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Roger Schroeder 8 years, 5 months ago.
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September 20, 2016 at 1:16 pm #1930
Hi, Woodworkers,
Am facing a design problem and hopefully someone can offer advice. I’m in the process of building a replica of an early 1800s dressing table. Two of the drawers have curved fronts. The knobs are wood and I’m planning to use that style. The bottoms of the knobs are obviously flat; so I’m wondering how to reduce the gap that will be created when I join the knobs to the curved drawers. We can argue that the gap will be too slight to make a difference, but I’d find that to be a sloppy fit, which will get worse after years of use.
I thought about creating a concave hollow in the knob bottoms, but the knobs might look odd from the sides.
My second thought is to use a use a forstner bit in my drill press and create a flat surface on the drawer fronts.
I’m open to other suggestions, but actually I’d love for someone to figure out how the oldtimers solved this problem with handtools.
Incidentally, the original I found in a book and it’s in the author’s home in Vermont. So please don’t suggest I take that route to see how it was done.
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September 22, 2016 at 8:50 am #1934
Roger, I went through the same thoughts when I made a curved front dresser years ago. Creating a flat with a forstner bit is a good idea but it would have to be perfect to work and it’ll look like you’re trying to fix a screw up. There is also the problem of the depth of the knob being different so I opted for curving the bottoms of the pulls to match. No matter that it may look a little different since that what hand made pieces are about. It becomes part of the story of the piece. I don’t remember how I did it. I might have used my molding plane or cut a block to match and wrapped sandpaper around it. I believe I cut a long piece and matched the curve along the base. I then cut it and mounted it on my lathe and turned it. Saves time and aggravation! Of course you’d have to take the thickness into account when sizing up the knobs. If that technique keeps splitting off at the tip when you turn it you could also cut and match a piece and glue it to the base of the knob. You’d never even see the glue line. Have fun, Charlie
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September 29, 2016 at 7:26 pm #1943
Charlie,
Thank you! You allayed my anxiety about using a forstner bit and offered a solution to achieving a concave to convex match of knob to curved drawer front.
Roger
PS. Stay tuned to some more head scratchers. -
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