Curvy Nightstands Slide through the Home Stretch

Once the outsides of the legs were shaped it was time to shape the front faces of the legs to better define their curvy shape. This was done using a simple jig and pattern-following router bit while the case was dry-fit together.

The last step for the case parts was to finish the joinery - the shelves were joined to the sides with Dominos, while the top was joined with dowels. The latter were located using a simple shop-made positioning jig.

The bodies then went together very nicely, albeit with a lot of clamps!

The next step was to add the drawers, and of course, curvy sides deserve curvy drawers (or at least drawer fronts). To ensure smooth running of the drawer slides, the inside of the case was made square, but the drawer fronts were shaped to follow the curvature of the legs faces. Once the drawers were mounted, handles were fashioned out of solid wenge to match the rest of the accent trim.

The final result was very satisfying.

Now they just have to make their way to the other side of the country!

Sledding Through the Curves

How do you make a perfectly fair curved surface out of solid wood that's 20" wide , 28" long, and almost 3" thick? That was the challenge of the latest project in the shop. The project is a pair of nightstands made of solid mahogany, and based on a Klismos-inspired stool I made last year. 

I know what you're saying .... go find a 20" capacity bandsaw and just cut the curves. Easier said than done, and then there would still be the challenge of building a jig to keep the slender blank perfectly perpendicular to the saw table - no easy feat. Ultimately, I decided to stick with the equipment I had, for convenience. Since I only have a 12" capacity bandsaw, and the premium pattern-grade Sapele I was using was only about 6-8" wide, the sides would have to be glued up in three pieces.

To strengthen the joints, I added dowels, which were positioned properly in the blank using a shop made drilling jig.

After the dowel holes were drilled, the outline of the side was cut using the bandsaw. The blanks were then glued up and set into a fairing jig. 

The fairing jig works with like the setup often used to flatten large slabs with a router. The sides of the lower part of the jig are the exact fair arc that describes the curve of the nightstand side. Riding across these is a sled, along which a trim router rides. As the sled moves along the curved rails a series of narrow flats is created.

The faired surface can then be sanded smooth, resulting in a fair curved nightstand side. 

Bandsawn blank (L), rough faired blank (R), and sanded fair side (bottom).

The faired sides can then get their joinery cut and the nightstands take shape - stay tuned....

Done and Delivered!

I don't usually post many photos of completed pieces, but I thought this one deserved it. You've seen what went into this piece, so now here's how it came out. My thanks to Paul Schraub Photography for the studio beauty shots.

To pivot the drawer, there's a small finger-pull carved into the end of each drawer.

Because the pivot point for the drawer is close to the center line of the table, about half of the main compartment is somewhat inaccessible, so I fitted a small sliding inner container to fill that space.

The shape of the drawers is vaguely boat-like, which fits well with other nautical-themed details in the house. Here's its new home in the entry way.

It's Good to Have Friends!

I was recently reading an article about the great furniture maker Jere Osgood. In it he talked about how his big break from traditional making was that he designed the look of a piece first, then figured out the joinery and how to actually execute the design. That was a big deal in the early days of what is now known as the studio furniture movement, and today many makers follow that, or similar, paths. I, too, go that route often. But sometimes, admittedly, it gets me into trouble. The console table discussed in the last couple of blog posts turned out to be one of those situations. Whenever I present a final design to a client, I make sure I have a pretty good idea of how I'm going to build it. If I didn't, how would I estimate the cost? Plus, it would be terrible to have a client fall in love with a design and then have to tell them it can't be built (at least not within budget). But, that said, most of us in this business like a challenge, and like to explore new territory, and sometimes that leads to things you didn't expect. Two cases in point....

Once the base and top were made (see earlier blog entries for their descriptions), I turned my attention to building the drawers. Because of the shape of this piece, regular linear-travel, sliding drawers would be nearly impossible to make work, so a pivoting action was the logical answer. My original idea was to hang the drawer on a threaded rod with a ball bearing to make the action smooth. However, when it got right down to it, it was clear that that scheme just wasn't going to be up to the task. Luckily, my friend Roger Heitzman, a true Master furniture maker, has always been very generous with guidance and advice, so I called him up and explained the problem. After batting around several variations we (actually, I should say Roger) hit upon a simple and elegant solution. The drawer would hang on a post that was welded to a mounting plate, with ball bearings top and bottom. Having the post on a plate meant that the alignment of the post could be adjusted with shims as needed to keep the drawer swinging correctly in plane. The top bearing, and in fact the entire drawer, would be held in place with a simple stop collar, and the bottom bearing would just ride along to keep everything square. Mechanically simple and intellectually elegant - and it works great.

With that solved, the problem of how to actually build the drawer reared its ugly head. Having designed a drawer shape that had compound curvature (curved in two planes along two faces), regular drawer box construction techniques seemed inadequate. But laminating the compound curved front also seemed like a daunting endeavor, and while it might produce something resembling the right shape, joinery would be quite a challenge, especially where providing strength for the pivot was concerned. Stack laminating the entire drawer as a single piece was a possibility, but veneering the compound curved front face was also fraught with problems. Luckily (again) this, too, was part of the discussion with Roger.

