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Desk Moldings I

The decorative elements of the desk, in fact the base frame of the piece, were all about deeply incised moldings on the edges of every planar element.  I would estimate that the construction phase of the base was about 90% for making the moldings, about 10% for making the joinery.

Once the individual elements were cut and cleaned up, I set to work on making the moldings on their edges.  Given the nature of the moldings this was a multi-step process, using some tools that I bought and many more that I made or modified.  I began with those surfaces that were the most amenable to trying and perfecting the technique, namely the feet.  They were manageable in size and complexity, and completely accessible since I was working them prior to assembly.

In essence these were not carved moldings early as much as they were “scratched” moldings, in essence created with a series of scratch stocks.  So, my first step was to fabricate a slew of scratch stock cutters to configure the primary shape of the three half-round runs on the edge of the feet.  I ground a center flute cutter  from a blank from my inventory from the English profile tool to establish the valleys, and a Lie-Nielsen iron needed only a bit of tuning to work just fine to perfect the convex rounds.