Earlier this week I had an e-mail from a friend. He’s working on a model of a wine box with a sliding lid. He was at the point of drawing in a recessed finger pull and was looking for suggestions on how to do it. I wasn’t able to doodle it out in SketchUp at the time but my original suggestion to him was to draw a cone and intersect it with the lid. When I finally had an opportunity to try it for myself I decided that while it works, it isn’t especially pretty.

As I played with it, I got to thinking about how I’d make that cut in real wood in the shop. Often it is useful to think about the tools you’d use in the shop to make what it is you’re trying to draw. That will often get you a long way down the road to drawing it.

I figured a Forstner bit would be a good option especially if you have a bunch of them to do. On the drill press you could set up a block cut to an angle as a guide for the lid and run the Forstner bit in at a shallow angle. So there was the answer for how to draw it. Use a cylinder  intersecting the lid at some shallow angle.

An alternative might be to use a shallow gouge and a sharp knife. Maybe the gouge has a sort of elliptical shape. In the following video, I’ve shown howyou can experiment with different shapes including making one with a gouge. Keep in mind that for various reasons the shape is probably not exactly what you’ll get in the shop but it’ll be close enough and you can use the drawing to get a good idea of what needs to happen when you do get to the shop.

Dave