Serpentine Sideboard

[Ronn W]

This is my goal.

The first step in this project is the 2 doors.  They are laminated curves.  Despite the layout and building a form for the laminating,  it is probable that the doors will not exactly match the desired curve.  Since the curve of the door can affect the leg bevels and the rail curves, I will wait until I can trace the actual door curves on the plan and make any adjustments.

I built the ribs for the door forms by tracing the curve from full sized drawing on one piece.  Cut on band saw and sand to the line.  The other 4 pieces were made from the first by tracing, band saw and pattern router bit.  The cross pieces hold the from square and aligned.

covered the ribs with 3 layers of 1/8" bendable plywood glued and pin nailed.

 

The core of the 3/4" thick drawer is made of 6 layers of 1/8" bendy ply and liquid hide glue. The center line and a single nail in the center of each side hold the plys in place while placing in the vacuum bag.  That hide glue is slippery stuff.

That's it for now.  The second door is in being pressed.  I have a tendency, when I should make something over sized and cut to final later, of not making it oversized enough.  Same with these doors.  Hope this works out.

[pkinneb]

Oh this is gonna be good 

Thanks for sharing Ronn!

[Coop]

I’ll never gripe about making inset frame and panel doors again! You have my attention and admiration. 

[roughsawn]

Looking good, Ronn. You're the king of veneer, so I know it's gonna look great. Another project above my pay grade...

[Mark J]

Wow!  This is more complicated than I realized.  You have my attention. 

[Tom King]

There is some original hardware for them for sale on ebay.  Real dollars though.

[JohnG]

Next you can add more ribs to that form and make an airplane wing!

looking great!

[Chet]

I have some bent lamination projects on the horizon.  Hopefully I can gain knowledge with your progress and not mess up mine.

[Ronn W]

I order to complete the doors to the pint of being able to move on to the front frame the doors have to be trimmed rough size and the sides of the doors need to have a solid wood border for attachedment of hinges and latches.  You can see that the curve of the doors prettymuch matches the curve of the original drawing.  Great - no adjustments required.  The nail will be cut away with the next rough cut.

2 matching doors -

This cut removed the nails.  The sled has to be really accurate 90 deg to pull this off.  The sides of the doors need mahogany borders for hinge mounting.  So need to cut the sides at a 90 deg angle to the curve.  Used shim block on sled to get very close to cutting the proper angle.  The reason why will be clear later.

There was considerable adding an dsubtractin and double chekcin with the full sized drawing before locating this cut.

Next will be making attaching and shapoing the side borders to the doors with T&G.  Note always keep track of the centerline fo the door for reference - especially when you intent to book match veneer the final layer.

[Ron Swanson Jr.]

@Ronn W Where do you get full size plans, or did you create then yourself? Looks like it's moving forward at an excellent clip. Looking fwd to your next update!

 

Doug

[Ronn W]

On 12/11/2023 at 4:56 PM, Ron Swanson Jr. said:

@Ronn W Where do you get full size plans, or did you create then yourself?

This project is based on a 2011 pair af articles in FWW by Steve latta.   The article is good but does not cover everything.  I drew up the plans on General Cadd so I could study how the whole thing went together and to make a few changes.  I have a 25 year old large format printer left over from my engineering days so I can print to any scale I want.  I love it but when It dies it's back to drawing by hand.

I glued the side borders on the doors.  Went with poplar.  Since the doors will have cockbeading all around, the poplar will not be visible.  PIcs later.

 

[Chestnut]

This is awesome.!!

[Ronn W]

Attaching side borders to curved doors.  This first pic was a test piece.

Cutting dado in border piece.  cut one pass and then flip for second pass keepsdado centered.  I cut it narrow to start with and then adjusted the fence to sneak up on a good fit.

Fine tuned the fit with shoulder plane.

Glued sides in doors.

used cuts offs from doors to trace the finished profile of the borders.

The rest was painstaking plane and scraper work.  My bad shoulder complained the next day and I had only done one of the doors.

Preview:  I was expecting the veneer for the doors yesterday, but that will be the next step.

[legenddc]

Wow. I'm often guilty of underestimating the complexity of builds and thinking something won't be that difficult. I expected this to be quite involved when you showed the first picture but this is beyond what I anticipated. 

Thank you for doing a journal on this. I think we're all going to learn a lot.

[Ronn W]

So I double checked the dimension of the doors and realized that they were just tall enough to fit in the case openings but too close for comfort if I had to trim them at all.  Decided to add an inch to the height. I traced the curve of the door onto a 1" thick piece of poplar, cut near the line on the bandsaw and used a flush trim bit.  A little sanding and the door is now taller.  It will all be covered with veneer.

Cut some 1/32" veneer for the inside of the door and for the outside.  The outside pieces will be used as a backer for the finish veneer.  Since the finish veneer is just 1/42" thick, I will be using the 1/32" backer to help bridge over any minor uneveness on the core of the door.

for pieces of 1/32" veneer.  The 2 are the left show the back side of the veneer

Now starts the fun part - the finish veneer.  I have 2 pieces of 1/42" mahogany crotch veneer.  The veneer is wide enough to do wach door in a singel piece.

I plan to bool match the 3-27" wide drawers.  The veneer grain will flow vertically from drawer to drawer.

The veneer is pretty wavy so will have fo use veneer softener and a couple of days in the vacuum bag to get it flat.  I sprayed the vneeer both sides - really soaked it.

The white areas are really just clear liquid softener reflecting the ceiling lights.

The veneer is in the vacuum bag now-- 1 layer of blue scott paper towels, 1 piece of veneer, 2 layers of towels, 1 piece of veneer, and 1 layer of towels.  After 6 hours I will  replace the wet towels with new and repeat.  Keep repeating unitil the veneer is dry. 

Just to make a long story even longer:  I had just put the veneer in the vaccum bag, and went upstaris to lunch.  I started second guessing myself as to whether I had given the veneer enough time to soak up the softener.  Plus I though I had noticed a couple of ridges in the bag under vacuum - like the veneer had folded on itself.  I pulled the veneer out - no folds. ( Sigh of relief).  I soaked the veneer again and waited  longer for the softener to soak in.  Re-layered the veneer and towels.  I am feeling better about that now.

I am a little concerned because the veneer has some cracks that follow the crotch lines.  It came that way.  Once flat I will figure out how to hold these cracks tight while I glue the veneer to the 1/32" backer.  Easier than doing it on a curved form.

[Ron Swanson Jr.]

Wow! This is just getting better and better. Thank you for sharing Ronn! 

[Chestnut]

This project is going to be a great expansion on my limited veneering knowledge. I'm very interested in seeing how these doors come together. It's such a shame that commercial furniture has given veneer such a foul name. It really is a great technique and allows beautiful lumber to be extended further. All of those beautiful figured slabs i see and people make them into river tables just strikes me as wasteful.

I still remember the veneering lesson you gave me how ever many years ago and just want to say thank you again it's been useful ever since.

[Ronn W]

The veener cam out of the vacuum bag nice and flat.

I taped the cracks in the veneer.  Blue taper across the cracks on the back side.

and veneer tape on the show side.  I cut 2 pieces of 1/32" veneer that I want to apply as backer to the face veneer.

I rolled hide glue to the backer veneer and put them in the bag.  That ended up being a little tricky since the backer veneer tried to roll up almost as soon as the moiture from the glue touched it. 

Both pieces cam out fine except for the glue seepage through the veneer.  And it was not smooth - a bunch of little bumps.  I know that I can softened and maybe wipe away the gluel with water but remember that the glue holding veneer to the backer is only 1/42" under the surface.  So.  I used a wet blue paper towel and only wet each glue mark.  I also did the marks in a small area at one time.  Then I rubbed with a damp towel and used a curved scraper gently to remove the glue.  This was a real PITA.  Maybe I was being over cautious but delamination would have been catastrophic.  They came out OK.  You will noatice that the pieces are not longer flat. Luckily they are bent in direction of the door curve, so, no problem.

