All Replies on Spline - How would you make this?

band saw would be my first guess…how wide is that spline?

-- It's made of wood. Real sturdy.--Chubbs Peterson

If I had to do it, I’d put that spline in there before the wood was milled to final size and shape. Then, when you cut the angle on the frame, and the 45 for the corners, it would all line up. I hope that makes sence I can see it in my head but sometimes the fingers don’t do a good job of explaining

-- Gary, DeKalb Texas only 4 miles from the mill

You could rip the kerf for the spline on the table saw, and shape the end with a chisel.

Edit: by end I mean the rounded part the table table saw will leave behind. It would be mitered after the spline is glued in, dimensioned and routed for the rabbit.

Width of the spline will vary… the only part i dont understand is cutting the void for the spline.

Shane, bandsaw would be too rough i think. I realy dont want to hand tool it either (quick xmas gifts ha)

Kerf cut on table saw first then add spline and then miter.

Custom ground blade (CA or DA) with 45 degree top bevel. Cut the slot, clean up small amount of arc, and cut spline to fit.

-- Nothing to it, but to do it ...

Lay it out
Cut it out
Miter the end with a chisel

Practice on scrap first, second, etc.

Good luck, you can do it.

blackcherry

some people just dont get it

-- "Good artists borrow, great artists steal”…..Picasso

How thick is the dark wood at it’s thickest point? I was thinking you could use half inch stock and simply angle it for the deep 45, then just treat it like molding at the corners. Rout out the maple slot.

-- Failure does not stop me, it makes me try harder..... because I'm crazy.

If you dont want the inlay, you’ll have to take the Jatoba and rip the lengths out, cut it where you want the maple and then glue the maple in.
Now all you need to do is angle the piece to 45 degree by tilting it back from the face of the frame. No need to do dangerous cuts to 45 degrees and the wood will have a much better surface grain.

-- Failure does not stop me, it makes me try harder..... because I'm crazy.

I thought I had it, and type up a detailed explanation.
Then, before I could hit the post button, I thought about the forty five you mentioned on the end and went back to look.
I now don’t know either.
I’m marking this post to watch though.
I hope you come back and tell us how to do it.

-- http://wddsrfinewoodworks.blogspot.com/

Kerf cut on table saw, clean up and make 45 with small jeweler’s file. Just my opinion. Or maybe something with lasers. That’d be cool.

-- - The mightiest oak in the forest is just a little nut that held its ground.

trexco

That’s the best concept i could think of as well

If the spline were short enough you could cut on end but limited to blade height (also thought this would be too dangerous) this would eliminate the arc.

You may not need to clean up the arc though if the spline were cut at the proper angle to just touch the front and back corners, this would leave a void the shape of the arc. And final milling would expose this gap.

Just dont want to order a funky blade grind unless I have too, but would bite the bullet if absolutely necessary.

ripped on the TS – PRIOR to cutting the miter on the frame using a stopped cut (cut to line. stop TS, remove part, rinse and repeat)

the 45 at the end of the accent strip should be created and cleaned up with a narrow chisel.

-- ㊍ When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.

A jig like this combined with a custom ground blade in your TS would do it. Not cheaply, but fast an high production capability.

Or, like this and hand make the little 45 in the corner with a fret saw or perhaps a custom ground chisel.

-- Michael :-{| Diapers and politicians both need to be changed often; and for the same reason.

Table saw then chisel the mitered ends. Raise the blade to full height on the table saw to reduce the distance you have to stop from the end. Or, don’t change anything and make the length of the maple different on back than on the front. You could still use a single piece of maple, just angled and beveled as needed.

Regardless, when you insert the maple, just cut the bevel but leave the thicknessed stock massively oversized…then trim the maple in place with a handsaw and plane flush with a handplane. Don’t try to cut the maple to perfect size before insertion. By using oversized stock, all you have to worry about is making contact on the two mitered ends at the front and back surfaces. That means you can chisel away the middle to your heart’s content without worrying about a perfect interior miter. Nobody will see that anyway. Or, the beveled piece of maple can be mostly dug out on that end, except for where the miters come together at the faces…that way, you don’t have to chisel anything but the surface miters.

-- jay, www.allaboutastro.com

CNC, boom. That is probably how they did it.

Now if you are looking for a real answer for doing it in a regular old shop like most of us have, I would say that doing the laminations thing would be the safest and most repeatable, especially if it can be up to 8” long. I think it looks really cool, but could be one of those details that would take so much effort such a little effect (purely my opinioin, you may love it and others may notice it much more than myself).

