A couple of years before my sister asked me to make a new chairback molding.  I had collected the trunk of a dead redbud tree from her yard with the idea that I would make her some bowls or vases.  It was very wormy when I collected it and it sat on my driveway for several years.  I decide to see if I can find enough non-punky wood to make at least one piece for her. 

Barks side

Doesn't look like something you would salvage but it looks a little better on the Inside.

After cutting it in half it was looking doubtful but I managed to find a couple of pieces that should work.  Redbud is very pretty wood. 

Yeah, I should have left it in board form but I milled it into the arc shape when I was assuming I was just going to make a simple curved shape using just my band saw and some shaping by hand and on my router table. 
There will be a few holes to fill but that should just add to the look. 

I only had these two pieces so I decided to run some tests on some scraps so I cut and glued up a 2x4 into about the same shape as my redbud blanks. 

I first had to get this mounted so that I could be sure that the entire piece would fit inside the curved blank.  I used a pen holder to draw out the rough outline to make sure that I positioned it so that the entire profile would fit inside the blank.  This picture is actually after the rough outline is cut but you can see the pen toolpath result. 

Because of how tall the blank is, Initial work-holding required some creative clamping using some hand screw clamps.  A hand screw at each end gives me a way to use hold down clamps.  Note that the first step was to drill holes in the auxiliary spoil board and then drill the alignment holes into the top of the blank (which will be come the bottom of the finished molding).  Initial rough outline:

Note that I will get 2 pieces of molding out of each blank.  In this case two top pieces.  I rough and finish carve the bottom 3D profile

Part way through the finish 3D toolpath:

The piece is then flipped over, using the alignment holes and dowels in the spoilboard to get it perfectly positioned and the bottom profile is repeated. 

I now have a piece with 2 bottom profiles.  I slice it in half with the bandsaw and mount it onto the spoil board using double sided tape to hold it in place, using the alignment holes to get it perfectly positioned.

And the roughing and finishing 3D toolpaths for the top are executed. 

The bottom half of the molding is made from the second piece of wood and it just involves milling a profile with alignment holes but it works sort of the same way as the 3D profile.  It too is milled from the top and the bottom and cut in half to yield two pieces. 

It too is sliced in half and alignment holes are milled into the other side.  These holes are used to join the top and bottom together.  I test fit the top molding on before I sliced it in half.

You can see that there was an alignment problem when milling from the opposite side, creating a step.  I fixed this for the final milling process. 

All that is left is to execute the same steps on the redbud blanks. 

Between the roughing and final passes, I fill the worm holes with dyed epoxy. 

Sliced in half

And the top profile cut

Similarly the bottom piece is cut to profile

Some shots of the finished pieces before sanding and finishing.  I had to fill a few worm holes that showed up during milling. 

After sanding and finishing.  I used a wipe on poly.  

New next to the original. 

I didn't get the angle quite right as I was cutting to length and I got a little too agressive when sanding the ends but my sister is very happy.  

That's it.  Thanks for following along.