Prepared the interior veneer for the doors.  Decide against the light colored 1/32" stuff and found some Satin wood (could be Lacewood) veneer to use instead.

I prepared the form for the door glue up by adding a layer of 1/8" foam to the form to even out any surface irregularities since the finish veneer will be against the form.  Covered the foam with packing tape.

 

Sorrry that iI don't have a Pick of the lyers on the form - picture has the same anme as another pic and the other pick uploads instead.  Name change no help.

Anyway  Face vener with backer face down in the first layer, then the door, then the inside veneer.  I did not want curling problems before I could get to the bag so I glued the down side of the door, positioned it on the fenished vener on the form and then rolled glue on the up side of the door and plsitioned the inside veneer on that. I wanted to be able to cleam up the glue on the door surface before it became rock hard bu still set enough to remove from the bag.  I called Titebond.  He said the  about 6 hours would give the glue enough set to remove from the bag if the curve was not putting too mcuh stress on the glue.  I added that he was not sure since he had not done what I was doing.  I went with 5 to 6 hours.  So here is the first door and you can see the glue that must be removed.

glue removed.

Back (inside of 2 doors).

Show side of 2 doors - sanded to 150.  More 150 grit to do and then 220.  Scratches show up easily on crotch and burl.

The doors are done for now.  Can't fit them to an opening until I build the opening.  BTW,  The door curve still matches the drawing with tolerance. Next is milling and building the front frame of the sideboard and all 6 legs.

[Ronn W]

Time to mill all the mahogany pieces ( legs, front rails, pieces for side panels.  Rough pieces.....

I have never really used the band saw for rough rips but decided to give it a try after reading your various comments about it over the years.  I like it.

From left to right - 7/8" middle rail on top of 1 1/4" bottom rail on top of 1" top rail. 6 - 5/8" thick boards for end panels.

MIlled pieces....

 

There are 6 legs of 3 different sizes on this beast.  1 5/8 square, 1 5/8 x 1 3/4 amd 1 5/8 x 2 1/8.

I think that joinery will be next while I still have all the square and straight edges for reference.

 

 

[Chestnut]

18 hours ago, Ronn W said:

eally used the band saw for rough rips but

This is the best way to rough rip in my opinion.

[Ronn W]

At this point the project is on hold.  I am seriouly considering starting over with walnut.  I will keep the veneered curved doors.  Those will look fine with walnut.

See my discussion of coloring experiments under "Finishing".    I am just not happy with my coloring options for the African mahogany.   This piece is going to be heirloom quality ( I hope) .  So,  I have to be happy with all aspects of the project. The color of the African mahogany just doesn't make for me.  I used to own a pink dress shirt, but, Aapink sideboard?  I don't think so.

I have yet to try exposing the mahogany to direct sunlight so  we''ll see how that goes when we get some sun - maybe next week.

So when I shop for the walnut and the ends of all the boards are rough and painted green, How can I pick the boards that have some rift cut grain along either edge.  Must have rift cut for the legs.  Should I take my block plane and try to reveal the end grain?  How to you guys address that problem?

[Mark J]

If I recall correctly, some 18th century American furniture was made fro cherry.  Would that be a consideration? 

[Ronn W]

On 12/30/2023 at 9:00 AM, Mark J said:

If I recall correctly, some 18th century American furniture was made for cherry.  Would that be a consideration?

Yes that could be a possiblity.

 BTW, 4 houts of direct sunlight did not affet the coro of the mahogany.

 

[Chet]

On 12/28/2023 at 4:54 PM, Ronn W said:

I am seriouly considering starting over with walnut.

Would you do something such as shellac to the walnut?  I recall seeing something somewhere that walnut can lighten in color over time.

[Ronn W]

Yes, I think you are right that walnut can lighten over time.  I have several pieces around the house and  really have noticed a significant change, yet.

My most likely finish will be 2 coats of shellac followed by 3 wipe on/off coats of ARS satin.  Except for the top where I willl use a french polish method to filling the grain before the ARS.  The crotch mahogany doors and drawers - I will have to wait see how it looks after 2 coats of shellac.