I'm making a chair and would like to create a depression in the wood seat for my butt to rest comfortably. Working in oak and sanding is WAY to slow. Suggestions as to how I might do this without purchasing expensive equipment as I don't envisage making enough chairs to warrant the expense.
The usual hand tools (adze, scorp, travisherm compass plane) will probably cost you more than an angle grinder.
If you already have an angle grinder, find a wheel that will hog out the material and use a sander to finish up
The classic method uses some handtools like the curved drawknives, inshave & scorp, The inshave is like a more radically curved drawknife, and the scorp even more so, sometimes with a single handle & both ends of the blade curving into a circle and joined at a single handle. You may be able to find drawknive or even an inshave at a yard or estate sale. I've never seen a scorp in the wild myself. Without those, for a one-off project, maybe you could try a belt sander with something like a 24 or 36 grit belt, using the roller to gouge out a rough shape. It would still be a lot of hand work to clean up. If you are handy with metalworking, maybe you can make an inshave that's passable enough for a single job.
I've never tried it, and you'd have to make sure that the RPMs aren't excessive, but it occurs to me that a die grinder with a burr might work reasonably quickly too.
---------------------------------- A 4", right angle, sander/grinder equipped with a rubber sanding disk and 24 grit disks.
Figure 25 disks/chair.
Have fun.
Lew
Dennis Lougheed wrote in news:4f0b877c$0$26948$c3e8da3 $ snipped-for-privacy@news.astraweb.com:
If you've got a router, you could hog out the bulk of the material. Finishing would then require sanding the rest of the way.
There's also carving accessories for angle grinders. I've never used one, but have seen them on TV. They look like they work well.
A hand plane might also work, if you've got one where you can set the blade way down below the sole. Like a router plane, the blade would remove material from beneath the plane while it rides on the edges above. This is just an idea, no idea how practical it is...
Puckdropper
Others have mentioned various hand tools, then suggested instead various power tools. I've made quite a few chairs (see the flickr link in my sig), and I don't use any of the tools mentioned so far (angle grinder, scorp, inshave, drawknife, etc.). I use:
Once you've reached this point, you can finish up with sandpaper without too much trouble, probably just by hand or with a good rubber sanding block, starting with 120 or 150 grit and working towards the smoother grits. Of course, a good round bottom random orbital sander will make this final step a snap.
None of the hand tools I mentioned will set you back very much money (especially if you snag good used ones on eBay), and you'd be surprised how fast you can get the job done once you get the hang of them. It's also way more satisfying (and less error-prone) than attacking the wood with an angle grinder, and WAY less messy. I can't STAND using power tools for this purpose; they're noisy, it's hard to "feel" your progress (when you have high and low spots), and they throw dust everywhere!
Radial or table saw, radial is easier. Instead of the blade cutting a straight line, the blase and wood are arranged at an angle to each other and shallow cuts are made with the blade teeth only. That will cut an arc, the width being determined by the blade diameter and its angle to the wood. Multiple passes - blade being extended slightly each time - are made to get the depth you want.
Think cushion.
Inshave
Might check back with the last years issues of Fine Woodworking. They have had one, maybe two articles on building fairly simple router sleds that allow you to machine out contour to a pattern. Yeah, it is a little laborious but doesn't appear to be that bad.
Ron
"HeyBub" wrote in news:9eydnXhf- N_Pi5HSnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:
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Puckdropper
Well done, sir!
-- We are always the same age inside. -- Gertrude Stein
I'm making a chair and would like to create a depression in the wood seat for my butt to rest comfortably. Working in oak and sanding is WAY to slow. Suggestions as to how I might do this without purchasing expensive equipment as I don't envisage making enough chairs to warrant the expense.
I've used a flap disk on an angle grinder. 5 minute job.
You forgot to mention that it's deccorated with rhinestones, gold chain, and other faux gemstonens.
but, if you did so, that would make it a "bum bling" piece of humor. And your joke is better than that.
It's easy to hog out oak if you can cut near-parallel to the grain; I'd think in terms of plunge-cutting with a circular saw to make semicircle stop cuts in the deepest part of the depression, then carve toward those cuts with a gouge. It's quicker than you'd think.
The wood, though, has to be straight grained, you do NOT want to cut a smooth curve near a knot.
Adzes, too, can be useful.
For finishing, go ahead and do the sanding-disk thing. Don't inhale the sawdust, though.
Convex plane.
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