in fact the width of these scallops changes depending on how fast the piece is moved over the knives. The slower you go, the closer together the scallops are and the better the resulting surface – better yes, but not perfect.

After seeing this, I felt I could make the surface better. I don’t have a jointer plane, so, I pulled out my #4 smoothing plane to see what I could do. I made a few passes along the edge of the board watching as the plane removed the white chalk leaving a stripe of chocolate colored wood in its wake.   The first picture is the resulting surface (the second picture is a close-up of the hand planed edge). I put some Naptha on a paper towel and wiped away the residual chalk that was still in the pores of the wood. The smoothing plane only removed one or two thousandths of an inch of material, however, as seen in the pictures, the surface quality was now infinitely better.

I often use my smoothing plane on the faces of panels and other parts that have been face jointed in order to remove these milling marks. However, I don’t always edge joint with a hand plane after using the jointer.  My edge-glued joints are usually pretty good but, I sometimes think that they can be better.  After this little experiement, I’m sure of it.  Of course, a smoothing plane is not the best tool for this job…so, it looks like I’ve got a good reason for a jointer plane to be the next entry in my hand tool arsenal!

• In search of a smoothing plane
• Modern Shaker Table: Completion
• DVD Review: Coarse, Medium and Fine
• Embellishments Class: Day 2
• Sculpted Rocking Chair: Seat Joinery

However, you may recall, the design for this table calls for the legs to splay outward to the left and right by 2 degrees.  In order to accomplish this I needed to accurately cut the ends of the front and back aprons at 2 degrees.  I used my miter gauge at the table saw for this operation.  With the guage  set to 2 degrees, I cross cut one end of each of the aprons.  To bring the aprons to the exact length I next added an extended fence to the miter gauge.  I placed a stop block on the extension so that I could cross cut each of the aprons to the same exact length – again at 2 degrees on the opposite ends.  In the picture you can see the result of these cuts on the font and back aprons.

The aprons for the left and right ends were easier.  With the apron stock already cut to finished width I simply cross cut the pieces square with the miter gauge square at the exact needed dimension.  Again to assure that the parts were dimensioned exactly the same I used a stop block for the second cut on each apron.  The reason that I mention the use of the stop block and the batching of these cuts is that by following this procedure you can machine  parts to their exact dimension without changing setups and possibly introducing error.  The fact that both pairs of these aprons are cut to exactly the same length assures that I will have a much easier time of creating a square assembly when the table is ultimately glued up.

After getting the aprons cut to length I moved on to creating the arches in them.  I laid out a fair cure using a flexible piece of scrap stock and transferring the curve to the stock with a pencil.   I then used double-stick tape to temporarily stick the aprons together and cut the curves on the band saw.  I stayed about 1/32″ away from my lines and after the curves were rough cut I smoothed them with the sander.  This operation was also done while they were still taped in pairs to assure that the curves for each set of aprons would be identical.

After shapiing the curves on the aprons I moved on to creating the mortises in both sets.  Usually I would do this with the stock still square to allow for easier clamping and squaring.  However, for the loose tenon joinery I’m using to work properly on the front and back aprons, the mortises need to be cut perpendicular to the angled ends of the stock at the as they will be installed.  This allows me to use the simple mortises already cut perpendicular into the legs (recall that the top and bottom of the legs were previously  trimmed to 2 degrees to make everything flush at the top after the aprons and legs are assembled).  I used the same router mortising jig for this task.  The picture shows an apron in place and one of the two mortises already cut.

Next I’ll tackle adding the cherry inlay into the aprons and the top.  Then it’s on to assembly.

• Modern Shaker Table: Making the Tapered Legs
• Queen Anne Side Table: Leg mortises, knee blocks and posts
• Queen Anne Side Table: Cutting tenons on the aprons
• Queen Anne Side Table: Dovetailed top rail and scroll work
• Queen Anne Side Table: Glue Up and drawer runner assembly

In this case I used two rough boards about 6 inches wide to create the top.  I followed my normal milling process to machine the boards square and true and cut to rough length and width.  I took a good look at these boards to determine their best top sides and also which edges to glue together as the center of the table top.

With Hard Maple like this, the sap wood (the wood that grew toward the outside of the tree) usually has the nicest creamy color.  So, I first tried to orient the boards with the growth rings curving downward when viewed from the ends (i.e. with the sap wood facing up).  I then tried different orientations of the boards shifting them slightly until I found the most pleasing transition of grain at the center seam.  I settled on an orientation and glued the boards together.  In the pictures you can see the steps for the glue up.  I some used Parallel Jaw clamps to apply even pressure to the boards along their edges and also some Quick-Grip clamps at the ends across the center seam to keep them as even as possible while the glue dried.

After a few hours drying I unclamped the boards and scraped the glue squeeze-out away with a sharp cabinet scraper.  After the dried drops of glue were removed I applied some mineral spirits to the top to see where I may have missed some glue – it’s a little difficult to see the glue on the creamy colored Maple.  The mineral spirits helped to highlight any remaining dried glue.  In the picture, you can see that I marked the areas with glue and any tearout from the planer with a pencil.  With that done I went at the top with my #4 smoothing plane and the cabinet scraper until I had removed all traces of glue, mill marks and tearout from the top.

The next step was to mark and cut the arches on the ends of the top.  As you can see in the picture, I made a simple trammel with a long piece of scrap, a pencil and a screw as a trammel point.  Nothing real scientific here, I just varied the location of the screw until I obtained the arc that I was looking for.  Once I had that location I simply marked the length of the top at the center line and placed the pencil point there.  Then I held the  screw point lightly against the top on the center line and swung an arc across each end of the top.  No need for any fancy tools or jigs.

With the arcs marked on the top I set up some auxillary support at the band saw. I first contemplated creating a jig similar to the trammel to cut the arcs but, after thinking about it I felt it would be easy enough to just freehand the cuts and then clean them up on the sander.  So, I went the freehand route.  No problems there. With the extra support helping to hold the top I just swung it in an arc following about 1/16 of an inch outside the lines.  Once the cuts were made I cleaned them up on the edge sander until I reached the marked lines.

Next up will be milling and mortising the arched aprons and assembling the base.

• Modern Shaker Table: String Inlay and Glue Up
• Queen Anne Side Table: Dovetailing the drawer
• Queen Anne Side Table: Turning and shaping the feet
• Dreadnought Guitar: Sanding the kerfed linings and installing the rosette
• Dreadnaught Guitar: Notching the sides for the top braces