A big blank

Rather than come up with a design beforehand, I broke out a large solid wood blank to fit snuggly into the opening of the cabi­net. The extra bit of material in both width and height would allow me to trim the doors to fit nicely towards the end of the pro­cess. Designing a piece of furniture before breaking out material is usually the best approach, but in this case, I knew the overall dimensions I needed and drawing the curves directly on the door blank allowed me to clearly see the design full-sized.

I drew the curves on the blank with a piece of chalk. I tried five curves, but that seemed too busy for such a small cabinet. After playing around with different options and taking photos so I could look at the options I came up with, I settled on a design with three curves.

Cut the curves

Gentle curves like these are best cut on a bandsaw, but I wanted to ensure I’d remove the least amount of wood possible with the cuts. A scroll saw was the best option to reduce the kerf, even if it doesn’t do as good of a job at cutting even curves. The reason I wanted to reduce the kerf was because the cut edges would even­tually be glued back together again, and the less waste I removed, the better that glue joint would be.

While cutting the curves on the scroll saw, it was less important that I stayed on the lines, than making sure the resulting curve was even. These were supposed to be very fluid, smooth curves, and the fact that I was at times straying up to 1/4″ from the lines wouldn’t be a problem.

Sand, shave or power carve

The next step was to create a surface with different heights, sort of like ocean waves rolling into shore. Because this van­ity would be seen only from the left, I opted to reduce the thickness of the right sides of a few of the curved door parts, as this would allow the user to see the narrow blue edge of some of these parts. If I added the curves the opposite way the blue edges would never be seen.

To guide me as I reduced the thickness of some of the door pan­els, I first used a rabbet bit in my router to add a curved rabbet to the edges, setting the bit to cut to a depth of about 3/16″.

Next, I removed some material from the faces of these panels to create an even transition down to the rabbet. I was careful not to remove too much material at the rabbet edge, as that would make for a weaker joint once the curved sections were glued back together. I was aiming to finish with a 1/4″ high visible edge that would eventually be painted blue. I did this with power carving equipment, but some hand tools to even the faces and an aggres­sive sander with course grit sandpaper would also work well.

After power carving I sanded the rough surfaces smooth.

Add some colour

My scroll saw left a very smooth edge, so I didn’t sand it much at all. A few passes with a fine grit paper was all that was needed. If the edge you end up with is rougher, you might want to sand it a bit more heavily, but just be sure to not take off so much material that it will stop the mating curved sections from being glued back together properly.

I aligned the curved sections face up, side-by-side, on a flat surface and traced a faint line onto the mating parts where the reduced thickness edges lined up with their neighbours. This line gave me something to work towards while brushing milk paint onto the edges. As long as the wood was covered up to, and slightly beyond, that line the visible portion of it would be all painted. Keep in mind that painting much beyond the pencil line will cause problems with glue adhesion while laminating these curved sections back together.

The centre edge, which wouldn’t be glued to the mating piece, gets painted on its entire edge.

Sand and prep

Both the slightly curved and flat faces of these curved sections need to be sanded before glue-up.

I didn’t want any glue squeeze-out to get on the painted edges, so I added a small V-groove on the slightly narrower edges, as close as possible to the front face of the edges. For me, only two V-grooves were needed. This small groove would trap any glue that would otherwise squeeze out onto the painted edges during glue-up.

Do a test fit to ensure the parts line up nicely. If they don’t, removing a very small amount of material is likely all that will be needed. Chances are everything will line up fine, though. Evenly apply a small amount of glue to the mating surfaces, then bring the parts together and apply clamps. I used a few curved cauls along the curved edge, but it’s easy to also cut a few curved pieces of solid wood to protect the curved edges of the doors. Ensure the back faces, as well as the ends, of the parts are aligned as closely as possible before setting the panels aside to dry.

At this stage you can treat the panels like typical doors. I hung the doors, trimmed them so the gaps were even, took them back to the shop to apply a finish and then installed a pair of mag­netic push latches so the doors could easily be opened.