Bow Front doors, A dumb idea??

[Mike Cutler]

Hey folks.

I'm starting to close in on the rough finishing of a bowfront bathroom vanity I'm making, but I'm stuck at the doors a little bit.
Each door will have a 32" outside radius, be 3/4" thick, a chord length of ~ 13", and will be ~21" tall. There will be two doors and they will meet in the center. They will be solid fronts, per the customer. SWMBO. She absolutely does not want raised panels of any type.

My first thought was to go with bending poplar, but seeing as the rest of the work is soft maple, of which I have a lot left, I was thinking of doing a large panel bent lamination with the remaining soft maple.
The entire vanity will be painted white, so glue lines are not an issue with the lamination, and so far my initial attempts at steam bending have gone very well, so I'm not to worried about doing it.

So is this a dumb idea? and is there an alternative.

PS.
Any help with painting tips would be greatly appreciated ( Jason Roehl please help me.:D.) I truly suck with paint. I'm OK with finishing, but paint mystifies me. I really want a nice, smooth,brush stroke free appearance.

TIA

[Jamie Buxton]

I'm a little confused. You say you're considering bent lamination, but then mention steam bending. They're different.

Bent lamination will work for doors. It generally is done with large pliable sheets, like that bending poplar plywood you mention. If you attempt it with lumber like the soft maple you mention, you'll first have to form it into large sheets that are rather thin. That's not impossible, but it is challenging. You'd be better off using bending ply.

Another way to make curved doors, particularly with solid lumber, is coopering. You put bevels on the edges of all the planks, and edgeglue them. They come out at approximately as a curve, and you plane them to get them exactly as a curve.

[Josiah Bartlett]

On a project like this, the doors are the hard part. I would start with those and build the face frame around them, if you haven't already. It is very difficult to get the exact radius bent if you are laminating something up. I like the coopering idea because you don't need a very good bending form to get a good shape, but you will want to make a template for the curve.

As far as paint, if you want that perfect auto body paint look, you will have to spray it. If you don't want brush strokes, but don't mind a bit of orange peel texture, roll it. Use primer for the base coat. Floetrol paint additive will level out the paint nicely for a smoother look if you are using latex paint, but you will want to experiment with the mixture on a piece of scrap. For big box paints on furniture, I like Valspar or Glidden. I find Behr to be too clumpy and thick.

I like to use oil based paints if I am painting out in the shop. They stink, but they flow out much nicer than latex. However, if you want to repaint it ever, it is good to note the kind of paint you used somewhere (like on the back of a drawer) so you don't end up with a crackle finish.

[Mike Cutler]

Jamie

I wasn't clear enough in my initial post.
My intention is to resaw the soft maple into 1/8-1/4" thick pieces, steam bend the pieces on a form, and then glue them up as a lamination. The extra step of steam bending in a form to relieve stress, and then doing the lamination, was imparted to me by my boat building buddies. ( They do restorations of 18th and 19th century wooden ships.)
I've actually been doing a lot of playing around with steam bending the past few weeks with scrap pallet wood to get a feel for it. There really isn't a lot of solid info available on the subject, which was surprising to me.
I finally hit upon asking my friends that do ship restoration. They do alot of bending of solid woods.
So far I've been having pretty good results with it. It is time consuming though.

Josiah

Unfortunately, the radius is being determined by the granite top on the vanity. In a traditional bowfront the steam bending would have been done first and the spring back accounted for by having the rest of the piece falling out around the final radius.
In this case I have to bend to conform to the radius of the granite top, which is why the extra steps in the steam bending are being done.
Using the method of steam bending the individual layers, and then Laminating them together in the same form the next day leaves virtually zero spring back in the piece(s). I don't have to worry about the glue lines showing through, as the vanity will be painted, so I can get away with it.

I've been looking at HVLP systems like the Earlex that is demo'd by the Wood Whisperer, and the small unit by Chicago Pneumatics that is being sold by Rockler, Harbor Frieght and WoodCraft under various names. ANy advice would be greatly appreciated.
The vanity itself is built on a variation of the Mackintosh Music Salon table, so there is a lot going on with the support leg design. The rest of the cabinet is just a basic box, but the legs are a little more complicated.
I really want a nice finish, and may actually end up sending it out to be painted. I'd like to do it myself though.

