Cherry edging around curved oak table - advice needed

[Kaspar Snord]

Hi folks,

I'm currently working on a small coffee table in oak. The shape of the table can be seen in the following link:

. It's a so called Reuleaux triangle, with quite a few interesting geometrical properties. The width of the table is approximately 60cm (about 24 inches).

What I would like to do is to add a cherry wood edging about 1-2 cm (about

0.4-0.8 inches) thick around the table. I haven't yet decided upon how to do this, and I would like some advice. Sawing the edges to shape from a big enough slab of cherry wood seems like a hard way to do it, and would generate quite a lot of waste (cherry wood costs quite a lot here in Helsinki, Finland). If I saw a thick enough edge it's obviously quite hard to bend, but it could perhaps be done by steaming/heating it? Should I saw out strips thin enough that I could bend along the table (obviously these would have to be quite thin, so I would have to saw about 3-5 strips/edge).

Maybe there are other ways of doing it as well - any advice, trick or tip would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Kaspar

[Juergen Hannappel]

[...]

Ans would produce a bad grain pattern.

Do that. A web search for "steam bending" will produce lots of descriptions on how to do it; it's less difficult than you might think. (I once built a guitar, and bending the sides was definitely not the most complicated part).