Share your craft projects
Make new craft buddies
Ask craft questions
Blog your craft journey
Brian
2044 posts
and
31 followers
in over 10 years
in over 10 years
How can I make splayed side for a round tray?
My wife and I bought furniture for the first time recently since moving in to our new home 2 years ago. It’s a living room set including a large ottoman measuring about 40" square. She decided that will be the coffee table and she wants me to make a round tray for it. I would like the tray to have a lip on a 45° angle but I can’t figure out how to do it. It seems to be a very difficult thing to do without a lathe and even then it would have to be an extremely large lathe for that size. I looked on Google images for an example to post and I couldn’t find any! All the large round trays had a straight (90°) lip. Am I biting off more than I can chew?
Losing fingers since 1969
6 Replies
Hi Brian. The most straightforward way to do this would be to glue up segmented staves. I have a computer program that can generate the compound cutting angle if you let me know how many staves you would need, or I can suggest an appropriated number of staves if you let me know the thickness of the materials you will be using and the diameter of the tray. I think 45deg. is a pretty extreme angle and will make it all the more difficult to not only glue up, but also to glue to the tray. Without a lathe there would also be quite a bit of hand work involved to get it rounded after glue-up. maybe there is another way to do this, but I don’t know about it.
Mike, an American living in Norway
Brian: Take a look at this.
http://www.pdxtex.com/canoe/compound.htm
Tor and Odin are the greatest of gods.
It would be easy(ish) on a bandsaw. Do you have one?
I would assemble the circle with maybe six scarfed together pieces and then just cut it on the bandsaw. As you can’t get the bandsaw blade into the middle of the circle, you would have to dry assemble, mark, cut the individual pieces, and then glue it up.
Short answer: Yes, you are biting off a mouthful but it can be done. Mike’s way will work too, this is just another option.
The early bird gets the worm but its the second mouse that gets the cheese.
I was thinking today that maybe putting together a segmented circle, rough cutting it with a jigsaw, then using some plywood circles as a template for shaping with the router. The sides don’t have to be 45° precisely, I just want them splayed. So maybe shaping the inside (the top side of the splay) with an ogee or something and the outside (underside of the splay) with a 45 bit or some thing that will round up the edge would work.
I do have a bandsaw, but I also have a router table circle jig big enough so probably the router idea would be better. I’ll give out a go on some tubafores before buying nice lumber.
Losing fingers since 1969
Madts, I used that excellent resource when I built my octagonal lamp!
Losing fingers since 1969
Brian
Stack laminate four or more sections in the required diameter ,more will give you a better look because of less end grain showing .
Assemble the ring with paper joints in two joint locations and split when dry .
Cut inside of the ring and reassemble and then cut the outside .
