Table saw cove moulding

[Mark Bolton]

Dont often post images of work but had a small mantle to build for a customer approx. 7'x2.5'. We have been working with a lot of local Beech we have been getting a great deal on KD rough and this is some of it.

Had planned to order a knife for the the cove for our W&H but went the old school route of side slipping it across the TS and then grinding a scraper and scraping it in. There was only about 10' of cove so I couldnt justify the couple hundred price tag for the knife even though it will likely get used again.

Corners are all lock miter on the shaper and all butt joints are pocket screwed. I had hoped to have a single piece of 16" material for the top but 12 1/2" was the widest we could get clean so we added a filler in the rear on the top which will be mostly concealed by some stonework and scribed trim.

The cove was the funnest part, really enjoy scraping when we get the chance.

Put one image below, others at:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/album.php?albumid=518

Hope this works,
Mark
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[Jon McElwain]

Nice looking cove! I love the TS method. Always seems like it should be so sketchy, but works out in the end!

[Mark Bolton]

Nice looking cove! I love the TS method. Always seems like it should be so sketchy, but works out in the end!

Thanks, and agreed on the sketchy factor. Every time we run a batch like this I am always saying it's never going to be crisp and sharp but then it always is. Thinking about it beforehand all I ever envision is wavy profiles and miles of sanding but it's never the case in reality.

A good setup, feather boards, and we find using two people to push long stuff at a very even feed speed is the key. When this came off the final pass on the saw it was pretty smooth with only fine saw marks. Perhaps 10 minutes to scrape and it was done.

Thanks,
Mark

[Dave MacArthur]

Looks nice, I'm glad you posted that. Rockler has an add on their site right now for MagnaSwitch, where they use a Magnaswitch jig to run some TS cove, which makes it look quite nice for setup compared to boards w/ clamps. Your cove sure turned out nice, I hope you'll post a pic of it in-place after install too.

[Gary Pennington]

Great workmanship! Thanks for sharing.

[Mark Bolton]

Thats funny, I just watched the magjig video. Pretty nice setup. Only killer is we run this on our slider so we could run those on the table portion but not the slider portion. With the slider we just clamp a long aux. fence to the fence on the slider swung to about 25 or so degrees. We clamp a featherboard to the slider/table joint which locks the slider (there is a slight play in our slider when the slider is latched in a fixed location). Then a second featherboard (magnetic) out on the outfeed end. The nice part about that setup is the featherboards on top of the piece. Thats the key to the TS cove in my opinion. It has to be firm to the table. We simply use knuckle savers from the jointer (push blocks with rubber pads) and push it down and through.

That is a nice setup though for sure.

Last coat of stain went on this A.M. and will be spraying this afternoon. Will try to post some finished pictures.

Thanks,...
Mark

[Joseph Tarantino]

i just checked the 5 other pics. how come the miters of the "box" shown in pic 5 of 5 don't line up with the miters of the cove molding? or are there other elements that are being added to the piece that will address this?

[Mark Bolton]

i just checked the 5 other pics. how come the miters of the "box" shown in pic 5 of 5 don't line up with the miters of the cove molding? or are there other elements that are being added to the piece that will address this?

This mantle is a direct copy of an old painted mantle that is being replaced by this one. The flanks/returns of the mantle that run back to the wall are 9" wide where the front of the mantle is 16" deep. You would of course need equal legs to have the miters line up.

This is actually quite common on mantles as often times the front is far deeper than the returns because you often want more frontal projection to be proportionate with the hearth.

Mark