When the mechanism was worked out it appeared clear that a simpler and more traditional construction technique would work after all. The key was finding 4" thick lumber to produce the correct drawer depth. The drawers were originally meant to be made of maple, to provide a nice contrast with the mahogany top and legs. Unfortunately, none of the suppliers in this area had any 16/4 maple, but the closest and most often used one, Jackel Enterprises in Watsonville, did have some very nice 16/4 mahogany, some of which had nice ribbon stripe figure. So, I decided to make the drawers with mahogany, then bleach them to get the color contrast the design called for. Using thick stock meant I that the pivot mechanism would be well supported, and I could shape the fronts and ends of the drawers easily with just hand planes, rasps, and scrapers.

The front piece of the drawer was initially shaped on the band saw, then faired and brought close to final form with hand tools.

It was joined to the two end pieces by means of multiple dowels (you can also see the mortise for the drawer bottom in the photo).

The back of the drawer was straight and square, so it could be joined to the ends by means of half-blind dovetails. You can also see the hole for the pivot post (left) in this photo.

Once all the joinery was cut, it was just a matter of gluing it all together. This is the point where I quickly realized that my haste in wanting to work out the shaping of the front worked against me, because gluing up would have been a heck of a lot easier if I had left all the stock square, and then shaped it after glue-up! Fortunately, I was able to work out a system of clamps and straps and got the job done.

Once the drawer was shaped, I had the unexpected task of figuring out how to resolve the giant chunk of wood that was the drawer front. Fortunately, one of the main functions of this piece is to stand in an entryway, and provide a convenient place to drop keys and so forth. So, my solution was to carve a couple of recesses into the front to provide just such places. Using a couple of purpose-built jigs, a small router and lots of sanding, these were fairly easily accomplished. The two rows of holes on the left are not used, as they're hidden under the tabletop in use, but are there simply to help reduce the overall weight of the drawer.

That brings us to point two.... When the drawers were test mounted under the top, they worked fine, but it became readily apparent that I had not accounted for their weight when designing such a delicate and slender top (only 7/8" thick). Even without anything else on it, the roughly 18 lbs of drawers created a noticeable sag in the unsupported back edge of the top. The easy fix would have been to just add a short arm to the middle of the base to hold up back of the top. But that would have been clumsy looking, and would have ruined the flowing lines of the base. So, the next logical solution was to add a stiffener to the underside of the top. Enter another good friend, David McMurtry, an engineer to the core! Not knowing much about the relative strength of different shapes and varieties of steel available, I innocently asked David's opinion on what shape and thickness of steel bar might best suit my needs. His answer was, of course, to come back the next day with three pages of calculations taking into account both known static and expected dynamic loads and strengths of various thicknesses and sizes of steel. After some further discussions he not only gave me a CAD drawing of the stiffening plate needed, but even sent it to two local fabricators for quotes. That was a Friday, by noon the following Monday the plate was ready for pickup. When installed it kept the top wonderfully stiff - no sagging in sight.

It's good to have friends! Thank you both, Roger and David.

A Shapely Top for that Leggy Console

With the shapely base for the console table completed, the next step in this project was to make the equally shapely top to go with it. Because of the shape and detailing of the top, I decided to make it using shop-cut veneers. This way I could achieve the most consistent color and grain match. It was more work that way, but made for a more stable platform in the end. The first step was to cut and fair the marine plywood substrate. Next, the leaves of veneer had to be jointed and glued together. At just over 7' long and only 3/32" thick, the veneer leaves were much too flexible to joint on a machine. So, I turned to an age old hand tool technique. Adjacent veneer pairs were sandwiched between two pieces of plywood to make a shooting board, of sorts, so they could be planed for a perfectly matched joint.

The jointed leaves were then taped together and their edges glued before being pressed to the substrate in a vacuum bag.

After the bottom face was pressed, a chamfer was cut in the front edge. The chamfer was then veneered and faired. Before the top face was pressed, T-nuts for mounting the drawer pivots and stiffener were mortised into the top surface of the substrate. The mortises were then filled and leveled before the top face was pressed.

Once the top face was pressed, the front edge could then be faired to final shape and the drawer pivot post and leg attachment mortises could then be cut.


Finally, the top face was mortised and stringing inlaid. To make the string inlay fit easily into the tight curve at the ends of the top, it was pre-bent before insertion using a simple clothes iron for steaming, and the edge of the original top template as a form.

Once the top was completed, it was time to tackle the drawers. Stay tuned....

New Project: A Leggy Console Table

My newest commission is an entry console table that features swoopy, sculptured legs and two curvy drawers for small items like keys and such.

Complex legs like these start with a paper pattern printed full-scale from the computer model. The patterns are placed on the plywood template material such that the mating edges of the parts line up with the straight-and-square milled plywood edges.

Once they're rough milled on the bandsaw, they're smoothed and faired by hand with rasps and sandpaper.

The parts are then laid out on the rough lumber to take best advantage of grain.

Once they're rough milled, again on the bandsaw, the mating edges are trimmed straight using a straight-edge saw guide.

After the mating faces are established, dadoes are cut across them to form bridle joints.

The next step is to trim them to exactly match the templates using the router table. In a design like this, with highly curved parts that meet at variable angles its important to leave flat ears to act as clamping aids.

The next step is to mill and attach the contrasting feet. To create a pleasing look, its important to maintain a continuous grain flow from leg to foot. With legs that are square in cross-section, structural integrity can be maintained by creating the foot by just veneering the bottom of the leg. But with curved legs that are rounded in cross-section its much easier to simply attach a solid foot to the leg that can be shaped and smoothed with impunity. Because the joint between feet and legs in this situation is, by necessity, an end-grain to end-grain joint, it has very little structural integrity. Therefore I always support this type of joint with a mechanical fastener, aka, a screw. Once the pre-drilled foot is glued in place, a pilot hole is drilled into the leg and the screw inserted.

Once the foot is attached, the leg can be tapered and rounded. Because the tapered legs change in thickness along their length, the radius of the edges has to change, as well. To make this easier, I use several round-over router bits of increasing radius as I move up the leg. This makes creating a consistently changing edge profile a snap.

Here are the four back leg pieces dry fit together. You can see the floating bridle tenon that connects all four pieces, as well as the positions of the clamping ears at critical points.

Then its just a matter of gluing it all up.

After the back leg sub-assembly has dried, the clamping ears are removed and the final fairing completed.

Et voilá, the assembled base.

Stay tuned for more as the piece progresses.

The Renee Taylor Gallery

Well, it was an interesting journey over mountains and through deserts, but the Gallery display cases made it to Arizona all in one piece - a minor miracle, given the state of the highway system (nothing will give you a new perspective on the state of America's road conditions like being stuck in the right lane in a giant truck with rock-hard suspension for 800 miles!).

The installation went smoothly, thanks to the excellent help of my friend Jeff Hagar - I couldn't have done it without him (stay tuned one of these days for the blog posts of the bathroom remodel he earned!).

Here are some shots of the space - if you find yourselves in Sedona, I encourage you to drop by the Vue Gallery and check out the great space, great art, and some very spiffy display cases, if I do say so myself!

The "before" shot of the space.


Cabinets everywhere!


The final result.


The front set of cabinets, as you walk in the door.


The rear set of cabinets in the interior of the gallery. Notice the great soffit design feature the owners put in that directly mirrors the foot print of the display cases. Their builders were in making templates directly from the cases the day I left.


Fifteen feet of storage cabinets behind the counter.



Another view of the cases showing the waveform accenting on the case fronts, as well as the light soffit above.

The Gallery cabinets continue...

Well, the gallery cabinets are starting to roll now. The flat parts are nearly finished being cut, and the curved pieces are almost finished being glued up. The curved parts are all shaped using bending forms. I ended up making 6 different forms for the 8 types of parts needed.

For the toe kick fronts, the forms are simple - multiple layers of MDF with a curved edge, The 2" wide kick fronts are glued together by simply clamping the glued parts to the form ....

The curved display case fronts, though, require more complicated forms. The forms are made of ribs cut to the required radius, which are then joined with cross-braces and solid wood ends. This frame is then skinned with a layer of bending plywood....

Since the edge of each cabinet front layer will be shaped, the layers have to be veneered and bent separately before shaping, then the layers joined together. To maintain the correct radius of each successive layer, all three are glued up at once. It's a little tricky, but with a system, it works fairly smoothly. In a nutshell, each glue-up requires 7 components - the main layer is made of two pieces of bending plywood and a veneer covering, and the two outer layers each consist of one piece of bending plywood and one of veneer - after glue is applied to all surfaces, each layer's veneer and substrate are taped together to keep things from shifting .....

Next, the three layers are stacked and filler strips are added to maintain an even thickness throughout the entire packet. A hardboard caul is then added, and the whole packet is taped down to its form .....

Then the whole thing is put into a vacuum bag and pressed ....

You might also have noticed the big chalk arrows on the veneer faces - those are to help maintain a consistent grain direction an all parts. One of the great properties of the khaya (a type of African mahogany) that I'm using for this project is that, like all mahoganies, it has great luster, but the luster is directional. Meaning that if you were to rip a piece of wood into two halves and flipped one 180 degrees, the two halves would look different in terms of color (one being darker than the other). This is due to the directional nature of the wood fiber cells, and the way light refracts entering and exiting the cells. So, for a consistent look, its important to make sure all the cabinet fronts have their grain running the same direction - hence, the arrows!

Stay tuned .....