making curved chair rails

[fobos8]

Hi all

I'm gonna be making some dining chairs soon - just in the process of drawing them on sketchup. Ideally I'd like the chairs to have a curved crest(upper) rail and lower back rail so diners backs' are well accomodated. The upper rail will be around 310mm long, 50mm wide and 21mm thick. The centre of the rail will curve about 30mm out from the two end points.

Thing is I don't have a bandsaw!! What options do I have for shaping them??

I could cut some 3mm veneers and glue them around a form. Just wondering of there are any ways to cut a curve without a band saw. Is router table with template trimmer an option??

Best regards, Andrew

 

[Peter Sefton]

How are you going to make the curved former without a Bandsaw? :?

 

[fobos8]

How are you going to make the curved former without a Bandsaw? :?

I intended to jigsaw some 6mm mdf close to my curved line and then sand it smooth. Then use the template and router with templete trim to transfer to thicker mdf to make the former.

 

[Peter Sefton]

This should work well, if you wanted to make the chair backs in a more traditional manner then you could use a Bow saw to cut the solid timber to shape and then spoke shave and sand.

 

[fobos8]

This should work well, if you wanted to make the chair backs in a more traditional manner then you could use a Bow saw to cut the solid timber to shape and then spoke shave and sand.

a good idea and might well be quicker then laminting veneers.

what about routing options??

 

[Racers]

Hi,

You coild route a series of slots knock, of the waste and plane/sand smooth.

I made a compass plane from an old coffin smoother for the internal curve on mine (I bandsawed the backs first)

Pete

 

[fobos8]

those chairs look really great. Thanks for the advise