Hello fellow woodworkers I have not been building furniture that long. I love looking at other peoples furniture and the ideas that some of you come up with. I have noticed that there have been several pieces lately that have influenced my design ideas but before I proceed with them I would like to post a question about curved pieces and the joinery involved in them.
I see a bunch of articles on joinery such as a mortise and tenon that meet at straight intersection such as a stretcher and a leg joint on a table. I see articles where the joint is described at a non 90 degree angle such as a seat rail in a chair where it meets the back and front legs. I don’t have a problem creating those joints.
My question is what is the method to achieve a joint where a leg might be curved and the end of stretcher or rail needs to be curved to meet it. Is it a matter of creating full sized templates that fit the curve and trimming the end of the stretcher or rail according to the template. I use a traditional mortise and tenon but maybe for this type of joint a floating tenon would be more practical. Any help on the subject would be super helpful. Also if there are any articles that could point the way that you know of please inform me of them. Thank you for your time.
Mike
Replies
This is basically a scribing problem: Cut the rail to its full length, but don't trim the shoulders all the way back from the tenon end. Insert the rail in the leg and scribe the leg's curve onto all four sides of the rail.
Then recut the shoulder back to the scribed line (knifing it can really help here) and it should fit perfectly. For concave shoulder curves, you may need some gouges for paring to the scribe line. A skinny chisel (1/8") followed by a curved sanding block can do in a pinch.
This is effectively how I close up angled tenons with straight shoulders. I usually don't have enough space to scribe, though... It's usually one corner or edge that hits too soon, keeping the opposite edge or corner from seating against the mortise face. A little paring or filing takes care of it.
HTH!
/dev
This connection and others like it can be joined at any angle.
A complimentary templet phenomena. Has been addressed in FWW.
MP
It is often easier to work the joint before cutting the curved pieces to shape; that is while they are still squared up. That said, when it isn't possible to do so, a bent lamination for instance, it is usually possible to make a fixture or jig that cradles or captures the piece in such a way as to guide it past the cutter, or guide the cutter (router for example) past the piece. Finally, it is sometimes easier to just lay out and cut the joint with hand tools and be done with it, especially if it is a one-off kind of situation.
Ray
I thank you guys for helping me out with this. I agree that I always will try to work the joint out before shaping it if I can. I also appreciate the details about scribing the surfaces to be mated. I love FWW but sometimes it seems a little repetitive on certain things and I wish that they would tackle some of the more complicated situations in furniture making more often. I have learned so much from them and reading knots and want to always expand my knowledge and it is great to be able to ask questions to help the self taught get past more difficult situations. If anyone else has anything to add please share and thanks to you that have shared. Mike
You said, " I love FWW but sometimes it seems a little repetitive on certain things and I wish that they would tackle some of the more complicated situations in furniture making more often. I have learned so much from them and reading knots and want to always expand my knowledge." Isn't it a shame, that there are plenty of people like you who would like more, even more who have quit taking it, but all they want to cater to is the beginner. It is not like there aren't people offering to share more advance techniques, they just are unwilling to go advanced. I guess they may be liable if your head explodes or something.
I know that they have a very tough job when you are trying to please thousands of readers. I certainly dont mean to be critical but I spend the money to get the magazine and then I spend the money to keep their website and it would be nice to see some articles that are focused on more difficult techniques or some of the modern trends that are taking place in the industry. That being said I know its important to have articles so that the beginner who picks up the magazine realizes that he or she can do this and be taught how just like I have been over the years. It seams that their goal could be to advance all levels of woodworkers without alienating the beginners. I love the magazine and I look forward to seeing it in my mailbox but it would be nice if I could get super excited at least with every other issue. I wonder if I should buy their DVD-ROM with all the issues but i would be worried about the repetition. Woodworking has such a broad range of topics so I know its hard to please everybody all the time. I would love to see two issues of FWW every other month. One that ran the normal articles and one that would be for advanced woodworking.
FW has a video workshop on chair building by Matthew Teague that may cover some of the things you are interested in. It is at http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/chair-workshop/index.asp?
Thanks AustinTom but his chair building video does not cover the joinery that I am talking about. Mr. Teagues chair design smartly keeps the mating surface of the legs straight or flat. That keeps the joints a little more on the simple side. He talks about that while shaping the legs to keep clear of the mortise area. Yes his joints are at an angle but the end of the rail does not need to be curved in order to meet the curve of a leg.
I may not be describing it correctly so I guess the easiest way for me to explain what I am looking for is to imagine that you have a circular table that has a 2" wide circular frame around it and then you have boards that needed to cross the center and connect to the sides. There needs to be a curve in the end of the rails where they would meet the frame. My questions are how to tackle the mortise and tenon joint at that curved meeting. For the application I am looking at it isnt that extreme. I am looking for joints with a more mild curve. I believe the easiest way to approach this would be to handle the joint first before my wood is shaped into the curve I want. I wanted to know how other people tackle the actual curved end of the rail or stretcher while maintaining the mortise and tenon joint.
All my work so far has stayed away from this by tackling the problem the same way Mr. Teague did in his chair. The difference is that I am sure he doesn't have to if he doesn't want to and I have been intimidated to try it, but now I want to learn how. Thanks for trying though.
I think I understand the problem now and I don't have any experience doing this. My first thoughts are to use floating tenons and cut the mortises for the tenons in the cross pieces before cutting the curves in the ends. For the side, the same technique might work or I would make a jig with one side of the jig the same radius as the side piece and the other side of the jig flat for the router to ride on. I will monitor this thread to see what other ideas come up. Good luck.
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled