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Martin Carroll Martin Carroll is offline
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Default Making a curved template

In article
..com, GMM writes
In the final stages of refurbishing the downstairs bog (yup, it's been
on the go for ages!) and I want to fit an undersink cabinet. The sink
in question is not too large (but then neither is the room) and I want
to use it rather than change for a purpose built vanity unit for a
variety of good reasons, so I thought I might buy a 600mm kitchen base
cabinet and modify it (to make it shallower) to form the carcass,
using something yet to be decided as the worktop that sits each side
of the sink.
Cutting the right shape of (horizontal) curve would allow the sink to
sit partly embedded in the worktop as there's a flat 'lip' around the
edge of the sink. Now, I'd rather make the cabinet more shallow than
the sink IFYSWIM, so I'll also need a vertical curve in the top part
of the cabinet (was thinking a matching door and drawer front here,
with the curve cut in the drawer front). Obviously I shall have to
think about how to make up for the bracing that I'll cut through in
doing this, but that shouldn't be too tricky. The tricky part is
working out how to cut the curves. Although I haven't measured
properly they look more like arcs from ovals than arcs from circles so
it looks like the thing to do will be to make some kind of template to
match, then follow this with a router, but how do I make the
template? Perhaps a big piece of stiffish paper carefully creased and
ripped until it sits against the shape properly, a bit of trial and
error cutting MDF templates from that until they make the right fit?
The horizontal curve can be a bit scruffy, as the lip of the sink will
cover most of it, but the vertical one will be on view, so I'd like to
get it right, at least within the margin of a neat silicone bead.

Somehow, I have a feeling that there's a proper way to do it, and
someone here might know what that is......



Is this the sort of thing you were thinking of? http://www.m-and-
p.co.uk/wyke-road/cloaks.jpg

I did this a year or so ago for the last refurb I did. ISTR that all I
did was to cut the front top panel roughly to shape and then kept
sanding and checking until i seemed to fit OK.

Cheers

Martin
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Martin Carroll