[Jamie Buxton]

This door is bent which direction? If you open the door and look at a vertical edge, is it straight, or is the top edge straight? And which way do you intend the grain to grain to run -- vertical or horizontal?

If the vertical edge is the straight one, and the grain direction is vertical, coopering strikes me as the best way to make it from solid lumber. There's no worry about springback. There's no messing around with steam. There's no need to resaw the lumber into exactly the same thicknesses to form the sheets for the lamination.

If you were going to make the vertical edge straight, and the grain direction horizontal, then, yes, steam bending or bent lamination could help you. But there's little reason to run the grain horizontal. It'll give you more expansion issues, because the height is more than the width.

[Mike Cutler]

Jamie and Josiah

I'm liking the Coopering solution more and more. Thank you for that.

My initial plan was too just laminate the layers in the horizonal direction, or have the grain run at 90 degrees for every other layer, with the vertical being the straight edge, but your observation about expansion/contraction is valid, and I hadn't considered that.
Hmm.... Something new to learn.

[Richard McComas]

Do a Google search "how to make radius cabinet doors" lots of interesting stuff.

Found the short video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRPmYSw5D_c

[Chris Padilla]

I'd be tempted to go the resaw route myself but only because I have the vacuum bags and such and I'm always looking to further my skills with resawing and veneers (even though the veneers would all be reglued together again).

Ever since I saw David Marks create that curly-cue lampstand out of koa, I've been hooked on resawing, veneers, and bent laminations.

Coopering, however, would be something new and require lots of work with hand tools to smooth out. That also sounds very interesting.

How about coopering a substrate and veneering to that substrate? ;)

[Mike Cutler]

Richard

That's a pretty cool video. I'll watch it more in depth tonight when I get home.

Chris

I'm always looking to try something new also. I've never done coopering, but I'll give anything a whirl.
I made some clipboards a few years back out of Olive wood, and another from macassar ebony. I basically laminated them just like plywood, each layer 90 degrees opposite. They're only about 5/16" thick, but they've been dropped in the mud, left in the rain, exposed to multiple hours of sunlight, rain, freezing rain, snow and heat, and have maintained their shape. No potato chipping at all.
I'm very comfortable making my own "plywood", so if I go this route and just have to bend it, I don't think it will be a big deal. Just time consuming.

[Frank Drew]

Mike,

Perhaps you've already decided on a method; if I was asked to do paint-grade curved doors, and wanted to do a good job in the least amount of time, I think I'd make a one-piece bending form out of MDF then vacuum press my lamination using sufficient sheets of bending plywood or thick construction veneers, or a core of bending ply with a harder veneer as the face sheet.

[david brum]

re the paint: If you want a smooth look that you'll be happy with, you will need to use a high quality oil based product such as Satin Impervo. I have painted quite a few pieces over the last several years and have tried lots of latex/acrylic paints which have all ended in dissatisfaction. Despite different products and sprayers, all of the furniture remains blocky (sticky), even after several years of curing. Latex/acrylic is also not designed to be thinned significantly (many HPLV sprayers require 20-25% thinning).

By contrast, oil based paint can be thinned to whatever consistency is required for your sprayer. It flows out beautifully and dries to a very hard finish. It does take about a good month for the solvent smell to dissipate, but it is well worth it.

The other secret to a good paint finish is proper prep work. Little things which wouldn't be noticed with a clear finish really get spotlighted as there is no variation in color to hide them. You have to sand, patch, sand more, primer, sand, etc until everything is perfect. You have to plan significantly more time than you'd spend on a clear coat.

I really like Zinsser BIN shellac based primer. It is easy to spray right out of the can and dries very quickly. It also sands well. For patching and filling, I have tried Bondo but prefer Elmer's wood patch as it seems to shrink less and sands well.

David

[Eiji Fuller]

Why paint when you can use a pigmented pre catalyzed lacquer? You'll get a much highr quality finish.
Forget the turbines, I get a better finish with my $150 binks sv100 cup gun.