One of my good clients that I frequently do CNC inlay pocket work and also built a large natural edge table for recently brought a couple of natural edge ambrosia maple boards by, ostensibly to build a long coffee table from. Sadly, I had to show him that they were pretty much "banana boards" that just were not going to work for any kind of table top. There was quite a bow in both of them! We parked them in my wood storage, knowing that some idea would come for using them. That idea became a heavy mirror frame with the natural edge on the inside next to the glass.
My illness, the pandemic, cutting chair seats for another client and other distractions conspired to delay things, but I figured out a plan last week, cut down the slabs and today I milled things up and got to the job. Working this kind of project is a combination of good planning with an even bigger dose of "wing and a prayer". LOL
The project began by sizing things up to rough (very rough) dimensions with chalk
IMG_7360.jpg
The pieces were crosscut which was fun considering they were not exactly...flat...and ripped at the bandsaw into general component sizes
IMG_7361.jpg
About 30 minutes of face jointing followed by thicknessing to a net 40mm provided actual usable boards for the project. Working with the shorter components reduced the material loss in a very reasonable way. Once that was done, the non-natural edges were cleaned up with straight-line ripping clamped down on the slider. It was done slow and steady and with minimal stock removal...the idea was to provide a clean, straight, "jointed" edge with little or no burning.
IMG_7395.jpg
Because of the size of the mirror frame and the fact that my main bench had two other projects going on, I took advantage of the larger CNC table again. The first step was to shuffle the boards around to find the best orientation for the four pieces such that minimal "faux" natural edge would be require to make the inside corners work.
IMG_7396.jpg
That determined, I did a little layout to setup for the corner miters which were then cut on the slider with the miter fence at 45º. It was clear to me that this would get things close, but due to the nature of the stock, a bunch of fine tuning was going to be required.
IMG_7397.jpg
That held true...the two corners to the front of this photo were "really good" but I had to adjust things for component at the top of the photo
IMG_7398.jpg
After determining the lines required, I chose to use the track saw to make the adjustments to fit that component...which were actually done on the side-pieces.
IMG_7399.jpg
That got things really close...just a little work to back-bevel the miters on each side brought things together the way they needed to be.
IMG_7400.jpg