Doing the Wave

Vaughn McMillan

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Since there were a few people who asked about the wavy lines on the sides of the box I made for the 2011 swap, I figured I'd share how I did it...

Cut a wavy line in a 3/4" cherry board. I used a bandsaw and oscillating spindle sander to clean up the cuts and get the two pieces to fit with no gaps.

Soak some 1/16" thick x 3/4" strips of contrasting wood in hot water for a couple hours to soften them.

Clamp the soaked wood tightly - with no glue on any surfaces -between the two halves of the board. Let that sit a day or two until the wood's dry. This gets the curves started in the accent strips, although there will be some springback when it comes out of the clamps. It'll look something like this when you take it out of the clamps. (BTW, these pics are from a box I made a few years ago):

Cherry Wave Construction 1 800.jpg

Next, glue it all up (I like using plastic resin glue like DAP Weldwood) and let it dry in the clamps for a day or so. After that, I plane the board flat again, then resaw it into two bookmatched boards that end up about 1/4" or so thick after planing.

Cherry Wave Construction 2 800.jpg

From that point on, it's just a matter of building a simple mitered box. With some care and planning on the miter cuts, you can get the accent line to line up from one side to another. The miters have to be cut so that no wood is removed from the outside face of the board. If not, the lines won't be aligned.

Wave Box Miters 800.jpg

On this box, I got two of the four corners lined up. The other two are off a little bit. When there's no gap, the corners will look like this:

Cherry Wave Box 3 - 1 800.jpg Cherry Wave Box 3 - 2 800.jpg

And here's what happens when there's a gap in cutting the miter...in this case the gap was about the width of the saw kerf (3/32").

Cherry Wave Box 3 - 3 800.jpg Cherry Wave Box 3 - 4 800.jpg

There ya go...:wave:
 
With some care and planning on the miter cuts, you can get the accent line to line up from one side to another. The miters have to be cut so that no wood is removed from the outside face of the board.

OK. But how, exactly, do you do that? Cut most of the way, at an angle, and then use a knife? Tilt the table on a bandsaw? I'm completely missing something here... ;)

Thanks,

Bill
 
Thanks Vaughn That's a great tutorial! :thumb:

Now how did you chuck up the rectangular lid to cut the swooshes in it?? :huh::dunno:

I'm not much of a lathe guy:eek:

I'm guessing the handle on the lid is placed in just the right spot to cover up the hole from the bottle stopper mandrel or the screw that went through into a waster block.
 
OK. But how, exactly, do you do that? Cut most of the way, at an angle, and then use a knife? Tilt the table on a bandsaw? I'm completely missing something here... ;)

I cut it on the tablesaw, but set the blade height to just clear the thickness of the board. I was feeling pretty lucky to have gotten two of the four just right. :eek:

I'm guessing the handle on the lid is placed in just the right spot to cover up the hole from the bottle stopper mandrel or the screw that went through into a waster block.

No screws or waste blocks. :D I used a vacuum chuck in three different positions. First, the piece was centered, and the curved profile of the top was turned and sanded. I used the tailstock to center the piece and hold it while making the initial profiling cuts. Then I mounted the piece offset (with no tailstock support) to make the crescent cuts on one side, then mounted it offset the other direction to do the other crescent cuts. The one crescent that's deeper than the other two was done that way to hide the scars from the catch I had that blew the lid off the lathe. :doh:

The knob in the middle is only hiding the dimple made with the live center in the tailstock when I did the initial profiling of the lid. ;)
 
Sweet! I've used that resawing technique to make the grain wrap all the way around a box before, but never thought about doing a wavy strip...

Sweet!!! :thumb: :thumb:
 
Took a look and though wow, a bunch of really nice creative touches there. I like the box a lot Vaughn. Thanks for showing us how you did it.
 
Sweet! I've used that resawing technique to make the grain wrap all the way around a box before, but never thought about doing a wavy strip...

Sweet!!! :thumb: :thumb:

I've used the wave on things other than boxes, and they didn't need the resawing...

Jatoba and Pecan - 01 800.jpg Pecan and Jatoba - 01 800.jpg Jatoba and Pecan - 03 800.jpg Pecan and Jatoba - 03 800.jpg

For this pair of paper towel holders, I used 3/4" pecan and jatoba boards. Set one on top of the other, then cut the curves. Swapped a few pieces around and ended up with a negative pair. I cut the back pieces a little too short, so I had to use 1/8" or so filler strips on each end to lengthen the boards. (The proverbial board stretcher.) :p The lines don't match up real well, but if I had used mitered corners they would have. (These are just glued butt joints with pocket screws in the back.)
 
Hey Vaughn, in your house, does the toilet paper sit on some kind of custom woodworked HF with mother of toilet seat inlay? :rofl:

Nah, the holder in the bathroom is just this simple wood one I got at Home Depot:

redneck-couch-toilet.jpg
 
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