Mantle Idea using Drawerlock bit?

[Roland Chung]

I want to make a contemporary looking mantle. It will look like a monolithic block of maple floating on the face of the fireplace - no visible means of support.

Originally, it was going to be a top and bottom wrapped with the front and sides - with the edge of the front and sides being visible on the top and bottom. I picked up a drawerlock bit thinking that I could mitre all of the joints and make it look more like one large block of maple.

Now I am concerned that some of the corners may have a void that may prevent using a roundover bit on the finished edges. Anyone familiar with using this bit for this type of joinery?

RC

[glenn bradley]

The Wood Whisperer did a pod cast on building a pool table leg using locking miters. He had the same challenge as he wanted a stopped chamfer on the corner. His solution was to cut a rabbet down the corner and insert a piece of solid material to accept the profile.

[Jamie Buxton]

It is pretty difficult to use boards to construct a hollow block that looks like a monolithic chunk of wood. The grain directions can't come out right. For instance, say you run the grain the long direction on the top, bottom, and front of your mantel. What do you do at the ends? A monolithic chunk of wood would have end-grain there. Your board has face-grain, so you're stuck. The point is that your mantel is going to have a grain-direction discontinuity at some edges. Given that, you may as well use joinery which isn't trying to conceal the fact that there's joinery.

[glenn bradley]

Here it is. My mistake it's at Eagle:

http://www.eaglelakewoodworking.com/index.htm?videos.htm