-- Brian T. - Exact science is not an exact science

A custom blade still won’t get you there. It will not give you a vertical cut because it is round. You will still need to clean up the inside edges.

-- Oldworld, Fair Oaks, Ca

Here’s a cross section of what I’m talking about. Forgive the poor Sketchup ability, but you get the idea. Just trim the maple after gluing and before cutting the frame miters.

-- jay, www.allaboutastro.com

I don’t know why an inlay won’t work because who cares if you see the spline on the back of a picture frame?
I don’t see why you could not do a stop cut on a router table before cutting the bevel, if you feel you still have to go all the way through the material then just rout it in several passes from both sides and chisel the angel in the stop side.
An alliterative would be to cut the groove using a tenoning jig before cutting the bevel on the table saw but you could only make it around 5” long that way. All said and done you need to take some scrap experiment and see what works for you.

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

I just had an idea…
- Turn table saw on
- Turn grinder on
- Pick up grinder and walk over to table saw
- Hold grinder upside down over spinning TS blade at a 45 degree angle
- Slowly lower grinder down to make custom-grind blade

Might want to wear safety glasses for that one.

-- - The mightiest oak in the forest is just a little nut that held its ground.

In the end I think Jim is right… I can just make the inlay proud and run it through the planer.

This way I can make the inlay deep enough to give me a good size maple piece to work with still… say 1/4 deep… still have to hand tool the 45 but my chisels are razors so I should be good.

Thanks for all the thoughts! Will post project when im done.

Just realized this Jatoba is Q/S with tons of small flecking, should be cool.

But you said you didn’t want an inlay, Brian. All that Sketchup work for nothing! ;)

-- jay, www.allaboutastro.com

I wish I could use Sketchup that well Jay.

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

Well as a favor to thos that helped….
If you ever need any visualization of a project done let me know.
I have over 60K of software… below is an Inventor model brought into Autodesk Showcase
Its a coffee roasting tower I am currently working on… I draw all my projects in 3D… I have my whole house drawn inside and out.

Another approach would be to make the blanks for the frame from a glue-up.

Rip the dark wood into 3 strips; the middle strip as narrow as the inlay.
Replace the ends of the middle strips with the inlay material, mitering the ends.
Glue the strips back together to form the blanks.

Nothing scary or difficult.

-- Greg D. -- the price of freedom is tolerance

If you want it on both sides, I would inlay on both sides and fake it.

The other thing I was thinking was to make it a 3-layer glue-up of jatoba/maple/jatoba. The thin maple strip would then be joined at a 45 with a mating Jatoba piece. The bad thing about that is you’d have jatoba-jatoba glue lines.

Inlay both sides and no one will know the difference. Make one jig for the maple section inlay (it’s reversible) and it will go fast…just repetition.

Miss Zabrina sure gets around.

-- jay, www.allaboutastro.com

Rout the groove with a handheld router and edgeguide. Then mill the overall shape of the trim. When filling in the spline, you will have a small amount of chisel / trim work.
You can achieve a similar look by leaving the spline rounded to match the router bit profile.
Best of luck!

-- Willie, Washington "If You Choose Not To Decide, You Still Have Made a Choice" - Rush

wow Brian that’s cool and amazing.

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

Brian, Splines are often used double-duty for strength as well as looks. If you install them before cutting your miters, you loose the strength aspect.

From the glare only on one side of the miter, it appears that the frame is sloped towards the outer edge. Taking advantage of that, you could simply build the frame normally, then cut the slot for the spline using a regular Rip blade on your TS(like what crank49 shows) to get a similar effect. The difference would be that the 45 slope would be in the opposite direction.

-- Backer boards, stop blocks, build oversized, and never buy a hand plane--

I agree with Gary.

-- Made in America, with American made tools....Shopsmith

Agree with RussellAP & Greg D. Technically I don’t believe that would be considered a spline unless it was done rance’s way, another idea I liked.

-- -- Rick M.

rance

Thats the kind of insight I was looking for… very clever. I guess the only bad thing is that you would see this on the inside of the frame as well (would need a 2 part spline if I wanted fill the inner side with Jatoba).

This would also act as a true spline (I was originally just after the look)

A lot of these thoughts limit the length I could make them, except for those that mention laminations which I really want to avoid.

The outside blades on my stacked dado has a left and right 45 degree cut on the carbide tip of the teeth. Just a thought.

-- I don't make mistakes, I have great learning lessons, Greg