Hello here this is my second attempt to blog shell boxes. The last one ended up in the wall art ‘Inverted World’. Well this one is a little less spectacular but is based along the same theme of curves. This time a curved pattern
but it will have stringing introduced between the colour changes as will become apparent as the blog progresses. The main woods are American Black Walnut and Sycamore with Yew stringing. I will be book-matching woods where necessary.
First step is to cut one piece of each of the main woods, 110mm square by 18mm thick.
This needs cutting into 45° triangles. An easy way is with a jig like this
marked up with an engineers square and cut on the bandsaw. The wood to be cut is placed in it and cut on the tablesaw, thus
To cut the necessary curves in this piece I used my Circle Cutting Jig
So to prepare the four triangles for cutting I first made up a sacrificial carrier plate from 3mm Hardboard (Masonite) like this
Then double sided taped the triangles together and to the carrier plate like this
The Sycamore is on top and the Walnut beneath. I clipped off the bottom corner of the wood so as not to snag the pivot pin on the Circle Jig. I then cut the largest radius
Followed by the smallest radius curve
After separating the pieces and cleaning off the double sided tape I had a stack just as before I started cutting. I flipped the pieces curved on both inside and outside thus
When you separate the top layer from the bottom one and re-arrange them you get this
When glued up each of these four triangular patterns will be re-sawn, producing the full pattern. You’ll see. Just be patient.
For the stringing I used the same method with the circle jig and bandsaw to produce curved stringing out of a piece of Yew. Placing it in the pattern like this.
I made up a simple gluing cramp jig to glue the assemblies up like so
and glued up two triangles at a time like this
The pressure of each clamp counterbalances the other here. The metal rule is used to separate the triangles as each is going to be individually re-sawn. In the next part I will do the re-saw and fully integrate the pattern.
Be seeing you