Curved and Cross Grain Mouldings by Hand?

RenaissanceWW

RenaissanceWW

Member
Thanks to Matt Bickford, I'm shooting great mouldings along the grain.  So how does one make moulded edges across the grain or along a curved shape.  My moulding planes understandably don't work well across the grain.  Is this just a scratch stock doing all the work?  Even then the scratch stocks I have used can be tricky across the grain.  I see examples in museums all the time so I know it was done before router bits.  Anyone got experience with this?  I'm about to embark on a Pembrooke table with butterfly style drop leaves and was hoping to make it from a solid piece of crotch grain Walnut I have.  The edge will have an ogee profile.
 
Curved moldings either have to be carved or scraped, and usually a bit of both. I'll scribe the cross grain to make sure there's no telescoping into the rest of the top, then use a gouge or two to rough it out, for an ogee for example, and then scrape the profile with a scratch stock. Spokeshaves are handy to remove wood sometimes. Finally, use a file, round, oval or whatever works, and file the surfaces clean, then maybe another pass with a sharp scraper before sanding with fine paper.-Al
 
I work a fair bit of cross-grained walnut mouldings and I find it helps sometimes to solidify the wood by sizing it regularly between scrapings, or saturating it with thin shellac, both of which can be washed out afterwards before giving it a final fine sanding. If you're not going to be staining the wood, solidifying with varnish or a drying oil often works well.

Also lubricating the wood with liquid dish soap sometimes helps.

 
There is a type of hand tool that is specifically made for cutting profiles into the curved end grain of (for example) a pembroke table.  One word for it is a "coachmaker's shave", another one is a "sash shave".  This is a link to a picture of one on Lee Richmond's The Best Things site:

http://www.thebestthings.com/oldtools/graphics/mi110273.jpg

That one has been sold, but if you want one, you may wish to call him as he typically has more on hand than what is pictured on his website.

These types of tools will generally only work well on gentle curves, and one generally has a pair, one right-handed and one left-handed so that you can work "downhill" on the endgrain.  American examples are sometimes "double ended" in that both directions are made into one tool.

For the gooseneck moldings that one typically sees on queen anne and chippendale colonial furniture, they were produced almost exclusively with carving tools, as Al notes.  Period examples sometimes show evidence of being scraped with a profiled scraper after carving, others still bear small facets left by the carving tools.
 
Thanks for the pic.  It is unclear from the image though.  It this an actual shave or just a scratch stock.  I can't tell from the angle but it doesn't look like there is an escapement for shavings or if there is a beveled edge on the iron.  This could be a great shop built tool.
 
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