Help with curved legs getting the grain correct
sroxberg
| Posted in General Discussion on
I am making a small Krenov style cabinet on stand, it’s in issue number 208.
The legs will be made from Cherry, and the legs have a slight curve to them.
I am concerned with how the grain pattern will look if it doesn’t flow fairly straight down the leg.
Are there any articles, tips, or tricks to getting the grain on curved legs to look good?
I was considering buying some 12/4 and then rotating my 2″ leg blanks within the thickness to achieve a quarter sawn blank.
Does anyone know of a source for quarter sawn 2 by 2 leg blanks?
Replies
I think you want rift saw,so adjacent faces all have similar straight grain. Quartersawn is just flat sawn on one face (and it's opposite) with quartersawn on the adjacent faces.
Grain Direction
I worked this out some years ago cutting cabriole legs...You want the radial grain to run from the back corner to the front corner, this will result in the grain flowing down the curves.
Frank Miller Lumber in Union City Indiana is my source for qs cherry, and while not all mills carry qs cherry I'm sure FML is not the only source. They don't separate qs and riftsawn cherry so an order will include both. Occasionally a board will have wider spaced grain with some swirling, so if ordering from a source you might need to ask for 3-4 boards and hope at least two have tight straight grain. I'd expect to make angled rip cuts to get ideal rs grain in your blanks. The boards sometimes are not very wide, especially in 8/4, and maybe even narrower in 12/4. But a flatsawn 12/4 may allow you to get 2x2 rift blanks with angled ripping. Hope this helps.
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