Thread: Help choosing from the timber pile...

Why not do a bent lamination for the curved piece? No short grain issues, much stronger, and you could put a veneer on the face to hide the glue lines.

Cheers

Only method I know is to check small areas with a block or smoothing plane

By the look of it , none of those slabs have a curves sharp enough to do those feet ,
in fact they have no curved grain to speak of at all.
It could be an idea to go searching to a bent branch or two of a suitable wood that will machine down to do that job .

Hmmm....

Woe is me.

I can't decide on the legs. The ideal plan would be to steam bend, or laminate the legs.

If I laminate I don't think I could to the tight curve of the foot and would need to attach a foot... which would be obvious.

If I steam bent and then laminate I could make all the curves... but I can't think of a mould to do it...

It is possible to do all of this... but I only have 4 days to do it... no steaming gear.... and no success on the first mould...





At this rate... I may end up cutting it from straight grain solid timber... drilling up the leg and inserted an unglued steel rod... that'll fix it... but it ain't classy.

Boz
this is my suggestion
make the feet oversize from straight grained timber, with the grain running horizontally
saw the feet in half longitudionally -- so you have a front and rear face for each foot
thickness each piece so that it's thickness is approximately 3/8ths the finished thickness of the foot
choose a contrasting timber, thickness it to 1/4 the thickness of the finished foot
rip 4 strips long enough and thick enough to insert as thick "banding" into the edges of the legs
cut 4 pieces of the contrasting timber sized so the grain runs at approximately 30° to the long edge
glue up each foot sandwitching the contrasting timber between the show faces with the gran in the "filling" reinforcing the grain on the show faces of the foot

shape the foot using your template

here's a sketch

Thanks for the feedback ian. I ended up joining two pieces to maintain the long grain strength. Seems to have been a good solution.



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