Pedestal Table: Curved Aprons

I've decided to make the curved aprons for this pedestal table the old-fashioned way. These days, aprons like these are often made from several laminations of bending plywood--a perfectly viable method--but I felt that the traditional approach would be more appropriate for this project.

The first step in making traditional curved aprons is to make a pattern for the outer and inner radiuses. I like to make the initial pattern a little oversize and then trace it onto stock that has been surfaced on two sides, as you see in the photo below.



It's important to know the circumference of the apron so that you can estimate the amount of stock you'll need. Once I've traced as many pieces as I'll need, I cut the boards into manageable sizes and begin sawing out the blanks.



As I cut out the blanks, I begin stacking them in their approximate final position on the roughed-out top. Notice how the seams in the aprons do not line up. That's the whole point of building aprons in this manner rather than just sawing some curves out of thick stock. By staggering the joints this way, you're overlapping the relatively long grain towards the centers of the curves with the shorter grain of the extremities. Short grain is very prone to breaking; by overlapping short and long grain, this tendency towards breaking easily is overcome.




The next steps will be to flush-trim each blank to an exact template, then assemble the aprons. After that, I'll veneer them with vertically-oriented quartersawn maple.