I made a balance beam for my son to play on. I bought the straightest (ugh!) doug fir 4x4 I could find at the big box store. While this was a down and dirty project not intended to be very refined, I had a horrible time with the curves on the feet. It was too thick to really use my turning saw with any kind of accuracy on the back side (and I don’t have too much experience with my turning saw). I mostly whacked away at it with a 1 inch chisel to get it reasonably close, then switched to a draw knife. My draw knife is pretty big - too big for something like this, so I tried to finish up with a spoke shave (too small!) as much as I could. It would have been nice to have a smallish draw knife or a heavy rasp. Oh well. Given its purpose (to entertain a 7 year old and slowly succumb to the weather) I think it’s good enough. I don’t know how well the glue will hold up to the weather, although it will be mostly under a covered area, so I drove a large lag screw through each foot. Three coats of spar urethane to seal it up. This project was a challenge for my tiny bench.
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