Thread: How would you build this curved side... - Family Woodworking

Hey folks,

I'm playing about with different ideas for a dresser for my daughter (age 11).
While looking around for ideas, I came across the weird and wacky stuff over at Straight Line Designs. Now, I think some of that stuff is a bit too over the top for my tastes. But it is a source of some wild ideas.

So I doodled up this idea for a curvy dresser:

The basic guts of the dresser would be fairly normal rectangular construction, which simplifies things greatly. But the curved sides would still add some whimsy and visual interest.

(And yes, Dave Richards, I tried to properly orient the grain, but for some reason I cannot get the "texture" sub-menu to appear when I'm clicking on a curved face. Somewhere I need to find some better grain images too. I think I have some good ones, but then I start working and I just think how fake it looks. Not to mention Dave tossing up all that gorgeous quilted cherry on his table! But I digress... )

So I'm thinking of how best to make those curved sides. This is what I've hit on so far:

That is a close up of the top of the right side. The front (and back) legs would be a 1" piece of stock. I cut a curve on it, and then rabbet the curve to receive a 1/4" piece of veneer plywood. On the inside (top left of the image) is just a flat piece of 3/4" cabinet grade plywood, which gives me a flat surface for mounting the drawers anyway I want.

Here, in case you're confused I took two images with just basic colours indicating the 3 different pieces:

Do you think 1/4" hardwood plywood would flex enough for this? I would think so. I could swap with 1/8" ply, but then I think I'd want some sort of backing support, either another 1/8" sheet or something else.

I also think it would look nice to have the sides and front faces of this blend as much as possible. I figure that a strong chamfer on the edge would go a fair way to blending the front into the side and hiding the seam. (and no, I didn't put a chamfer in the sketch.) Got any better suggestions? Connecting the plywood to the leg at a miter, for instance, seems to me to be a risky option.

Here's a view showing the front leg of the side structure hidden:

Here's a view of the underneath of the side structure:

I would need to come up with something to fill in that triangular gap where the feet meet the floor.

Comments welcome. Note that this is for me right now a mental exercise, and some sketchup practice. I might just end up building her a mission type dresser. So please don't ask for progress photos!!!

Source: http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?28336-How-would-you-build-this-curved-side

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