Need help creating serving tray handles

Question

I’m making a serving tray in a woodworking course. I designed it to have a “fence” running along the length of the board and attaching the handles between the two fences. As you can see from the picture below, the handle consists of 2 pieces with an arc. The upper piece is quite thin (min. 12mm, max. 18mm).

My question is about how I would go about constructing the handle pieces.

I thought about making the handle in one piece as if the top of the handle is attached to the bottom part, adding about 3mm to account for the saw blade (see picture below). Then, after routing the arc, I could cut the pieces apart. This seems like a good way to provide some stability for the handheld router OR provide more safety if I’d use a table router (not sure on which tool to use, either).

If I’m going to use a router, I’m also not sure about how to create a template for this. I could just draw the arc line on the wood, so I can “eyeball” it… Is there a better way?

I could also just draw the shape of the arc onto the wood and use a chisel…

Any advice or comment is appreciated.

Answer 1

I'm not sure why your mind went to the router here but I don't think it's the way a lot of people would choose to do this (although it can absolutely be done that way). If the ends here were single pieces and the openings were extended ovoids then a router would arguably be the way to go, after getting rid of most of the waste by other means¹.

Since it's just the one tray I think the curved edges you need are within the scope of "I'm OK with doing these individually" for most people.

However, saying that, there's a more efficient way of doing it and that's ganging the pieces together² for some or all of the operations and working them all at once. Naturally this will also help ensure greater uniformity in the end result, if that's something you particularly want.

• For ease of workholding I would make all four pieces the same size initially, then cut or plane down the narrower top pieces to size. This could even be done after installation in the tray if desired.

• Don't attempt to draw the curve freehand by eye; this is far more difficult than it seems and rarely works as well as one hopes. Instead use a very old method, bend a thin strip of wood (or a steel rule) and mark along it, something like this:

^Source.

• You only need to draw the curve once if you're ganging the four pieces together and working them all together.

• If you want or need to do them individually then mark only one piece, work it to completion them mark the other three pieces from the first. This is considered best practice for uniformity of results in many woodworking operations.

• If a bandsaw is available, you'll have all four pieces ganged together and will saw close to the line using it. If you're nervous you might want to aim to be about 1/8" (3mm) from the line, but with care — working slowly and being prepared to back up a bit and change angle as needed — you could aim for 1/16" (1.5mm), leaving a lot less excess wood to remove in the next step.

• Work down to the line initially using sanding, using very coarse paper (60 grit or even coarser!) if you have to do it by hand. If an oscillating spindle sander or drum sander in a drill are available, use them. You could conceivably also do this using the toe of a belt sander, but you'd need to be very careful.

• Finish off the surface either by hand sanding in the direction of the grain up to 180 or 240 grit (the most common finishing grits), or by scraping.

• If a compass plane is available consider doing the entire operation using it. You can just use a curved-bottom plane to do some or all of the final smoothing, but there isn't a great deal of wood to remove here so it's quite possible to do the whole job with the plane, saving multiple operations and setups.

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¹ Drilling a sequence of holes with e.g. Forstner bits, or drilling two holes and joining them with jigsaw or coping saw cuts.

² Using the tape + superglue trick, good carpet tape or hot-melt glue to temporarily tack them together.