Curved Moulding Advice Needed

[Chris Dodge]

I am very excited about my next project which is a display cabinet for an antique store. The owner found a picture of a similar piece in a magazine, sent me the picture and asked if I could duplicate it except they wanted solid wood doors on the bottom instead of glass. The top doors and sizes are glass.


The challenge I have with this is the curved moulding at the top. Has anyone here done curved molding before on a router table and, if so, how have you done it?


My thought is to cut the curved moulding to size on a bandsaw and then take the waste piece and mount it to the router fence. I would then push the moulding along this curved waste piece as it gets cut by my router bit. Does that make sense? Any ideas on how to do this a better way or any tips on how to do it this way that might be helpful? Thanks for your advice!


Below is my cad drawing of the piece.


28384

[tod evans]

chris, a large part of my business is manufacturing radiused mouldings, it appears as though you have drawn the piece with segments of two different radiuses? if so and if you have the correct bits you should have no problem doing the profile with a router and inner/outer fences to trap the work. make sure your glue-up puts the seams in a fillet so they`re hidden,or easier to hide, and you may want to leave a little extra wood on the large radius to support the piece while milling......02 tod

[Jim Becker]

I am thinking that for safety, I'd pattern route/shape this kind of thing on the table. It would be easy to jig-up for it, including handles to keep one's hands away from the cutters.

[Richard Wolf]

I make goose neck piece for stair rails with a sled like you are describing but in your case I would think flat on the table. Many router bit manufactures sell bits designed to make gooseneck moldings for highboys and grandfather clocks. It is worth the investment for you safety.

Richard

[tod evans]

chris, sorry i didn`t go into enough detail.. in order for your moulding to look correct the router bit must make sucessive passes at different radiuses depending on which segment of the profile you are working on. the simplest way to achieve this is to start with a perfectly concentric blank, i suggest cutting with a trammell using either a bandsaw or router, once your blank is concentric build a "trap" jig to use on your router table. this jig must have snug fitting inner and outer fences,you may choose to add a "holddown" device to keep the blank from lifting, or you may choose to make successive cuts to achieve full depth?either way the trap jig must be adjustable in relation to the bit so you can use multiple "off the shelf" bits to create the profile.most likely you can get very close to most profiles using a straight,cove and roundover bit. the cove and roundover will depend on your profile and you may have to cut the bearing shaft off of the roundover to get it where you need it? hope this makes sense? tod

[Chris Dodge]

That does make sense. Thanks Tod! I can see that this won't be as easy as I had hoped, not that I thought it would be easy. I designed the moulding based on router bits I already have in stock and believe I can accomplish this moulding with what I have read in your post and the other posts.

I like the idea of keeping the piece on the table but I think I would have to change the moulding design in order to do this. I may still go this route but will try the other method first.

Thank you all for your help. If anyone else has any ideas or advice please chime in.

[Alan Turner]

Lonnie Bird's book on Shaping Wood has a description and pix of making moldings for a broken pediment, which is similar to what you are trying to do. For this limited amount of molding, I might consider rough cutting the steps, and then hand beading with a scratch stock.