From: Jason Dain

Location: Halifax NS

Hobbyist or Pro: Hobbyist

Experience: 3-5 yrs

Project Name: Bent Lamination Wall Shelf

Wood Species: Ash

Finish Used: Random orbit sander to 220 grit before glue-up. Hand Sanding to 320 following assembly. 3 coats of Minwax wiping varnish followed by application of paste wax with 0000 steel wool.

Project Description:
This is a bent lamination wall shelf made of Ash from a 2005 Popular Woodworking magazine article.

It was pretty easy to build following the directions. I had wanted to build this since I got the magazine way back in 2005 but didn’t have all the stuff I needed. This past year I?ve picked up a Dewalt 735 planer, Grizzly 0490 8? Jointer, Grizzly G0513X2 Bandsaw and G0548Z 2HP Dust Collector so the build was on!

A few things I would do different: 1) When resawing the 3/16? slats, I would not just randomly slice them from multiple boards at a time and not keep track of the order of the boards so the grain doesn’t match. I was trying to be efficient not walking back and forth from the Bandsaw/Jointer. 2) When gluing the boards against the form, I would need more clamps and would use a negative form to apply even pressure along all the slats. 3) When routing the slots, I would put some tearout protection on the front of the boards as some of them did tearout when cutting the slots for the shelves and had to be repaired.

This was my first project with all my new equipment so I?ve labeled it the $2000+ shelf!

This Viewer Project comes from Stan. Its a curvy design with some incredible figure!

Here is the latest project that I finished. It is a coffee table for a corner sectional couch. The table was the result of watching David Marks’ video on curvilinear methods. The design for the table came about one Saturday morning while making coffee. We had been wanting a coffee table for our new couch, and all round, square, or rectangle tables just didn’t fit. The cone filter sparked an idea for the shape of the table, so I walked over to the couch and held the filter out in front of me. Bingo, I had a shape!

I own a copy of David Marks’ DVD on curvilinear design, and I had done some bent-wood lamination development on other projects. So I knew that I would use that technique on the outer rim of the top. The top rim is made from 17 strips of Alder wrapped around a plywood form. Used bicycle inner tubes to clamp each layer as I glued up the rm. The rest of the top is book matched quilted maple veneer in a radial pattern. I used the two ply method for gluing up the veneer so that I could center he radial pattern. The legs, made from Alder, were glued up in one step using a cable jig.

I stained the Alder a Cherry color, and then added two layers of a top coat. It was at this stage that I attached the outer rim to the veneer top. I didn’t want to take a chance of getting stain on the maple veneer. Finished with two more layers of a top coat oil. All together the table took about 150 hours.