Making a solid ring for round table edge???

[Christof Grohs]

Can anyone point me to a tutorial on cutting pieces to trim a round table? I have a few tops I produced and I need to trim the with a solid edge. They are 36" diameter. I'd like to have the 1" wide ring overlap the plywood sub-base by 1/4" So I need to cut a ring comprised of 6 or 8 segments with a insid diameter of 35.5" and outside diameter of 37.5". I'm stumpped:confused: http://www.terrawooddesign.com/dirPhotos/041-AWM.jpg

[Grant Wilkinson]

What do you mean by making the ring in segments? From your subject line, I thought you wanted to make the ring in one piece.

If you can provide more details, I'm sure someone on this forum will be able to help you - maybe even me. ;)

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Big table to have a solid edge. Cut a strip of something and glue it in place. Don't want a glue joint cut lits of really thin strips and laminate them with feathered joints and epoxy them into a solid ring on the table in situs,

[Mike Henderson]

I'm not sure this is what you mean, but what I've done in the past is to make my edge segments - that is, cut the pieces so that the angle between them is correct. Use splines or biscuits when you glue the segment pieces together (you can clamp it with a strap clamp). Then attach the glued ring to a piece of plywood. You can screw through the plywood into the segments. Actually, you can glue the pieces together while attached to the plywood if you put waxed paper between the segments and the plywood - that will keep it flat.

Now, find the center by projecting the lines of the angle cuts to the middle. Use a router and a circle jig to cut the inside round - don't cut through the plywood - only the segments. Trial fit your decorative piece - then cut it again in *VERY* small increments to sneak up on the correct size (and I sure hope your inset piece is round). Eventually, you'll reach a point where you have to push hard to get the inset piece to fit.

Now use your router and circle jig to cut the outside edge and apply whatever decorative profile to it.

Couple of ways to glue it to the inset. If it's the exact same thickness, remove the ring, put some waxed paper down, then reattach the ring to the plywood. Glue the inset into the ring.

Otherwise, you have to glue the ring without the plywood backing and it's difficult to line up with the inset piece all around.

I hope that's what you meant by your question.

Mike

[Ben Grunow]

Seem to recall a poker table tutorial a couple months ago that described this in detail

heres one http://peterod.com/roundtable.htm

not the one I was thinking of but it is an idea

Ben

[Doug Shepard]

I've used pretty much the same method Mike H. mentioned. First though, I'd take that scrap piece of plywood and draw the inner/outer circles on it then draw pie shapes to divide the circle into 6 or 8 wedges. Lay a straight edge across the outer ends of a pie wedge to box in the 2 arcs. That will tell you how wide your starting stock needs to be. Allow for some overage so that the router bit would be cutting full bit width all the way through the cuts. 8 wedges will let you use narrower stock. I'd try to line the joints up with part of the geometry on your table top when you inset it. The flowers if 6 segments, or the inner whiter wood segments if 8. I've used double biscuits to join the segments just because I didn't want the splines visible on the edge. But if you go that route be sure to locate them so that you dont cut through them with the router. The 1/4" rabbet ledge you could just do with a bearing guided rabbet bit after you've cut out the circle.

[Christof Grohs]

Thanks for the input so far. I think I should clarify a couple things. I should not have called it a "solid ring", what I meant was that it needed to be of solid wood, not a wood/resin combination like the rest of the table. This misread as one big piece of wood...a horrible waste of material. I was thinking about 6 or 8 segments, joined end-to-end to make the full ring. In the case of 6 segments, I would need 6 pieces with 30 degree cuts on each end to make 360*. I will try the method described by Mike and Doug, this seems to be the only real practical way to do it.

Thanks
c-

[Jim Becker]

Christof, I highly recommend the "draw it out full size" method for assembling your segments, etc., for this kind of project. In fact, doing that on a cheap piece of luan ply gives you the ability to tack things down securely while you form the inside and outside edges with a trammel and a router. The full size pattern will also insure that any biscuits, dowels, splines or :) Dominoes you use are in the field that will not intersect the curves and be, umm...visible...after the cut. ;)

[luc gendron]

You can buy thick (3mm up to 6mm) veneer edging. Talk to your local wood supplier, if not drop a line to www.hardwareattic.ca (http://www.hardwareattic.ca). They will get it for you in your wood species.

[John Fry]

This is the jig I use to cut the inside diameter on round edging. I test cut in scrap until I get the radius perfect.

http://www.chiselandbit.com/veneered_table/vtable15.jpg

Next I cut the miters on the edges. This table is just straight grain veneered, but I usually make sunburst patterns on my round tables, so these miters must match the veneer segments perfectly. Then I cut clamping notches to leave "ears" for good clamping ability at the miters.

http://www.chiselandbit.com/veneered_table/vtable16.jpg

Each segment is custom fit at the miters and the veneer seams, then clamped and glued separately.


http://www.chiselandbit.com/veneered_table/vtable17.jpg

When all the segments are attached, the router trammel is used again from the underside, to trim the round framework, then a profile is chosen and cut last.

http://www.chiselandbit.com/veneered_table/vtable2.jpg



The finished edge framing comes out looking like this.


Hope that helps.