How do you give a finished look to your table edge? I plan on using 1/2 homosote and 1/2 ply wood. My bench work is not rectangler in shape it will have some tight inside curves so the material I use must be flexible.
Masonite is probably the best, & I have used 1/8th. inch baltic burch. A nice idea is a retaining wall that a lot of guys have made, that look like stacked up ties or timbers.
I’m not sure how tight you mean. 1/8" masonite is fairly flexible. If you cut into 4 to 6 inch strips you can bend it to 18" radius or less if you are careful. If you need something more flexible than that you could try the aluminum or vinyl that siding installers use to cover wood trim.
Depending upon how tight a curve you are talking, the prefinished plastic casing trim like used around doors and windows looks good and flexes very well. Another trick is to use 1/2" AC plywood, and cut a shallow 1/4" kerf on the back c side, perpindicular to the grain on the A side.
Curves are apealing to the eye but tough to make.
Jim
18" is the tightest curve I will have. Thanks for the ideas. [:)]
This is plastic casing trim as mentioned by Jim. This is about a 44 in diameter piece of plywood. It was fairly difficult to get this to work. The plastic when bent this far has a tendency to snap. And getting it to stay in place, I used liquid nails and trim nails, was a bear. But it worked out in the end.
For applying veneer on curves I take C clamps and clamp the table with the veneer or in this case the wood trim in the throat of the clamp. Attach one end of the trim to keep the trim from flying and move the clamps in to the edge, leaving about an inch with the throat of the clamp holding the piece against the edge. Going slow and carefully warming the casing with a heat gun works. Once you have the trim around the edge less the space, apply glue to the inner surfaces. Place the trim where you want it and using wedges between the clamp throat and the trim, wedge the trim into place, and secure with nails driven in at an angle. Gluing right before attaching leaves you time to work the curve and saves on the mess. Driving the nails in at an angle gives more holding power. If you only have a few clamps and can’t do the whole curve, this method works doing little at a time. Let the glue DRY completly then wait a little longer, before unclamping.
Good luck
Jim
There is a product called Coroplast that you can get in 4x8 sheets at sign shops. In essence, it is corrugated plastic that resembles cardboard in construction but is very colorful, and quite flexible. Besides signage, hobbyists in RC use it to construct SPAD(Simple Plastic Airplane Design) aircraft. It is cheap compared to balsa and can be cut and folded, bent and plyied into infinite shapes. I am thinking of using some gray that I have left over from RC planes to construct some tunnel portals out of. It could be inked to appear like cut stone or some brown could be inked and layered to appear as wood beams. Come to think of it, you could use gray to simulate stone arch bridges and long span viaducts. This material comes in about twenty colors and is paintable so it can be weathered also.